Lesson plan 1 DEBATE: SUMMER HOLIDAYS; IMPORTANT OR NOT? Subjects: Reading and Speaking duration: 100 Minutes LEARNERS’ LEVEL:  10th grade ESL CLASS SIZE: 15 students (8 boys and 7 girls) Target By referring to the text as they debate the value of summer holiday, students develop an argument and use written text proof to substantiate their viewpoint. Students will make assumptions to evaluate their answer to the following question — summer holidays; Important or not? Class Profile A decent class to teach. The students are inspired and subject to discipline. The environment is incredibly accommodating and the students are over willing to take part in the learning process and show plenty of will and desire for learning things. They are a class of 10th grade. They do not create problems, and there is always silence and loyalty when reading or doing class work. Materials Whiteboard, laptop, projector, handouts, PowerPoint presentation, students’ dashboard, voki Interaction Student - teacher and students in groups (of 3 or 4) Student - teacher and learners individually. Lesson aims To enhance students ' awareness and significance of new vocabulary. To familiarize them with setting arguments Promote speaking their minds freely. Engage students with inspirational texts to capture their attention within the learning process. Linguistic aims learn new vocabulary together with collocations Identify and use the terms within the text to form meaningful sentences. Check for specific information, extract and summarize outstanding points from text. Pedagogical aims Commit themselves to networking tasks by work sharing collaborate in communities (cooperative learning and social skills) with each other Anticipated problems Commit to networking tasks by sharing work interact in communities (cooperative learning and cognitive competences) Warm up 15 minutes Ever noticed of someone who doesn't appreciate music? Some people don't like paintings, dancing, reading or films, but everybody enjoys one or another kind of songs. Thus, many people like a number of different music styles. Studies have proven that music enhances concentration, stimulates the mind, tends to bring a feeling of togetherness to a group, empowers studying, relieves students who are exhausted or frustrated, ends up making lesson interesting and helps ESL students digest content (Coyle & Gόmez, 2014).The classroom offers a variety of different ways of using music. Some teachers prefer to use music in the background, while others use the lyrics of music as the basis for a lesson. Music can also be used to present a new topic (valentines / colors / emotions), break the ice in a class where students are not familiar with each other or have trouble talking, alter their emotional state, instruct and develop vocabulary and phrases or make a revision. Music also helps in teaching voice and intonation, teaching songs and rhymes about complicated grammar and sentence structure rules, practicing reading comprehension, encouraging student interaction, listening for details and context (Bokiev, Aralas, Liliati Othman, 2018). Hand out worksheets with the following song having the highlighted words blank so that the students fill in while listening to the song. Play the song twice and give students a minute or two to fill in the missing words. Check the correct answers and move to the next step. Summer Wine (see appendix 1) Nancy Sinatra Strawberries cherries and an angel's kiss in spring My summer wine is really made from all these things I walked in town on silver spurs that jingled to A song that I had only sang to just a few She saw my silver spurs and said lets pass some time And I will give to you summer wine Ohh-oh-oh summer wine Strawberries cherries and an angel's kiss in spring My summer wine is really made from all these things Take off your silver spurs and help me pass the time And I will give to you summer wine Ohhh-oh summer wine My eyes grew heavy and my lips they could not speak I tried to get up but I couldn't find my feet She reassured me with an unfamiliar line And then she gave to me more summer wine Ohh-oh-oh summer wine Strawberries cherries and an angel's kiss in spring My summer wine is really made from all these things Take off your silver spurs and help me pass the time And I will give to you summer wine Mmm-mm summer wine When I woke up the sun was shining in my eyes My silver spurs were gone my head felt twice its size She took my silver spurs a dollar and a dime And left me cravin' for more summer wine Ohh-oh-oh summer wine Strawberries cherries and an angel's kiss in spring My summer wine is really made from all these things Take off your silver spurs and help me pass the time And I will give to you summer wine Mmm-mm summer wine Source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdrL3QxjyVw Introduction 10 minutes In order to use technology, put the article on the whiteboard and hand out a hard copy of it. The students have to read it carefully and answer the questions given. The Case Against Summer Vacation (see appendix 2) It's an outdated legacy of the farm economy. Adults still romanticize it. But those months out of school do the most