Focus Learning Elementary Summer Camp 2022 Full-Day

Click on this link for all of our information on our half-day and full-day programs we have to offer during our 2022 Summer Camp!  

For this week's full-day session, choose either our Leadership OR Language Arts program for the morning session.  Then, enjoy our Tech program for the  afternoon session. 

Language Arts Program

The Hatchet: Survival Training Guide

Our Summer Book Club focuses on novels that explore our relationship with the natural world around us.  The Hatchet is a story of survival - a young boy is stranded in the wilderness and must learn to work with his environment to have a chance of making it home.  Each story will give students a different perspective on the natural world and our place within it.

Areas of Focus | Students will get to:

• Read and discuss various story elements
• Brush up on a few basic survival skills
• Submit written responses to reading comprehension questions
• Discuss our place in the natural world
• Create an environmental Call-To-Action

Main Skills to be taught and practiced:

• Survival
• Critical Thinking
• Discussion
• Creative Writing
• Literary Analysis

End-of-Week Project:  

The Hatchet - Survival Field Guide for Crash Survivors

Materials:

The Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen

Leadership Program

Successful Leadership

This summer, we will take your child’s worst stumbling blocks and make them their building blocks where they can transition from surviving to thriving.  Your children will leave the summer camp with a renewed confidence and a honed skill level that will stretch out into every area of their life, such as: in their school presentations, theatre, political debates, or even perhaps stand-up comedy one day.  This camp experience will be nothing short of transformational and will leave your child with the building blocks to be a REAL Success.

Areas of Focus:

• Focused practices on major leadership skills
• Memorization techniques, human relation practices and acting out real world situations
• A taste of leadership training with Dale Carnegie and John Maxwell techniques
• Ability to engage with an audience with high empathy
• Public speaking and debating with comfort & confidence

Successful Leadership:

• inspire students to take responsibility for their lives now
• develop an effective attitude towards life and work
• impromptu speeches, prepared speeches, and debating

Tech Program

Game Design: MakeCode Arcade 

 This innovative software gives students a much richer ability within its more limited graphics. E.g. MakeCode Arcade has things like level editors, which Scratch lacks.  It is also easier to teach basic game design concepts and another cool thing missing from Scratch is that you can easily switch from blocks to JavaScript. So it is easier in MakeCode to transition to real programming. 

LEARNING OUTCOMES

By the end of this course, students will be introduced to the fundamentals of game design and programming using events, loops, if/else statements, variables and arrays.  Projects in both programs will be as follows:

Areas of Focus:

• Getting started on Arcade.  Students will program a top-down shooting game like Galaga.
• Students will program a maze game with multi levels.
• Students will program a scrolling platformer game.

Teacher Expertise:  Charles Rotenberg began using the Lego Mindstorms Robotics System from its origins in 1998. In addition, he has used the Vex Robotics systems extensively for building and competitions.  Accordingly, he has provided instruction to thousands of students over his teaching career in Los Angeles and Toronto.  Since joining the Toronto French School in 2014 to build a competitive robotics and math program, he has coached and mentored students in enrichment programs, camps and clubs, and robotic competitions for children in grades 2 through 8.  Many of his first students are now graduating and have chosen engineering and computer science careers in Canada’s top university programs.  More importantly, these students have taken the experience of failing to succeed into other life pursuits such as competitive swimming, game design and music.