No Bones about it: Cemetery Board is a Decaying Corpse

With the ringing of the final bell for this past school year, most kids dashed home with a single thought: "No more recess, no more books; no more teachers' dirty looks." For a large number of children, however, the final "bong" of the regular school bell was only a signal for the beginning of a new phase in their education-Summer School.

Sound like a drag? Perhaps to some, but to the kids attending the summer session at Northridge Elementary, learning is one of the best ways to keep themselves occupied during the short summer.

For fifth graders like Joey, it helps him to "learn more about fifth grade for when I get back to school."

The five-week summer curriculum at Northridge focuses upon a single theme that carries through math, science, English, the arts and social studies. The theme this year is "Digging for Clues."

"With our curriculum, we hope to give the kids a chance to explore their interests in depth," said Michael LaMarr (3rd through 6, Science and Math). "We're going to do some crime scene clues to see how science follows a couple of crimes, and we're going to do some outer space stuff, digging for clues in space."

"As another benefit," continued LaMarr, "the overriding theme gives them a common thread. The kids come from so many different areas that the thematic approach gives them a common thread. In my first class I think I had seven or eight different schools represented. And it's all enrichment. With the theme you can enrich that topic a whole lot more."

Christina Fleming is the acting Summer School Principal at Northridge Elementary, and the "Digging for Clues" theme was her idea. There are nine summer schools, and each summer school principal has to come up with a theme for the summer school session.

Northridge has 210 students this year, 6 classes of thirty-five. Like regular school, the classes are divided into first through sixth grade, though all classes are combination-first, second, and third graders in a single classroom, fourth, fifth and sixth combined in another.

For Lindsey it means that he will "learn what I'm gonna do when I get to my regular school, and helps me to get good grades when I get there."

"All the students are attending for the grade they will be in the fall. For example, our kindergartners just graduated a week ago and now they're First Graders," said Fleming.

The classes are taught by six teachers: two Language Arts teachers, one for primary and one for upper grade; two math and science teachers; one performing arts teacher; and one fine arts teacher.

The children will put on a school performance July 18, at 6:30 p.m. at Northridge.

"Digging for Clues" across the curriculum adds great excitement for the students. "Our fine arts teacher is doing some neat things with clay," said Fleming. "The kids are going to build a dinosaur, bones and skeleton, bury it, and then we'll go on an archaeological dig, an dig up the bones just like the scientists do in the Badlands. Some of the younger kids might do an 'imaginasaur,' and some of the older kids might actually do a to-scale dinosaur that they'll bury out in our sandbox."

In preparation, the kids have already begun to make the fossils that they will bury, making impressions of leaves in clay that they will fire in a kiln. All of the classes will participate. They are working up to making the big dinosaur.

One of the big plans for the Northridge summer school students is for the FBI to drop by the Mystery Festival and show the kids forensics skills, teaching the kids how to search for information, finding what's left and then putting it together to find an answer. The Sacramento Mineral Society will visit the school to display gems, and the kids will then make their own gems in art and go on a search for buried treasure. The science classes are discovering things. The language arts classes are reading and writing mysteries.

"We get to learn about dinosaurs," blurted Jackie, "and new definitions of words for when we want to write stuff, so that we'll sound more intelligent and that we know more about what we're talking about.

During the year, the older kids will partner with some of the younger students to help them learn, and probably to learn more themselves. The First Graders will do a "Worm Buddy" project. They are studying, touching and measuring worms, and seeing they're habitat and what they do.

"We're approaching it with the earth," said Mrs. Hammill, a regular teacher at Northridge. "We're starting out with worms, and from worms we're going to talk about owl pellets and how animals prey on other animals who live in the earth." From the contents of the owl pellets, the kids will construct an entire skeleton of an animal eaten by the feathered predator. "And then the last thing we're going to do is a small dig, where the kids will find small pots."

Surprisingly, in spite of the anemic education budget of California, summer school is offered free to all participants, because it is funded separately from the regular school session.

Summer session is not always held at Northridge. From one year to another the program moves throughout the district. The San Juan Unified School District tries to choose summer schools that are air-conditioned. Referring to the mild weather, Ellie Ennis, the school secretary exclaimed, "If we can make it through five weeks with weather like this, I will be a very happy person."