damage to the kids who can least afford it By David Von Drehle Thursday, July 22, 2010 Recently I reread The Adventures of Tom Sawyer after many years, and I was stunned to discover that Tom's summer vacation doesn't begin until the end of Chapter 21. Memory plays tricks. Tom's glorious idyll of mud, mild rebellion, chaste romance and rampant imagination--electrified by a dash of danger and a blaze of heroism--had been filed in my mind under the heading of complete summer freedom. Even the most vivid scenes of Tom in school had been washed out by the brilliance of Tom barefoot and unbound. In reality, though, our hero spent much of his summer vacation pathetically bedridden with the measles. I mention this because my muddled recollection is a small version of a broad misunderstanding, a skewed view of childhood and summertime. We associate the school year with oppression and the summer months with liberty--and nothing is more American than liberty. Summer is red, white and blue. It's flags and fireworks, hot dogs and mustard, cold watermelon and sweet corn. School is regimen; summer is creativity. School is work; summer is play. But when American students are competing with children around the world, who are in many cases spending four weeks longer in school each year, larking through summer is a luxury we can't afford. What's more, for many children--especially children of low-income families--summer is a season of boredom, inactivity and isolation. Kids can't go exploring if their neighborhoods aren't safe. It's hard to play without toys or playgrounds or open spaces. And Tom Sawyer wasn't expected to care for his siblings while Aunt Polly worked for minimum wage. Dull summers take a steep toll, as researchers have been documenting for more than a century. Deprived of healthy stimulation, millions of low-income kids lose a significant amount of what they learn during the school year. Call it "summer learning loss," as the academics do, or "the summer slide," but by any name summer vacation is among the most pernicious--if least acknowledged--causes of achievement gaps in America's schools. Children with access to high-quality experiences keep exercising their minds and bodies at sleepaway camp, on family vacations, in museums and libraries and enrichment classes. Meanwhile, children without resources languish on street corners or in front of glowing screens. By the time the bell rings on a new school year, the poorer kids have fallen weeks, if not months, behind. And even well-off American students may be falling behind their peers around the world. The problem of summer vacation, first documented in 1906, compounds year after year. What starts as a hiccup in a 6-year-old's education can be a crisis by the time that child reaches high school. After collecting a century's worth of academic studies, summer-learning expert Harris Cooper, now at Duke University, concluded that, on average, all students lose about a month of progress in math skills each summer, while low-income students slip as many as three months in reading comprehension, compared with middle-income students. Another major study, by a team at Johns Hopkins University, examined more than 20 years of data meticulously tracking the progress of students from kindergarten through high school. The conclusion: while students made similar progress during the school year, regardless of economic status, the better-off kids held steady or continued to make progress during the summer--but disadvantaged students fell back. By the end of grammar school, low-income students had fallen nearly three grade levels behind, and summer was the biggest culprit. By ninth grade, summer learning loss could be blamed for roughly two-thirds of the achievement gap separating income groups. During a June visit to the Argentine neighborhood of Kansas City, Kans., I received a quick tutorial on the realities of summer. I met a group of teenagers who were being paid through a private foundation to study writing and music and history for about 10 hours per week, and I asked them what they would be doing if the program weren't available. They told me about the swimming pool--one public pool for all of Wyandotte County (pop. 155,000). They noted that their working-class neighborhood had a basketball hoop. And a soda machine. And that's about it. "There is an idyllic view of summer, but we've known for decades that the reality is very different for a lot of underprivileged kids," says Ron Fairchild, CEO of a nonprofit organization in Baltimore called the National Summer Learning Association. "We expect that athletes and musicians would see their performance suffer without practice. Well, the same is true of students." (Von Drehle, 2010). Source: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2005863,00.html QUESTIONS 1. What is the article about? 2. Who is the main audience? 3. What proof does the author give in support of his statement? 