Summer School Week 2

We have just completed our second week of summer school and are beginning our third. The good news: Mr. Campbell and I are still married and we have not had any tiffs in front of the kids. Haha.

The bad news: there are a few challenges as the kids get a little burned out reading (in some shape or form) for 6 hours straight. Overall, the attitudes have been good, but the kids do keep us on our toes.

The kids have some gaps in their reading knowledge-- we are working diligently to fill in those gaps.

Here is what we have done so far:

We adapted the Frayer Model as our warm up. I have them pick three words they don’t know from a list of approximately 6-8. We let them use the dictionaries, but have attempted to teach them NOT to write down words in their definitions that they don’t know.

Jon and I changed our Frayer Models to include a picture and the use of the word in a sentence. This really helps our ESL kids (which is almost all of them), to use the words in the proper verb tense. We have them share out a vocabulary word and they put their “finished product” up on the overhead.

I love using the overhead, it gets even the most unmotivated kids to volunteer. Today, one of the kids had the word “Diversity,” he drew a picture of a person from China who was visiting America. (Not bad for 8 in the morning!)

We also have access to Study Island. Here we can assign the kids areas to work on, such as Context Clues, Character Traits, Summaries and Main Ideas. Study Island is web based and has the state standards for many (if not all) states. It seems decent because it allows the kids to have access to the vocabulary they need and work on different areas they struggle in. The lessons can go back to third grade proficiencies if necessary.

Later, we break the kids into groups of 4-5 and work on different skill sets. Our summer school principal was emphatic that we do not teach more of the same and really encouraged us to break up the kids into different stations. I think it is easier in math because you can do more of the kinesthetic “stuff,” but we are trying our best in reading.

Truly, I see a little more progress everyday.

On the other hand, we have only six more days of direct instruction until the big TAKS test. So much to do, so little time!