As of June 29th, Aspire’s six-week, no-cost, summer learning camp has officially begun! We welcomed 135 students into our doors, just one week after the school year ended, for full days of learning and fun.

And what a joy it’s been! Stepping into the space, you can hear and see the students’ excitement they play games, work in groups, and showcase their projects. One student shared:

“There are a lot of things at camp that are fun. My favorite part is when we get to meet new people and make new friends!“

Summer is an important time for students: nationwide, students lose between 10-40% of the learning that they gained from the past school year during the summer (University of Colorado Boulder 2022). To prevent the “summer slide” and make sure students are ready to enter the next school year strong, Aspire reinforces lessons and skills throughout the summer, incorporating them into different lessons and projects. For historically underserved students, many of whom can’t afford expensive summer camps, this time is critical.

That’s why our summer camp is completely no cost to every student and family! Every summer, our program team creates a new curriculum so that students who attend our program year over year never experience the same camp twice. This year’s theme is the World Cup, with every week focusing on a different continent and its relationship to the tournament. Our students have been avidly following the games and are full of opinions about different teams, so they’ve been especially engaged and invested in these lessons!

You can read some of the highlights from the first two weeks of camp below.

Week One: North America

For the first week of camp, students explored the host continent of the World Cup. Their favorite lessons and activities included:

• Practicing fractions and averages using soccer statistics. To kick off camp, students started with a Math Monday activity where they chose a North American soccer team and calculated their statistics. By finding the mean, median, and mode of data like goals and assists, they were able to compare their chosen team to others to see which teams were the highest scorers, most consistent, and most likely to win. Our middle school students took it one step further and also calculated the exact probability of their team winning against another team based on past wins and losses! 
• Learning how advertisements work and creating their own, based on the types of ads shown during the World Cup. They explored both print and digital ads, discussing in groups how different ads made them feel and what was most effective about each one. Then, they put those skills to good use and created ads using those techniques, competing for the most effective ad. The winner was an ad for a new flavor of Doritos (Winning Red) that had bold colors, powerful words, and a unique idea (1 in 1,000 bags had a World Cup ticket inside of it!). 
• Taking on volunteer roles in a roleplaying game about solving problems at the World Cup. Each team of students had their own role, pulled from FIFA’s official volunteer roles, and brainstormed solutions for different problems based on their role. For instance, what would they do if there was a viral fake ticket campaign? Or a translation error on the screens? Or a group of lost youth?
• Visualizing the geography of North America and the scale of the World Cup by creating a map that showed the distance between different host cities. Then, they talked about how fans and teams often had to travel many hours to get to different cities. The full scale of North America and how long it would take to different points became much clearer for students than it had been before!
• Building models of different North American landforms and planned how they would create a new World Cup stadium. They built mountains, canyons, volcanoes, and glaciers, and learned that engineers might face different problems trying to build stadiums in these places. From needing to build a safe distance away from the edge of the canyon to leveling out the ground of a mountain, they had lots of ideas for how to keep the stadiums safe.
• Meeting a special guest visitor: Moses the Dog! Our CEO, Paula Fynboh, brought her dog in for students to meet, greet, and pet. Moses was very enthusiastic at the beginning of the day, but much like our students, she was exhausted by the end of the day. From scheduled classroom appearances to encounters in the hallway, Moses had a packed day!

Week Two: South America

Moving south, students learned about the environment of South America and the diversity of cultures in the region. Highlights included:

• Creating their own terrariums that taught them about biodiversity and ecosystems across South America. They added rocks, dirt, seeds, and water (arranged nicely!) and are waiting to see how it will grow. As students assembled their terrariums, they went on a virtual field trip to the Amazon! 
• Becoming climate detectives of South America. Each group chose a country and then received a different animal, crop, and climate challenge to tackle. For instance, one group chose Colombia and talked through the impact of flooding on coffee and the Andean Condor. They made posters and shared with the class, coming up with at least one action they can take to help save the planet, like planting trees or protecting forests!
• Playing a dice tournament where they had to add up the numbers from each dice roll, trying to get as close as possible to 100 without going over. Middle school students had to roll 3 dice and needed to create equations from the dice rolls using multiplication and division. The closer they got to 100, the “dicier” it got! 
• Getting active by having an Aspire World Cup! Each class got to compete against each other and had time to check with their team about their sportsmanship skills (were they including all of their teammates? How could they help teammates collaborate?). The winner was… a tie! In the end, the classes decided to team up and the tournament ended in a draw. Students took the lessons on sportsmanship to heart!
• Practicing their writing skills by emailing their favorite soccer teams. They learned how to add an email address, create a subject line, write a message, and sign off. They worked in groups to make sure they had the correct spelling and appropriate phrasing for a message to a professional. One group has already received an encouraging email from the Argentina team, and their amazement is infectious!
• Cheering along during a World Cup watch party with their family and friends! Last Thursday, Aspire stayed open late to host a watch party where students and families could watch a quarter-finals game (France vs Morocco) in a fun, safe environment with their community. The game played in each of our classrooms, and families enjoyed food, balloons, and fun! One student was so excited, he used the lessons on advertisements to create his own about this event. Check it out here.

Rock Band Music Fundraiser

Join us for the Aspire Rocks Music Fundraiser at Clare and Don’s Beach Shack on July 29th at 6PM! The 10-person Aspire student rock band, the Jackson Nine, will headline the show, and they can’t wait to show off the songs they’ve been practicing so far at camp. They’ll be joined by Angel Roads and APM, local (professional) bands. Food and drink will be available for purchase, and we encourage you to buy food from Clare and Don’s, our generous venue sponsor. 

Tickets are $25 and available here, as well as available at the door.Your ticket not only provides access to great music and summer fun, it also supports Aspire’s no-cost learning programs for historically underserved students. We hope to see you there for an evening of summer fun, community music, and budding talent!