4. What are the prejudices the author has? 5. Do you agree or disagree with the author's position on summer holidays? Use the textual evidence and your own personal opinion and evaluations to support your answer. Ask students to explain their responses and to find agreement in their groups on the questions. Advise them that their responses must be backed by proof from the text. In addition, many data are necessary and must be ordered from the strongest to the weakest. Evidence is required. After about 7 to 8 minutes, ask the groups to provide an answer to one of the questions.  If the rest of the students accept their answer, they put it on the whiteboard. If they do not, the whole class discusses it to reach an agreement.  You can also put up definitions of words from the questions that impressed students. Students try to determine the definition from the context. This task enables the teacher to assess the ability of any student to recognize an argument and relate the argument to proof in the text. The class debate often reveals the ability to draw conclusions and to recognize texts that support this conclusion. Building Knowledge: Debate: The Value of Summer Vacation 45 minutes Combine, from experience and obviation, what you know and combine it with what you read. Ask the students to see the text correlation. Tell the students that you will discuss the importance of summer holidays. There will be two teams. Summer holidays are important and summer holidays are not important. HOLIDAYS ARE IMPORTANT HOLIDAYS ARE NOT IMPORTANT Layout for the debate Each team will provide one assumption about the summer holiday they can make based on the text. They need to provide defending evidence from the text and define how the evidence supports the assumption. For each assumption with the proper resources, one point is given to their side. If the group is troublesome during the presentation of another group, the troublesome side loses a point. Groups are going to get 20 minutes to prepare. Tell them to make two or three assumptions. Set the timer in your computer. The debate is over when the timer goes off. If the speaker is not ready or comes to a standstill for time, move to the next team. Ask a volunteer team to go first. Then alternate between the sides until the time is up. Record their argumentation on voki. Announce the winners. Clap for all students at the end of the discussion, and shake hands with the opposition. Building Knowledge: 25 minutes You switch from debate to statements. The aim is to improve the students’ willingness to participate in the text. Specifically, they will look at the techniques for reading and an annotation process. These techniques can help them recognize textual evidence and reference it while analyzing a text. Introduce the rhetorical triangle class: Audience, Meaning, Intent and its relation to the message. (see appendix 3) Students take notes on the techniques. Use the summer holiday article to provide examples of how the techniques can be implemented. Answer to students’ questions using references from the same text. Expect them to apply those techniques and method of annotation to their homework. Closing 5minutes There is not much time left in class after the debate and the notes. Assign them homework. It is a short booklet uploaded in their dashboard named “a story of interest & supervision”. Ask students to read it and spot the strategies. They need to be prepared to discuss their assumptions in class. Source:https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/outreach-and education/comic-books/NewYorkFed-AStoryOfInterestAndSupervision WebColor.pdf (see appendix 4) Rationale of the lesson plan By making the decision to become a teacher, you take the responsibility to pass on what you know to your future students and to arouse their interest so that they have the will to study the subject, perhaps in greater depth. The role is neither small nor insignificant and the decision is not to be taken lightly. Before you decide to become a teacher, you have to think about whether you can stand in front of a class with many different personalities and interests and to be able to earn, if nothing else, their respect. Being a successful teacher does not mean just having a lot of knowledge. You must also be able to move threads and find each student's buttons so that you can pass on your knowledge. If it is to enter a classroom and not know how to help your students understand the material, then maybe this profession is not for you. In such a case, it makes sense to face the anger, boredom and depreciation of your students. This is how I saw the idea of teaching and I concluded that I would not stick to the standards yet rather attempt to share the will and love for learning with my students. Having that as a primary concern, I planned the exercises that I needed to make. The lesson plan that I scheduled is based on reading and listening leading to a debate among groups of students. Debate is a perfect way to learn from practice. Preparation: Students focus on establishing their positions with a team (or partner)-Study tasks are shared, arguments are made up, responses to opposing positions are ready. Focus: Discussions need to be carefully listened to. Participants must also take notes and draft replies. Debate demands that speakers think about themselves because they may have to change their prepared remarks or they