Sitting at a table in a classroom at Yacolt Primary, sixth grader Carter Nylund stares intently at his computer screen as teacher Sarah Rhodes watches over his shoulder. To Carter’s left sits a small robot he built using a kit of LEGO building blocks. With Rhodes’ help, he’s programming it to move and respond to colors and sounds, or even smile using an LED panel “face.”
“I thought summer school would be boring,” Carter admitted. Instead, the days flew by and he hardly knew they were actually learning.
“For some of these kids, maybe school hasn’t been the most positive experience all of the time,” said Melanie Walter, who taught summer school for first graders at Maple Grove Primary. “I feel like this program has really kept students super engaged and busy. They’re just loving it.”
Battle Ground Public Schools adopted the LEGO Summer Academy curriculum and materials earlier this year as a way of using one-time pandemic relief funding to provide students with a hands-on, interactive learning experience.
Summer school is an opportunity for students who may need extra support in some subject areas to gain ground and be better prepared for the next school year. Traditionally, this involved lessons in math, language arts, science and maybe art.
“We felt like the LEGO program addressed all of those subjects in a way that didn’t necessarily feel like ‘learning’ in the traditional sense,” said Jessica Davis, the district’s Learning Support Program facilitator. “While they’re having fun, the curriculum is teaching a lot of valuable skills they can use.”
“My students didn’t feel like the learning was hard or tedious,” said Rhodes, who worked with sixth and seventh graders at Yacolt Primary this summer. “They just felt like time was flying and kept saying, ‘I want to do more of this!’”
While middle school students were building robots or even LEGO-powered prosthetic limbs, primary students drew a “minifig” to represent themselves and constructed carnival-themed contraptions.
“One day, for instance, they had to build a ramp and a vehicle, then predict and measure how far it would go,” said Mandy Becker, who also worked with first graders at Maple Grove Primary. “They feel like they’re just playing, but they’re actually learning a lot.”
In addition to gaining skills in reading, math and art, students are learning how to work together, sharing resources and ideas to make their goal a reality.
“There’s a lot of buy-in because they have so much choice over what they’re doing,” added Walter. “One day they got to make their own musical instruments and take them home.”
“There was a lot of apologizing to parents that day,” laughed Becker.
Students also spent time each morning working with Lexia, an internet-based educational program that scales to the learning level of each student. Their scores in that program helped to inform progress for individual students, but the goal of summer school is less about test scores and more about keeping students engaged in the act of learning.
“There’s so much good in just helping these students understand that learning can be fun,” said Davis. “If we can help them build excitement for learning, that is going to have a positive impact when they come back to school in the fall.”
Battle Ground Public Schools will be using the LEGO Summer Academy program next summer as well. Schools will send out information to families of students who are eligible to attend starting during the winter semester.
