ROME, GA—As the summer sun blazes on, Rome City Schools Summer Language Camps have come to an end for determined English learning students and dedicated RCS faculty. Throughout the month of June, faculty members throughout the system gathered to engage English learning students in an ESOL (English to Speakers of Other Languages) camp, hosted this year by Elm Street Elementary and Rome Middle School.
ESOL/Title III Coordinator, Sarita Brock, explained, “Summer Language Camp is a large part of our Title III (federally funded) budget. This means it is in addition to the regular ESOL services English learners receive during the school year. This camp is planned to provide our EL students with further opportunities to increase and grow their academic language skills within a low-risk environment. It is also super fun!”
The two-week elementary camp was hosted by Elm Street Elementary, as it has been for the past few years. Brock explained that students in grades K-2 were invited to participate based on recommendations from their ESOL teachers and students in grades 3-6 with limited English proficiency were also invited to participate.
The secondary camp, hosted by Rome Middle School, ran for three weeks and served students in grades 7-12 with limited English proficiency; students who have been in the country for two years or less. All participating students were provided with transportation as well as breakfast and lunch each day of camp.
“Each grade level focused on different units that promoted the growth of academic language,” Brock explained. “The lower grades focused on units involving animals, life cycles and family. The secondary students focused on seasons, months and celebrations. Students participated in fun, hands-on activities that promoted language growth.”
Secondary Camp Coordinator, Alondra Monterrosa, said that she and her fellow teachers incorporated a lot of crafts while working some specific lessons into each activity, such as sentence structure, ordinal numbers and verb tenses.
“We focus on language acquisition and building confidence in our English Language Learners,” elementary Camp Coordinator, Courtney Callaway, explained. “We focus on speaking, reading, writing and listening skills. There are also many language-based projects and art pieces that are created around language acquisition at our camp.”
“The teachers have done a phenomenal job choosing fun and engaging activities that also address critical academic language standards,” Brock affirmed.
While the camps focus on setting the students up for growth and success, they also offer opportunities for parent engagement. As they approached their last days of camp, Brock said parents were invited to a family day.
“Parents were invited to come and learn about the great things their children had done during camp,” she explained. “The students would guide their parents through a gallery walk and explain the activities. Parents would then spend some time with one of the teachers to discuss the Learning Success literacy and math take-home kits. These kits included activity booklets, flashcards, games, journals, and dry erase activity mats to help the parents facilitate their child’s learning during the summer. We had over 40 families participate in camp family day. It was a huge success and we loved seeing our families engaged in learning with their children.”
Monterrosa said that the progress students made from beginning to end was evident.
“We did a pretest and posttest and we saw the differences in scores. They have acquired some of the vocabulary and some of the conversational words that they need,” she explained.
“They've bloomed the last three weeks,” she added. “I'm excited for their progress even more during school. If anything, I think it's definitely boosted their confidence and it's going to help with school and academics.”
