<p class="ql-block">This year, the students in Little Dragon Summer Camp are a diverse lot. Some of them come from Chinese heritage families and speak Chinese at home; some of them come from different Chinese immersion programs where they learn and speak Chinese. They range from kindergartens to fifth graders. Yet, they share an outlook: learning Chinese, respect and appreciate the cultural difference, and have strong motivation about learning STEM in Chinese.</p> <p class="ql-block">Before starting our 1st newsletter in 2024, let’s acknowledge the dedicated and experienced teachers, nice volunteers, and field experts. We are lucky to have them with our passion for doing this summer camp. We work together and help our students make a meaningful week.</p> Basketball <p class="ql-block">In basketball lessons, our students learn from coaches, from volunteers who are good basketball players, from each other. With hard work, they improve the skills (e.g. shooting, dribbling, passing, etc.…) this week. </p> <p class="ql-block" style="text-align:center;"><b>Group A </b></p> <p class="ql-block" style="text-align:center;"><b>Group B </b></p> <p class="ql-block" style="text-align:center;"><b>Group C </b></p> STEAM in Chinese <p class="ql-block">This week, we enjoyed our Chinese STEM unit focusing on sound and how acoustical engineers create visual representations of sound. We started by exploring how vibrations create sound and learned the properties of sound such as pitch, volume, and duration. Through engaging hands-on activities, like experimenting with a tuning fork and playing the African instrument Kalimba, the kids really had fun.</p><p class="ql-block"> </p><p class="ql-block">Next day, we read a story called “Kwame’s Sound” together and it was about a young boy who lives in Ghana and who learns how engineers work with the Elephant Listening Project there to help them study elephant sounds and protect Elephants. Since we do not have elephants in Minnesota, we then explored the sounds of five local birds: the common loon, Eastern Wood-pewee, Northern Cardinal, Blue Jay, and Mourning Dove.</p><p class="ql-block"> </p><p class="ql-block">By the end of our STEM lessons, the kids recorded the pitch and duration of these bird calls and created visual interpretations using penne, macaroni, beads, and yarn. Kids also represented their interpretations to the small groups, sharing their insights and creativity. </p> Earth Science English Language Arts <p class="ql-block" style="text-align:center;"><b>Group A </b></p> <p class="ql-block">This past week, we started off each day with 3 books of their choices. Kids enjoyed read-a-louds. After reading, we had a little bit of creative freedom with colored pencils and paper. Other days, we did some flashcard drawing. We also played charades with the flashcards. The kids knew the words through the pictures, and some through spelling.</p> <p class="ql-block" style="text-align:center;"><b>Group B </b></p> <p class="ql-block">This week, we focused on close reading and comprehending short stories. We learned and practiced literary analysis methods to better understand the deeper meaning in the text and also learned about the different verb tenses to strengthen our grammar. Students worked collaboratively in groups on various reading comprehension worksheets and also started a personal notebook to collect all the new content they learned. </p> <p class="ql-block" style="text-align:center;"><b>Group C </b></p> <p class="ql-block">We alternated going over different exercises. For the one exercise we went over 3-4 paragraph long stories with multiple choice questions at the end to assess understanding. For the other exercise we had a short story that had short answer responses to also practice their writing skills.</p> <p class="ql-block" style="text-align:center;"><b>Group D </b></p> <p class="ql-block">This past week, we worked mostly on our Storms packet. Every chapter would have five tasks, and every day we’d work on 2-3 tasks. Kids made improvement. In the last day of the week, we wrote about a summary of the week and what they did each day. </p> <p class="ql-block" style="text-align:center;"><b>Group E </b></p> <p class="ql-block">We had started on about a 850 lexile set of short stories based on severe weather that we read and learned through out the week. Our exercises included answering short answer responses, learning vocabulary words, and learning how to write summaries. As expected the summaries seemed a bit harder for them but after following the graphic organizer they got it done.</p> <p class="ql-block" style="text-align:center;"><b>Group F </b></p> <p class="ql-block">This week students learned various methods for analyzing nonfiction texts. This was supplemented with introductions to new grammar devices such as using correct punctuation for run-on sentences and different ways to incorporate quotation marks. Students also analyzed a persuasive article and wrote their own short essay to practice expressing their personal views on the topic. </p> Activity Center <p class="ql-block" style="text-align:center;"><b>Drawing</b></p> <p class="ql-block" style="text-align:center;"><b>Math</b></p> <p class="ql-block" style="text-align:center;"><b>Craft</b></p> Lunch and Snack Time Maple Maze Swimming Pools Kids and Pond Playground Sounds of Summer Volunteers