CAMPERS’ PARADE
June 25, 2010
Summer reading and writing
camp has another good start
Students learn a lot and have lots of fun, too
Screams echoed through the basement as the last few
students entered. Once everyone calmed down and stopped
laughing and screeching, Mr. Matthews instructed us to
introduce ourselves.
After that, we reintroduced ourselves through writing.
The assignment was to pretend to be another person and write
about yourself. After several minutes of writing, we read our
essays. Some were extremely descriptive and amazing, while
others were plain boring. We were constantly disturbed by
chats, jokes, screams, and itchy eyes.
Once the students' essays were read, Mr. M started to
read his own writing. Boredom filled the air and everyone got
ready to take a nap. Once the teacher ceased, so did everyone's
snores. People woke up in confusion.
Slave labor continued as we worked on boring
grammar worksheets. These worksheets, however bland,
contained useful information about misplaced modifiers and
contractions. Mr. Matthews told corny jokes to keep boredom
at bay and make everyone laugh. We stopped our worksheet
evaluation after the persistent "Is it time for lunch?" calls ended.
T H E C AM PE RS
Victoria Fong
Ari Marshall
Yuree Jang
Vibhu Mocherla
Christine Lee
Shreya Shah
Jason Ling
Brian Sui
Shelley Ling
Robin Yang
Jason Ling (left) and Christine Lee work hard on a
writing assignment early in the camp.
On the first afternoon, we studied suffixes, prefixes
and roots. We also completed two worksheets.
When we worked on our roots worksheet, Mr.
Matthews gave us examples to help us understand. For
example, we learned that the root "aud" means to hear.
Some words that have this root include audiologist,
audition and audience. We discovered that different
suffixes, prefixes, and roots have very different meanings.
Next, we did a reading comprehension sheet. The
point of doing this worksheet was to help us understand
the meaning of some quotes. Yuree's favorite quote was
"No matter how little money and few possessions you own,
having a dog makes you rich." Jason liked the meaning of
the quotes and Christine enjoyed learning about those
meanings. We were all able to fully digest and comprehend
all of the quotes.
Last, our class read about a Sherlock Holmes mystery.
We studied Sherlock's steps for solving the case. We
discovered that Sherlock obtained clues to help solve the
case from Watson's expressions and actions.
Camp isn't all about work. We had fun, too! For
example, one camper kept saying funny things while we
were doing our worksheets. Another student lay on his
chair while the teacher was talking. Overall, everybody had
a really fun time at camp! 

Campers’ Parade 1
A powerful story
A movie teaches lessons about determination
"Time to watch the movie!" Mr. Matthews yelled.
All the campers stopped what they were doing and rushed
over to the couches. Everyone let out a big sigh when
Mr. Matthews announced that the movie, "Mr. Smith
Goes to Washington," was black and white.
The movie is about a man named Mr. Smith who
was a senator. He wanted to start a boys' camp in a
location that his rival, Mr. Payne, planned to flood. The
rival wanted to build a dam on a nearby river. In the end,
Mr. Smith won the case because of his long filibuster.
What's a filibuster, anyway?
Yuree Jang (left) and Shelley Ling listen raptly to a
discussion about the day's learning experiences.
Writing in many ways
The wrong word at the wrong time can be scary!
Today, we wrote. We thought. We know, all of that is
boring. Let's start again. Today was a great day at camp! We
had lots of mischief, adventure and (of course) writing. We
went back to our kitchens at home, describing them as
detailed as possible.
One camper's story was pretty scary. He depicted his
grandfather chopping in the kitchen as babies cried out. At
first, many of us didn't know that the grandfather was dicing
vegetables. We discovered that rearranging the phrases and
inserting details would help make the meaning clearer. Other
kitchen stories were very descriptive but not as entertaining.
Grammar practice followed the writing frenzy. Many
worksheets flooded the table, dealing with misplaced
modifiers and proper comma placement. Everyone laughed
their heads off at the silly sentences. For example, "The
opera singer was upstaged by the mime with the robust
voice" has a misplaced modifier. "With the robust voice"
should be after "singer," since it clearly describes the vocal
singer and not the mute mime.
