Summer Courses
High School Preparation Workshops
For a number of years, incoming 9th graders have put themselves at an advantage by spending four weeks of summer school solidifying their grasp of the basics while experiencing a college preparatory environment. Students will work on organization and time management, fundamental study skills, as they hone their writing, language and math skills. These workshops are open to both outside and Drew School students.
Writing Workshop (12pm-2pm in Room 203)
Four week course that meets for two hours per day. In a supportive and collaborative atmosphere, students will develop their skills in the types of writing they can expect to be basic to their assessment as high school students. To write well, students need to be enthusiastic about the subjects they write about, so every effort will be made to make the class interesting and stimulating.
Guiding the course are the principles that writing improves with volume (students will keep daily journals, write in class, and work on weekly projects), variety (students will write descriptions, narration, and various types of essays), and have excellent models (students will read the works of acknowledged masters and successful students). Students will collaborate on stimulating ideas and revising drafts. Daily exercises and short lectures on grammar, usage, vocabulary, and syntax will be used to develop students proofreading skills. Students end the course by creating portfolios of their work and by submitting work to a class anthology.
Math Workshop (9:30am-11:30am in Room 205)
Four week course that meets for two hours per day. This is a basic Math 1 preparation course designed for students who have found math difficult throughout their middle school years. It is in tended to increase a student's confidence with arithmetic and prepare them for high school math. This course covers arithmetic and the introduction to algebraic concepts. The focus of the class is to give students additional practice with arithmetic concepts that have often plagued students in earlier years. Most of class time is devoted to working on problems (both individually and in small groups) and there is no homework. Small quizzes will be given to prepare students for the high school environment.
Language Workshop (9:30am-11:30am in Room 206)
Four week course that meets for two hours per day. This course is recommended for students who have not had exposure to Spanish in the past, or who have struggled with language acquisition. This course will give students a leg up for the academic school year. Students will develop this foundation--get their feet under them to start the year off strong-- by mastering some basic present tense conjugations, subject-verb agreement, noun-adjective agreement, vocabulary and pronunciation. The students will improve their language skills and confidence via writing, reading, listening to music and watching videos. The course is intended to be highly interactive.
Academic Courses
English Seminar (8:30am-11:30am in Room 203)
Four week course that will meet for three hours per day
Over the course of the next month we will brainstorm, draft, revise, edit, and publish our work in a collaborative environment. Sometimes we will handwrite and sometimes we will use computers. Often you will be able to select your own topic to write about and sometimes you will be assigned a topic. We will experiment with different genres of writing: personal narrative, descriptive, expository writing, and journal keeping. There are the types of writing that you will surely encounter over the course of your years in high school. In addition to daily writing, we will also work on grammar and vocabulary.
Spanish II Prep (9:30am-11:30am in Room 206)
Four week course that will meet for two hours per day
This course is recommended for entering freshmen who were borderline on their placement exams, but want to take Spanish II, rather than Spanish I. This class is also recommended for returning students who would benefit from a Spanish I review before entering Spanish II. Having a solid grasp of the basics is critical for skills that endure beyond tests and high school. Also, given that language acquisition is cumulative, students will experience greater success in Spanish II after a thorough revisit of the fundamentals. Students will review basic vocabulary, noun-adjective/subject-verb agreement, interrogative words, all present tense conjugations (including regular, irregular and stem-changing verbs), the future (ir + a + inf), the present progressive, direct object pronouns and the regular preterit.
Pre Calculus (12:00pm-3:00pm in Room 205)
This courses will meet for six weeks three hours per day
This is a standard course preparing students for calculus. The topics include functions, their inverses, and an extensive amount of trigonometry including identities. The course ends with vectors and sequences. The textbook that will be used is Functions Modeling Change: A Preparation for Calculus by Hughes-Hallet.
SAT Math Prep (9:30am-11:30am in Room 205)
This course will meet for three weeks for two hours per day
This is a three week intensive class preparing students for the Math section of the SAT. This is a course designed for incoming juniors and seniors. Test strategies, as well as math essentials, will be covered. Students will do sample questions daily. Practice tests will be given frequently, so students will become familiar with the organization of the SAT.
Social Science Elective (12:00pm-2:00pm in Room 204)
Special Topics/Africa
Four week course that meets for two hours per day or equivalent dependent on instructor’s assessment
Students will conduct guided-research on a topic unique in the study of the vast continent of Africa. Part introduction to Africa’s history and geography, part introduction to the important issues in African art, politics, society, and public health, our ultimate aim is to understand the African continent’s diversity through the diverse interests of the course’s student participants. Possible topics include, but are not limited to: artistic expression, cinema, civil war, colonization, customs, Diaspora, drama, genocide, kinship, language, literature, music, orality. Students will share their findings on a regular basis, culminating in the sharing of their final research projects.
Dragon Athletics Summer Program
Summer session offers a range of sport opportunities for students to earn Physical Education units as well as improve in their sport. Enrollment through summer school will be required to participate in these sport classes.
All course offerings are coed. Students can earn up to 1.0 unit of PE credit per course. The tuition for sports courses is separate than academic courses.
The classes will meet a minimum of twice a week for two hours. There will be a total of 18 class meetings over six weeks.
Indoor Soccer
Baseball
Basketball
Volleyball