Students described what their teams did to try to cushion and protect an egg before dropping it from the top of a stepstool during Tracey Nordahl’s class at the Summer Academy and Expanded Learning Program at Kyrene de Los Cerritos Elementary School.

“It’s basically an egg in a cup with a tube and plates blocking both ends,” said a boy as he stood on the stepstool holding their project with his two team members on either side.

The team said they did some test drops and revised what they did to protect the egg afterward.

Video by Tabitha Bland/AZEdNews: Take a look inside Kyrene School District’s Summer Academy & Expanded Learning Program

“Are you confident?” Ms. Nordahl asked the team.

“Yes,” they responded.

“Earlier you said you weren’t. Are you more confident now?” Ms. Nordahl asked.

“The egg is OK!” said a girl on the team as she checked after the boy dropped the egg in the contraption they created to protect it.

“It survived,” another group of students said, and then the class clapped.

Then the next student group shared what they did and tested their project in front of the class.

“Summer Academy has been around for many years with classes designed to enrich our students and extend learning on key academic concepts. Classes have included STEM, art, music, cooking, sports and wellness, English Language Arts and more,” said Josh Glider, director of community education for Kyrene School District.

“The Kyrene Expanded Learning Program was created last year to help address learning loss associated with the pandemic and online learning. This year, both programs are being offered simultaneously as a hybrid model of enrichment and intervention,” Glider said.

About 1,400 students took part in these learning opportunities this summer, Glider said.

Elementary students participated in four enrichment classes or a combination of two hours of enrichment and one hour of intervention in English Language Arts and one hour  of intervention in  math, Glider said.

Middle school students took part in two hours of English Language Arts and two hours of math daily with Social Emotional Learning embedded in the curriculum, Glider said.

Students in Shari Vogel’s class played a card game that used the mathematical concepts of greater than and less than.

Middle school students in Marcia Quintero-Guest’s class worked on subtraction problems using decimals.

“This is the key thing that we need to look at on our anchor chart and add to your notes, Quintero-Guest said. “Just like yesterday, I would like you to highlight the most important part of this anchor chart. The most important thing to remember is to line up your decimals. We really care about place value.”

Students pulled out their folders and started highlighting key parts on their charts.

Then one of the students noticed that when they used their yellow highlighters their chart turned orange.

“It’s like a magic trick. It’s something new,” Quintero-Guest said.

Then students added notes to their charts on several strategies to use, before they started working on some math problems in teams and individually.

“Summer programming like this is important because it keeps students engaged in learning in a fun enriching environment, supports academic achievement, and prevents summer learning loss,” Glider said.