Thursday, July 21, 2011

Day 10: LAST DAY!

Last Day! We started with giving the campers one more time to practice their presentations.



We then went down to the auditorium so they could give their presentations (also it was cooler there).













I was really impressed by the work they performed this past week, and how well they presented it.

After lunch we had the campers fill out a survey to get their input and then gave them time to walk their schedules for next year.


We really want them to be comfortable in the building next year, and also have the ability to show their friends around. Beyond the project, acclimatization to the building is a big focus of SPeC camp too.






Then all you parents came in to watch the movie (http://web.mac.com/carol_sullivan/Site/SPeC_2011_Movie.html) and we sent the campers off to enjoy their summers!

Mr. Tower and I really want to thank all of the campers for a great two weeks. In our three years of running the camp this was by far the best group of campers we have had. Everyday they worked very hard and had fun while doing it. We both think they will do very well next year in honors physics.

We would also like to thank the CITs. They are the ones who really run the camp and volunteer their time on nice summer days.
We truly could not have done this without them!

Have a great summer! ~Guerin and Tower

Day 9: Putting the Boards and Presentations Together

Campers self-started today and got right to work putting their boards together. This group of campers have been great these last two weeks and today was no different. It was great to see them all get right to work.





A lot goes into a board from writing all of the parts and making the graphs to printing and mounting the panels in the right layout. It always take more times that the campers think it will.









Tomorrow they'll get ready to present and finish up to get ready for summer!

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Day 8: Mini-Projects!

The CITs celebrated the heat by having Dress-Up day:
Camp started by going around to each group of campers and evaluating and discussing their hypotheses. It brought up a good conversation of what is a testable hypothesis and what is just a statement that has an obvious outcome. It is very easy to fall into the trap of writing a statement in which you already know what is going to happen, especially when doing a project for the first time.

Following that, we sent the camper on their way to start their experiments. They spent the whole rest of the day collecting and analyzing their data for their mini-projects.













We got a lot of work done today, and tomorrow there will be more to do. It was hot, so we gave them freeze pops on their way out to cool off.