Afterschool Classroom Enrichment (ACE) is a program sponsored by the Irvine Public Schools Foundation (IPSF) in cooperation with the Irvine Unified School District. Classes are taught by IUSD teachers or professionals contracted by IPSF. Venado will be offering a variety of classes during Trimester 1 which include:
❖ Homework Club: Homework Club is facilitated by Venado teachers and is open to all Venado Middle School students. The goal is to support students in achieving academic success by providing individual monitoring of homework completion and assistance while developing basic work habits.
❖ Creative Writing: Throughout the course, students will analyze essays, memoirs, poetry, and short stories in order to develop creative writing and analytical skills. They will study grammatical constructions and learn to incorporate these elements into fictional pieces. Reading selections will allow students to engage with text on a more complex level as they explore figurative meaning and decode rhetorical devices such as metaphor, hyperbole, and paradox.
❖ After-School Hoops: Join us this school year as our coaches help students learn the fundamentals of basketball, focusing on proper technique and athletic motor skills that will help your child develop as an athlete and teammate. Each day our coaches will teach a skill, play fun games, and referee a scrimmage between the athletes. New and returning students are encouraged to join!
❖ NASP – National Archery in the Schools Program: Join us this year as we begin archery at Venado. Students will be introduced to archery through the NASP program, which promotes instruction in international-style target archery to improve educational performance and participation in the shooting sports. Students will have the opportunity to learn and practice archery in a safe and fun environment.
❖ CODE ACADEMY: AI & Autonomous Cars: With more and more people are becoming interested in using artificial intelligence (AI) to solve real-world problems, the tools to build your own AI have become much more accessible. Students will learn how to code an artificial neural network to solve problems that a computer typically would be unable to solve otherwise. From navigating a maze to teaching a computer how to use gravity to push itself up a hill, this course will provide students with the foundation for how AI works in a simple and easy to access manner. Then students explore the essential elements of the C++ Programming language by programming an autonomous car. They will begin by programming the car to navigate through a simple maze and eventually learn to utilize the various sensors on the car to program it to solve any maze autonomously!
❖ American Sign Language (ASL) - 3 levels: Are you interested in learning and practicing American Sign Language (ASL)? Do you want to communicate with your deaf and hard-of-hearing peers? By the end of this class you will develop receptive and expressive skills, be able to have basic conversations in ASL, learn the truth behind common myths about deaf and hard-of-hearing people, understand events from deaf history, and have a lot of fun learning!
❖ Math Counts: The MATHCOUNTS Competition Series is the only program of its kind, with live, in-person events in all 50 states, as well as schools worldwide through the U.S. Dept. of Defense and State Dept. Competitions take place in over 500 local chapters. The Competition Series is ideal for students who have a talent and passion for math who need to be challenged. Students will engage in exciting, "bee-style" contests in which they will compete against and alongside other bright, motivated students. At the local, state and national level, students win hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships and prizes every year. Everyone is welcome to participate in the class. The class culminates in the selection of 10 students who will represent VMS in the chapter competition with the possibility to advance beyond.
Registration for these classes will begin on Monday, August 19. Classes begin the week of Monday, September 9. Please visit the IPSF Academy website at www.ipsfacademy.org/ACE or the online brochure at https://portal.ipsfacademy.org/files/vms_fall_2019_web2.pdf for more information and to register for classes.
~ Dawn Baranski, ACE Coordinator and Math Teacher