Photograph by Paul Myers
Jim Sproch, who will be in seventh grade next fall, listens to science teacher Alex Chapman tell how to make a capsule for an egg-drop experiment at the Redwood Middle School Sports and Science Camp.
Saratoga teachers open combo camp featuring science, sports
By Rebecca Ray
Redwood Middle School teachers Brian Safine, Alex Chapman and Joe Christie didn't want to sit around this summer. They didn't want students to sit around, either, so they started the Redwood Middle School Sports and Science Camp.
The day camp, which includes two two-week sessions, provides alternative and individual sports, science instruction and team-building activities for 9- to 13-year-olds. The camp, which takes place at Redwood Middle School from June 18 to June 29, and from July 2 to July 13, is run through the Saratoga Recreation Department.
Safine, Chapman and Christie begin each day with a "prompt question," or life skills-related question, such as "What goals do you have for the summer?" and "What would make this a fun summer?" The students then write their answers in a journal. At the end of the day, after they have played two sports and worked on a science experiment, they engage in a "culmination" activity, such as a scavenger hunt, water fight or team trivia game. The teachers said they hope the culmination activity will instill in the students values, such as respect, responsibility and cooperation.
Safine and Christie teach seventh- and eighth-grade classes at Redwood that combine literature, language arts and social studies. They run the sports portion of the camp, which includes roller hockey, field hockey, lacrosse, archery, badminton, tennis and volleyball. Safine and Christie chose these sports after noticing an absence of alternative and individual sports in the local recreation programs, Christie said. These sports were also underrepresented at other camps, said Safine, and they wanted to expose students to them.
Christie and Safine began talking about starting a sports camp in October 2000, partly because there was no way for incoming Redwood sixth-graders to meet current students. A month later, Safine and Christie decided to include science as part of the camp when they talked to Beverly Tucker, supervisor of the recreation department.
Tucker told them that local residents expressed concern about students continuing to do well in science and math. So Safine and Christie asked Chapman, a sixth-grade science teacher at Redwood, to come on board. The wants and needs of the community fit all three of the teachers' backgrounds, which extend beyond the classroom, Christie said. He and Safine have also coached sports teams--Christie coaches girls' basketball at Redwood, while Safine coaches tennis. The teachers' strengths in sports, science and teaching offered a unique team-teaching set-up, Safine said.
In the science portion of the camp, which Chapman teaches, the students choose between three projects--a solar oven, a water-propelled model rocket and an egg-drop activity--and work on the project throughout the session. The egg-drop involves making a container that will keep an egg intact when the egg, while it is inside the container, is dropped from the second story of the classroom building. This activity and the model rocket activity will also be contests, and the students who build the solar ovens will use them to cook food for the other students.
Chapman is thinking of adding a forensic science unit for the second session, where the teachers will set up a crime scene. Students will investigate clues, learn basic fingerprinting techniques and how to solve a crime.
During the second week of the first session, professionals, mostly from the sports and science fields, spoke to the students about their careers and how they set their goals and achieved them.
Because it was summer, the teachers wanted the camp to be fun, Safine said. But they also wanted the campers to develop socially and academically.
Sixty-eight students signed up for the first session, which is far more than the teachers expected, Christie said.
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