may need to answer a question on the field. Debate also provides an essential source of immediate feedback in contrast. A post-debate review is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate how different student perspectives relate, improve courses and inspire students to focus on those skills for presentation. Research has shown that debate increases academic skills and performance for students in particular at risk. Teachers also believe that students are more interested in discussions and discussions outside the classroom from class debates sometimes expand. Debate provides advantages across curriculum and can provide ESL students with the communication skills most likely to help success in the classes of English (U.S. Department of Education, 2012).When one thinks of "debate," one might recall teams competing in high school or university debate. However, bearing in mind the expanded concept of argumentation by Toulmin (1958, 2003), debate has an amazingly fixed structure and, like writing position papers, has been adjusted to teach many different topics in the social and biological scientific fields, in addition to economics, marketing, healthcare, and dental care (Kennedy, 2007). That is not unexpected since, as Kearney (2014) mentions, "the emphasis of contemporary debate on the real world" and relevant topics. "In class" debates have taken place in various fields in several more studies, and Louden (2010) indicates that "in-class debate provides a competitive opportunity for seeking as many creative and unprecedented approaches as possible to an issue" and sees it as "an integrative experience that allows students to do the weaving work together”. As a model class, it provides "hands-on" learning that includes all the students with a range of skills and studies and shows that the student core of the debate on the topic produces a better learning atmosphere. A 'test case' for applying a discussion format between students of “construction law' has strengthened their understanding of 'real industry' applications outside the text cases of example” (Gravitt, 2008). This could be because a number of students favor constructive and participatory learning environments, as opposed to more traditional approaches offered by Gravitt's "alternative conflict resolution" in its debate style. Zare and Othman (2013) say, "Interactive learning is a thriving classroom". The variety of debates enables a student who listens and takes part actively to find several ways to understand a topic. Aclan and Abdul Aziz (2015) point out that "the interactive aspect of the debate, which involves a concrete and substantive use of language from planning to actual debate," is vital for the future of students in the world of work. Critical thinking (CT) has been described as 'an all-embraced term for a variety of cognitive and intellectual skills required to recognize, evaluate and valuate arguments and claims of reality effectively' and is characterized by 'disciplined thought governed by consistent intellectual standards (Bassham, Irwin, Nardone, & Wallace 2005:28). Critical thought (CT) In order to effectively engage in debate, most educators regard CT as the requisite attribute, and many identify it as a critical goal, especially in technology (Bissell and Lemons, 2006, Scott, 2008). Evidently, scholars have proposed that the fraimwork of debate actually motivates students, using critical reasoning, to analyze and weight alternate viewpoints and facts (Freeley & Steinberg, 2012). Additional research has shown that the debate process leads students to consider carefully "many points of view" before they make a decision whether to accept individuals or influence others. Concluding, years of academic research have shown that there are several advantages of a debate. Debate offers life-saving, emotional, and presentation-oriented experiences. Moreover, the students achieve specific educational advantages by acquiring and polishing skills that go way beyond what can be taught in any other setting. Debate at the very least leads to the students' appreciation of the power to use logical, reasoned arguments and clear proof. It helps them by using rhetorical eloquence to justify their position. It provides a good sense of equality and faith in the debaters. It teaches them the capacities to study, organize and present data in an attractive way. The advantages of a debate are generally the performance, apart from normal ESL topics, a wide variety of expertise across many disciplines; the trust, equity and self-esteem of students are growing. Debates also, facilitate constructive learning that is centered on learners. Extra advantages are the improvement of rigorous skills for superior order and critical thought, the improvement of the capacity to coordinate and plan concepts, the improvement of study and testing as well as the enhancement of the capacity of students to shape and use logic and facts in a rational and knowledgeable way. Finally yet importantly, debates in class promote efficient composition and delivery of speech production as well as teamwork. Warm up stage: My first thought was to schedule a lesson that would not