Curriculum
Summer Adventure offers programs at four different age levels:
- Kinderventure! Kids, kindergarten
- Adventure Scouts Kids, grades 1-3
- Explorers Kids, grades 4-5
- Voyagers Kids, grades 6-8
Students grades 9-12 may take high school courses during the summer, either to make up courses they have previously failed or to obtain advancement credits.
For K-8 participants, each session of Summer Adventure lasts two weeks, and the school day is six hours long. Participants take "Core Program" classes in the morning and two "Adventure Electives" classes in the afternoon. The program aims to integrate fun and learning to attract students. Sample courses include robotics, theater, aeronautics, movie making, and physical science. According to the Newton Summer Adventure Website, "The hands-on activities promote conceptual learning and problem-solving skills, attributes which are shown to lead to increased academic performance in school. In district-sponsored programs where the Adventure includes a pre-and-post assessment, achievement gains of near 50% have been recorded." The Columbia school district independently confirmed that Summer Adventure resulted in improved reading test scores for participants.
Summer Adventure is district-funded and free for all students.
Read more about this topic: Newton Summer Adventure
Famous quotes containing the word curriculum:
“If we focus exclusively on teaching our children to read, write, spell, and count in their first years of life, we turn our homes into extensions of school and turn bringing up a child into an exercise in curriculum development. We should be parents first and teachers of academic skills second.”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)