All in all, the second day of camp was the best!. 
When the movie finished, we resumed class to
discuss it. We learned that the moral was to never give up
and that life is not always fair. Mr. Matthews explained
what a filibuster was, which is when senators talk for as
long as possible to win their cases. Did you know the
longest filibuster was 24 hours and 18 minutes?
Additionally, we noticed that the government in the
movie was different than today's government. The moviegovernment did not help the people and their ideas.
Everyone enjoyed the movie! We have several
favorite scenes. For example, everyone thought it was
funny that Mr. Smith kept dropping his hat. Everyone
also loved it when Mr. Smith whistled loudly to make sure
"everyone still had faces." Some campers felt the movie
could use improvements on the ending. For example, we
thought the movie ended at a bad time.
Movie afternoon was a blast! When the clock
reached 4:45, everyone scurried upstairs to wait for their
parents. 
Yuree Jang (from left), Vibhu Mocherla and Ari
Marshall get a smile from a writing exercise.
Campers’ Parade 2
Hooray for Hollywood!
Dark shadows of the two counselors approached the
room. Everyone fell dead silent. As soon as the two
counselors entered, screams and laughter filled the air. The
counselors waved their arms around in giant motions to try
to quiet the over-energetic campers.
Once everyone finally calmed down, the two
counselors started to help us brainstorm ideas for our
upcoming video. We were bursting with ideas. In the end,
everyone voted and one brilliant idea was chosen. The
campers raised their arms in triumph when Counselor
Christie announced the final topic. The movie would be
about Bailey as the evil emperor of China. The counselors
helped us assign a role for everyone and aided in dividing up
the scenes.
After movie planning, we all worked on a bland
dangling modifiers worksheet. We learned that a dangling
modifier happens when a phrase is put in the wrong place.
This makes the sentence's meaning funny and confusing.
For example one problem was "Dropped in the bushes, the
child found the missing key." We all thought the worksheets
were super-boring, but also super-educational. 
Shelley Ling (left) and Shreya Shah study a
worksheet during a classroom work session.
Putting it all on film
We make a super-dramatic movie
The evil emperor of China entered the throne room.
No, it wasn't an actual royal, but an ordinary dog entering
the break room. The filming of "The Legend of the Leash"
had begun.
The plot, which involved rebellious servants and a
ruling dog, unfolds on camera with student actors and
homemade props. Servants of the horrible Emperor Bailey,
played by us, decide to overthrow the ruler with the help of
Jason the Teller and the mythical Leash. Our story explains
how the leash became discovered in ancient China.
Everybody laughed and enjoyed the filming
experience!
After that, we worked on songwriting. We wracked
our brains for imaginative inspirations to replace lyrics in
songs with our own. We had to follow the tunes of the
songs while changing the topics. The silliest song was
written by Victoria, rearranging Yankee Doodle to describe
Bailey, the camp dog. The most interesting song award
went to Mr. Matthews, whose song described our movie's
plot.
We asked Bailey for his opinion of the day. He
replied, "Woof!" He meant it was "off the leash"! 
The Smart Writer program offers group writing and
reading classes for students in middle school and
high school, a special group class for kids in fourth
and fifth grades, prep classes for the SAT or ACT, and
private tutoring. For information, check out:
Victoria Fong (top) ponders her next words in writing;
Ari Marshall enjoys a light moment during a break.
Campers’ Parade 3
www.thesmartwriter.com
Our own major moments
A world premiere!
An EXPO marker squeaked as green letters formed.
Mr. Matthews started writing the most recent essay prompt,
"Describe the most (blank) moment in your life." Right after
that he wrote choices to fill in the blank, including thrilling,
embarrassing and hilarious.
Scratching and scribbling noises from pencils ensued.
When everyone finished all the hard work, the essays were
read. Many essays were lengthy, in content and descriptions.
One camper's story was deemed the silliest. She mistook
Queen Elizabeth's palace with the U.S. president's mansion
in Washington, D.C.