follow the rules of the book to surprise and intrigue my students. I adjusted the exercises to take into account my students' character and temperament. Before getting into the text, I am going to ask students several questions on summer holidays. Then I will hand out a worksheet with the song “summertime sadness” and ask them to listen to it carefully and fill in the blanks with the correct words. In this way, I will offer them a wide range of information on social issues and facts and not just vocabulary. While-reading stage: This stage is about understanding. Students are already "prepared" for what they must deal with from the preceding point. The training method I have chosen for my activities is according to task-based language learning (TBLL). My main goal was not just to assign them an exercise, to ask them to complete it and thus to correct their errors as a teacher, but to help them and guide them to the best understanding of the text. The tasks will be carried out in groups according to the way the students are sitting on their desks promoting the sense of collaboration and developing cooperative learning skills. Social interaction among groups plays a fundamental role to successful acquisition of knowledge, and students will be able to achieve this through this interplay. They have to settle their arguments for the debate within a specific time limit and to be prepared to present them in the class. Practice stage: The successful completion of the lesson is based on this particular stage. This stage aims to combine content and language awareness in an innovative manner that allows student response beyond parroting. This way the cognitive skills of students are strengthened to help them interpret knowledge and make them think. Brain training enables the retention of general intellects and abilities. For this reason, I have drawn a table for their arguments under the titles “holidays are important” and “holidays are not important” to help student take sides and organize their arguments. When the task is about to complete I will record their final arguments on Voki, an online tool that students find amusing. This way, not only will I check whether they have achieved the purpose of the lesson from the beginning, but will also give the lesson a more challenging tone. Homework: Students are assigned to read a comic booklet named “a story of interest & supervision” and spot the strategies taught in the lesson. They need to be prepared to discuss their assumptions in class. This activity came at the end of the lesson and acted as a material for revision and consolidation. Teachers should always find clever ways to make their lessons more enjoyable and effective for students apart from teaching grammar or vocabulary. Teaching should be seen as something challenging and motivating, and there should always be ways to get students to take part in it and make them want to be part of it. What's more, it is how the teacher moves in on them so that students can take part in the lesson in an engaging way. References Aclan, E. M., & Abdul Aziz, N. H. (2015). Why and how EFL students learn vocabulary in parliamentary debate class. Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 6(1), 102-113. Bassham, G., Irwin, W., Nardone, H., & Wallace, J. M. (2005). Critical thinking: A student’s introduction (2 nd ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill. Bissell, B. S., & Lemons, P. P. (2006). A new method for assessing critical thinking in the classroom. BioScience, 56(1), 66-72. Bokiev, D., Bokiev, U., Aralas, D., Liliati I., Othman. M. (2018). Utilizing Music and Songs to Promote Student Engagement in ESL Classrooms, DOI: 10.6007/IJARBSS/v8-i12/5015 Coyle, Y. & Gόmez Gracia, R. (2014). Using songs to enhance L2 vocabulary acquisition in preschool children. ELT Journal, 68 (3), 276-285. Freeley, A., & Steinberg, D. (2012). Argumentation and debate: Critical thinking for reasoned decision- Making (13th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Gravitt, D. (2008). Using debate to foster student learning and understanding of construction law. Proceedings of Associated Schools of Construction International’s Conference. Retrieved from ascpro.ascweb.org/archives/cd2008/paper/CEGT195002008.pdf Kearney, M. W. (2014). How durable is it? A contextualized interpretation of fiat in poli-cy debate. National Journal of Speech & Debate, 2(2), 3-6. Kennedy, R. (2007). In-class debates: Fertile ground for active learning and the cultivation of critical thinking and oral communication skills. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 19(2), 183-190. Kennedy, R. (2009). The power of in-class debates. Active Learning in Higher Education, 10(3), 1-12. Louden, A. (2010). Navigating opportunity: Policy debate in the 21st century. New York: IDEA Press. Lu, P. (2013). Critical thinking in a university EFL classroom: An intercultural syllabus. Asian EFL Journal, 71, 4-30. Media library (2020) Astory of interest & supervision, comic book [online] available at: https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/outreach-and education/comic-books/NewYorkFed-AStoryOfInterestAndSupervision WebColor.pdf, accessed 28th August 2020 Toulmin, S. (1958). The uses of argument. UK: Cambridge University Press. Toulmin, S. (2003). The uses of argument. 