Summer school lets students brush up, branch out

Updated: July 22, 2012 6:08AM

Students at Park View School this summer will be learning to read and write better, hone their math skills and in general prepare to return to school next year as improved students.

But beyond that some will be learning to conduct science experiments they wouldn’t try during the regular school year. They can also try some experiments in the kitchen with a cooking class and expand their musical side with a guitar class.

They also are trying out new things such as making jeweler or studying Harry Potter — making their own wands and spell books, creating a wizards’ newspaper or trying their very own Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans.

District 70 is offering a mix of classes to help students with basic skills and to add some enrichment to their lives with ideas and subjects they would not tackle during the normal school year.

“It’s really a mix,” said David Pump, Park View assistant principal and director of the summer-school program. “We were after a wide variety.”

Students started class last week and the program runs through July 12. They attend four days a week.

The district is offering three class periods a day and students can take one each period, Pump said.

Classes run for 65 minutes.

“Some kids take three classes and some take one,” Pump said.

Pump said the enrichment programs give students a chance to kind of stretch out and work their brains in a different way.

“Harry Potter fans can learn how to cook food from the books,” he said as an example. “There are science classes where they can try different kinds of experiments they won’t do in school.

“It gives them an opportunity to experience some things they might not experience during the normal school year, some different of things that are fund.”

The program is open to any student who attends a Niles Township elementary-school district, Pump said.

One popular class in technology gives students a chance to see both sides of the computing world. They will work with iPads, as well as Mac and Windows desktop or laptop computers, Pump said.

Though students in Golf Elementary District 67 can attend classes at Park View, the district itself is just offering a two-week program during under a Title I grant for students who need some assistance in basic skills, Superintendent Jamie Reilly said.

Between five and eight students per grade are attending for two weeks later this summer. Enrollment was open only by invitation, she noted.

Reilly said this is the second year the school has offered the program.

The programs, she said, are oriented to “literacy and math reinforcement.”

Pump said the District 70 programs offer a nice, more-casual setting for the youngsters to learn some things out of the ordinary or just be better prepared for the new school year.

“It’s a nice program” he said. “It offers some different choices in a little more-informal setting.”

He also lauded the teachers who take part in the program and volunteers who help out, including former Park View students.

“It’s great that teachers and volunteers make themselves available in the summer,” Pump said.

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