We started out with reading comprehension. For the
first essay, we had to read an article about elephants and
answer questions. Many of us thought this exercise was easy,
despite the inability to look back at the passage. All of us
enjoyed learning cool facts about elephants. We found out
that their ivory tusks are illegal since African elephants are
endangered species.
A harder reading comprehension trailed behind the
elephants. Talking about the hardest language, the author of
the article gave us insight on the many languages of the
world. In the end, he showed us that the hardest language
cannot be determined, since every person has a different
perception and language. 
Bailey and the campers become movie stars
Lessons from a movie
Dun, Dun, Dun. Today was movie afternoon again!
We all huddled up at the couches to watch "The Great
Debaters." The movie was about a debate team at a small
black college during the Great Depression. While they
debated in competitions, Negroes outside were being
lynched and treated very badly.
In the end, the debate team went against the Harvard
team. However, you have to watch the movie to find out
who wins! Everybody thought this movie was scary, exciting,
and sad.
After watching the movie, we all went back to the
classroom to discuss the events in the movie. Mr. Matthews
gave an assignment for us to write about two things we
learned in the movie. We learned that there was a 14-yearold college boy on the debate team. We also learned that
there were many debate competitions during that time.
We shared what we learned to the class and everyone
enjoyed the assignment! 
Today we got to watch the world premiere of "The
Legend of the Leash!" We thought it was amazing! It was
exactly the way we thought it would turn out! Giggles
roared when we anticipated funny scenes.
After the premiere, we wrote an essay persuading the
reader whether a school should cut P.E. or music classes.
After a few minutes, we finished the essays. They were soso, since none of them was truly convincing.
After a snack, we followed up with a parallel sentence
structure worksheet. When writing a list in a sentence, the
items should be similar. For example, "I went kayaking,
hiking, and to the beach." This sentence needs some
parallel structure! See how "to the beach" does not match
"kayaking" and "hiking" since it isn't a gerund? This is
unparallel structure. In conclusion, the worksheet was
confusing, but we trudged through it. 
Some very famous words
Everyone entered the room with a giggle and a smile
on their faces. Mr. Matthews calmed the class down and
announced that it was time to study.
From a worksheet, we learned that "affluence"
means material wealth. After the worksheet, we learned
two interesting words, "oxymoron" and "palindrome." An
oxymoron is a two words that mean the exact opposite.
For example, "pretty ugly" is an oxymoron. A palindrome
is a word or phrase that is spelled the same way backwards
and forwards. When Mr. Matthews asked for examples,
Robin and Brian always were the first to raise their hands.
Next, Mr. Matthews handed us the Gettysburg
Address. We began reading from "Four score and seven
years ago…" and stopped at "…for the people shall not
perish from this earth." In our discussion, we learned that
"four score and seven years ago…" means 87 years ago.
After all of this was over, we went over to Mr.
Matthews' computer to do something fun! We listened to
the actor who played Darth Vader recite parts of the
Gettysburg Address. As we listened to the voice, giggles
erupted from the campers!
The summer camp was very fun! Although some
of us were very rowdy, we still had an exciting week. Many
campers want to come again next year! 
Campers’ Parade 4
Camp counselor Lucy Yang (top right) watches as
a group of students working on an article for the
camp newspaper try to remember all the things
that happened that day.
With a mixture of interest and impatience, campers
watch and wait their turn while other students enjoy
playing the Wii during lunch break.
A week of learning
Lively students get a dose of writing and reading
Robin Yang (left) and Brian Sui are deep in
concentration as they work on a writing
assignment during class time.
The kids in this camp were very lively, and very
bright. They tackled every assignment with a lot of
enthusiasm and interest. Some of the subjects
were a bit difficult, but the students never quit
trying. It was great fun and a rewarding experience
to have them in the camp.
— Richard Matthews
Counselor Christie Sui works with her group on a
newspaper article for the day.
The classroom whiteboard is filled with some
complicated planning for the students' video.
All articles except the one by Mr. Matthews were written by the
student teams.
Campers’ Parade 5