Describes "Mission Possible," a summer reading game with an espionage theme developed by young adult readers and the Boulder (Colorado) Public Library. Highlights include instructions for playing the game, sample activity sheets, beginning and culminating activities, daily record keeping, prizes, player evaluations of the game, and…

Provides an overview of "Read on the Wild Side," a summer reading program for young adults established by the Webster (New York) Public Library, and "Read Hard, Play Later," a young adult summer reading program of the Pioneer Library System (New York). Highlights include reading logs, T-shirts, publicity, program evaluation,…

Features five articles on outdoor learning for young children: (1) "Summertime Science for School-Agers: Just for Fun?" (Steven L. Snyder); (2) "Nurturing Environmental Awareness in Children" (Kim Hyers); (3) "Sharing Nature with Children" (Karen Stephens); (4) "The Adventure Outside Your Classroom Door" (Sally Hurwitz); and (5) "Environmental…

Describes the evolution and implementation of the Summer Institute on College Teaching, a faculty development program created by the Virginia Tidewater Consortium as part of a foundation-funded exercise through the Kansas City Regional Council for Higher Education. Guiding principles in program development and lessons learned are discussed. (MSE)

The Food Project brings together Boston-area youth to grow and distribute food for the hungry and in the process, develop leadership and job skills. Summer crew workers (high school students) grow vegetables, distribute them to food pantries, and sell them at farmer's markets. Crew leaders learn more about sustainable agriculture and hone…

It is important to start planning for children's summer camp activities long before summer arrives. This paper presents advice from the American Camping Association on asking the right questions of the camp director when looking at different camps. It also discusses the importance of knowing one's options in regard to summer camps. A sidebar…

Presents observations of two community-sponsored summer programs in which storytelling was used as a vehicle for expanding children's existing oral language and developing their literacy abilities. Describes how children first participated as attentive listeners to the professional storyteller, then became creative retellers, then used story…

To investigate the role of psychopathic traits in a clinical and comparison sample, we obtained dimensional California Child Q-Set (CCQ) personality profiles for 66 preadolescent boys with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and 56 comparison boys during naturalistic summer programs and correlated each boy's CCQ profile with an…

Imagine--you must bring water to a hurricane-ravaged area. There is only one bridge and only one truck, and the bridge can only hold so much weight. Your calculations determine if the truck--and its load of water--can make it safely over the bridge. This is a typical challenge during two-week summer camps for third-through fourth-grade students…

Several examples proved Van Hiele theory to be a useful ingredient in teaching of a summer course for high school students who had failed geometry during the school year are discussed. The theory provided a framework to help organize and reflect upon instruction for some key concepts in geometry.

Purdue University recently received $1.2M in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the development of educational programs for high school teachers, high school counselors, and high school students. The purpose of these intervention programs is to show that women (and men) can have interesting, useful, and society-impacting…

The National Writing Project (NWP) is the nation's premier professional development network dedicated to improving the teaching of writing. The NWP network comprises nearly 200 local sites in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. This report presents the results of a seven-year survey study of teachers participating in NWP summer…

Despite the growing popularity of robotics competitions such as FIRST LEGO League, robotics activities are typically not found in regular K-12 classrooms. We speculate that, among other reasons, limited adoption is due to the lack of empirical evidence demonstrating the effect of robotics activities on curricular goals. This paper presents a mixed…

In the United States and around the rest of the world, there is a renewed focus on ensuring that schools are providing students with the skills necessary to compete in the global economy. High-quality summer learning programs are an ideal vehicle to help students gain content knowledge and develop innovative skills: they provide time for…

When the League for Innovation in the Community College held its annual technology conference here last week it drew about 2,350 participants, live and in person. People came from 374 colleges around the country and overseas, and listened to faculty members and technology officials discuss new teaching techniques using gadgets like cell phones.…