Students learn about secondary education in Summer Horizons English as a New Language program

Summer learning is in full swing, as incoming sixth and seventh graders have been preparing for the upcoming school year in the two-week Summer Horizons program at Eastview Middle School. The program, primarily designed to help English as a New Language (ENL) students get acclimated to middle school, also serves as a mentorship opportunity for incoming seventh graders. 

“It’s great because it helps students get used to the platforms like Schoology that the district uses, as well as getting used to the bell schedule, using a locker and having to interact with different teachers,” said Ana Castillo Matos, an instructional coach who is teaching STEM for Summer Horizons. “They’re also learning some of the topics that they will be seeing next year.”

Incoming seventh graders use the program as an opportunity to review information from the previous year as well as support their peers that are entering sixth grade. Then, when those students begin sixth grade, they serve as ambassadors for the entire class of sixth graders. 

“This allows our students going into seventh grade to serve as role models and leaders for the newcomers,” said Suzanne Lasser, assistant principal at Eastview. “It puts them in a position where they can now show what they learned because they were the new students here most recently.”

This is the fourth year of the program, and Ms. Lasser noted that the students who have entered sixth grade after Summer Horizons came in with more confidence to start the school year.

Students take classes in STEM, English language arts and art. They also have been learning about strategies used in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) in their class with Jessica Rivera, bilingual school counselor at Eastview.

“We’re working on self-awareness, mindfulness, how to calm their minds and hearts, and using and identifying coping strategies like breathing exercises,” said Ms. Rivera.

On Thursday morning, students created mindfulness jars, which is a strategy that can be used to navigate coping with difficult emotions by practicing mindfulness. 

Jacqueline R., an incoming sixth grader, says that STEM is her favorite class, “because of the catapults we get to make. We use a little ball with it, and we shoot it up.”

After working on catapults in STEM, students began creating and testing paper airplanes. This lesson taught them about physics concepts such as force and motion. Students competed for the furthest airplane throw. One student, Aidan, consistently reached the wall with his airplane design, and he shared tips with other students on the best way to throw it. 

Dan Castillo, sculpture and metal arts teacher at White Plains High School, has been combining literacy with art in his classroom. Students created art and wrote stories to develop comic books after reading some examples. This helps them learn and reinforce their English with an engaging, creative activity. They continued the comic book theme throughout the course, creating sculptures of their main characters and finally making oil pastel drawings of landscapes for their setting. 

Valeria B., an incoming seventh grade student, reported that she enjoyed creating her artwork, saying “It was fun!” However, Valeria also enjoyed the STEM class the most after creating the catapults.

Sarah Reynolds, a special education teacher; and Yaritza Cedeno, a dual language social studies teacher, have been teaching classes focused on English language arts and Spanish language arts.

“I see a lot of confidence by the end of the two weeks,” said Ms. Reynolds.

In Ms. Cedeno’s class, students learned about their native country and created projects about them before moving on to a project where they made foldable brochures with information about the United States. 

The Summer Horizons program ends this Friday, and students will return to school on September 4 ready to learn and lead their classmates in a new building.