Summer at GDS: Week 8 Newsletter

MIDWEEK CHECK-IN August 8, 2019

Table of Contents

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Pinball Makers Creative Challenges & Little Hoppers Creative Writing Sketch Noting & Typing Math: LS Math 6th grade math 7th grade math Pre-algebra Algebra 1

AUGUST 7, 2019

SUMMER AT GDS MIDWEEK CHECK-IN

Pinball Makers

In Pinball Makers camp, the kids are building their very own mechanical pinball machines. They learned how to use saws, miter boxes, drills and drivers safely to build anything they can think of. In the past few days, the kids have come up with ideas and blueprinted their board. After this, they took on the task of creating their flippers. These are the complex mechanisms that keep the ball in play while using the machine. To accomplish this, the students must persevere through failing ideas and breaking parts to make something that works. As we move forward the kids will learn 3D Printing to enhance their designs. We are excited to play our finished pinball games!

SUMMER AT GDS MIDWEEK CHECK-IN

AUGUST 7, 2019

Creative Challenges: Session 7 Communication

In Creative Challenges this week, campers are learning about communication. On Monday, they played telephone and learned about sign language and body language. Campers did role playing, similar to charades, to identify what the other person was saying. On Tuesday, they went to the Smithsonian National Postal Museum where they explored America's postal history from colonial times to the present. At the museum campers were able to make their own postal stamps.

Wednesday, the campers wrote postcards and learned about hieroglyphics!

Little Hoppers

This week has already been an excellent and fun week at Little Hoppers camp as we have been exploring many different topics! We began our week with an exploration into oceans and animals that live in the oceans, outer space and stars with a look at constellations and learning how stars are formed and went on an imaginary jungle safari. Later this week we will be continuing with an imaginary trip to the circus and a look back into the Jurassic times. Throughout the week we have been practicing fine motor skills as well as number and letter recognition.

We are so excited to continue with the campers for the rest of the week and to see what kinds of fun discoveries we will continue to make!

AUGUST 7, 2019

SUMMER AT GDS MIDWEEK CHECK-IN

Creative Writing

At the start of the week, we got to know each other a little better by doing a human scavenger hunt. We answered questions about ourselves and then tried to find people in class who either shared our interests or were different from us in some way. It gave us an opportunity to interact with and learn about the peers who we will be interacting with through the week. We learned about our journal writing routine. Everyday we write for 5-7 minutes using prompts or pictures to inspire us. Everyone in the class had a chance to share some of their writing this week.

We began our first writing piece by developing a main character. We discussed character traits and read short stories to determine the outer traits, inner traits and emotions of the main character in the story. Then, we wrote introduction pieces about a character we created.

Later in the week, we learned about the typical elements of the plot and read a story called The Curious Situation of Foxes by Kyria Abrahams to listen for the rising action, climax, falling action and resolution of the story. We used what we learned to write a short story about our characters that included each of these elements.

It was exciting to take a trip to the Museum of Natural History! While we were there, we imagined and planned for stories about an adventure our main characters would take at the museum. We wrote these stories when we returned to camp. We took all of the stories we wrote this week, and we each published them in our own books. We added illustrations to bring our stories to life. Ask your camper to share their book with you when I bring it home at the end of the week!

SUMMER AT GDS MIDWEEK CHECK-IN

AUGUST 7, 2019

Sketch Noting

This week during Sketh Noting Camp, middle school students are learning more effective ways to take notes. Using pictures, colors and symbols, students are creating notes that help them understand course material better. On Wednesday, students practice their skills by taking notes about empathy. Once done with their notes, the students lined up in the hall where the notes were posted and used constructive criticism to help each other improve their skills.

Typing

Morning and afternoon typing classes have been working to complete the typing course and receive a certificate of either a course completion or participation on Friday. Each typing course lesson works towards different skills. Our touch-typing program uses online software (Typing Quest) that walks each participant through home key placement, letters, accuracy, speed, and more, all at the student’s own pace. Our typing teacher supports students in learning proper posture, hand placement, and other elements. Students will leave this week with a greater familiarity of the keyboard and proper typing technique.

AUGUST 7, 2019

SUMMER AT GDS MIDWEEK CHECK-IN

Math Review Camps: LS Math

What a wonderful start to our lower school math workshop. The goal of our twoweek camp is for campers to engage in interactive, visual, inquiry-based mathematics lessons that encourage them to explore mathematical ideas in depth and cultivate a growth mindset!

We started the week by asking our campers to complete a mindset assessment profile. This consisted of eight questions to give us a sense of what type of mindset our campers have (fixed versus growth). Afterwards, we introduced students to the Four 4s Challenge. Campers were asked to use four 4s to write an expression for numbers 1-20. You can really write expressions from 1-100 and many campers looked to do just that. It was so exciting to see what seemed to be an impossible task to become more feasible as groups of campers worked together sharing new and inventive solution strategies. We even had a chance to talk about the order of operations, square roots, factorials, and fractions! Many campers enjoyed continuing to work on this challenge throughout the week.

We also had campers work on our building shapes activity. This activity requires students to be dependent on each other in a way that brings students together as a community of math learners. Students will need everyone in their group to successfully build complex shapes with a rope. This is a great activity for the teacher to model the role of a skeptic as we checked each shape for accuracy. In between, we talked about what worked well and what are areas of growth when it comes to working in groups and more effectively communicating with each other.

Throughout the week students learned a new math game, Pico, Firme, Nada, and engaged in several other activities looking at graphing, measuring, number talks, and visualizing complex problems. We look forward to the rest of week one and all of week two!

SUMMER AT GDS MIDWEEK CHECK-IN

AUGUST 7, 2019

Math Review Camps: 6th Grade Math

This week in 6th Grade Review Camp we have been investigating remainders and operations with numbers, order of operations, reviewed long division and basic exponent properties, and talked a lot about the importance of pattern in math.

Using real-world applications and hands-on projects, this math review camp will help prepare students for the upcoming school year.

7Th Grade Math

This week in 7th Grade Math Review we started with order of operations, talking about the process and error analysis. We worked our way into 1 and 2 step equations. By the end of the week we should be into the distributive property and equations with the distributive property. This review camp serves as a reinforcement of key concepts and foundational skills that will help students find success in their 7th grade math class.

Pre-Algebra

The Pre-Algebra Review class is off to a great start! We've spent the beginning of the week challenging ourselves with a variety of problem solving tasks while reviewing Order of Operations and Fractions, Decimals and Percents. Students have been working hard, keeping an open mind, and have been positive contributors to the group. We'll finish up the week working with Ratios, Proportions, and Integers.

Algebra 1 Review

In the Algebra 1 Review class this week, we have jumped right in, beginning with challenging order of operations problems, solving a variety of linear equations, inequalities and absolute value equations and reviewing the rules of exponents.

We discussed the significance of slope in linear equations, and graphed linear equations, inequalities, absolute value equations, quadratics and exponentials.

With a wide range of schools represented, the students have gotten to know each other and are working hard together as a group.