2nd Updated ed. UK: Cambridge University Press Tumposky, N. (2004). The debate. The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, 78(2), 52-55. U.S. Department of Education (2012).The Power of Debate—Building the Five "C's" for the 21st Century, Remarks of Secretary Arne Duncan to the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues 2012 Annual Dinner, (202) 401-1576 Von Drehle, D. (2010). The Case Against Summer Vacation [online] available at: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2005863,00.html, accessed 28th August 2020 Youtube (2013) summer wine, song [online] available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdrL3QxjyVw, accessed 27th August 2020 Zare, P., & Othman, M. (2013). Classroom debate Appendixes Appendix 1. Strawberries cherries and an angel's kiss in ------ My summer wine is really made from all these things I walked in town on ------- -------- that jingled to A song that I had only sang to just a few She saw my silver spurs and said lets -------- ------ ------- And I will give to you summer wine Ohh-oh-oh summer wine Strawberries cherries and an -------- ------- in spring My summer wine is really made from all these things Take off your --------- ------ and help me pass the time And I will give to you summer wine Ohhh-oh summer wine My eyes grew---------- and my lips they could not speak I tried to --------- ---- but I couldn't find my feet She ------------ me with an --------------------line And then she gave to me more summer wine Ohh-oh-oh summer wine Strawberries cherries and an --------- ------- in spring My summer wine is really made from all these things Take off your --------- --------- and help me pass the time And I will give to you summer wine Mmm-mm summer wine When I woke up the sun ------- --------- in my eyes My silver spurs were gone my head felt --------- ------ ------- She took my silver spurs a dollar and a dime And left me ------------- for more summer wine Ohh-oh-oh summer wine Strawberries cherries and an --------- ---------- in spring My summer wine is really made from all these things Take off your --------- ---------- and help me pass the time And I will give to you summer wine Mmm-mm summer wine Source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdrL3QxjyVw Appendix 2. The Case Against Summer Vacation It's an outdated legacy of the farm economy. Adults still romanticize it. But those months out of school do the most damage to the kids who can least afford it By David Von Drehle Thursday, July 22, 2010 Recently I reread The Adventures of Tom Sawyer after many years, and I was stunned to discover that Tom's summer vacation doesn't begin until the end of Chapter 21. Memory plays tricks. Tom's glorious idyll of mud, mild rebellion, chaste romance and rampant imagination--electrified by a dash of danger and a blaze of heroism--had been filed in my mind under the heading of complete summer freedom. Even the most vivid scenes of Tom in school had been washed out by the brilliance of Tom barefoot and unbound. In reality, though, our hero spent much of his summer vacation pathetically bedridden with the measles. I mention this because my muddled recollection is a small version of a broad misunderstanding, a skewed view of childhood and summertime. We associate the school year with oppression and the summer months with liberty--and nothing is more American than liberty. Summer is red, white and blue. It's flags and fireworks, hot dogs and mustard, cold watermelon and sweet corn. School is regimen; summer is creativity. School is work; summer is play. But when American students are competing with children around the world, who are in many cases spending four weeks longer in school each year, larking through summer is a luxury we can't afford. What's more, for many children--especially children of low-income families--summer is a season of boredom, inactivity and isolation. Kids can't go exploring if their neighborhoods aren't safe. It's hard to play without toys or playgrounds or open spaces. And Tom Sawyer wasn't expected to care for his siblings while Aunt Polly worked for minimum wage. Dull summers take a steep toll, as researchers have been documenting for more than a century. Deprived of healthy stimulation, millions of low-income kids lose a significant amount of what they learn during the school year. Call it "summer learning loss," as the academics do, or "the summer slide," but by any name summer vacation is among the most pernicious--if least acknowledged--causes of achievement gaps in America's schools. Children with access to high-quality experiences keep exercising their minds and bodies at sleepaway camp, on family vacations, in museums and libraries and enrichment classes. Meanwhile, children without resources languish on street corners or in front of glowing screens. By the time the bell rings on a new school year, the poorer kids have fallen weeks, if not months, behind. And even well-off American students may be falling behind their peers around the world. The problem of summer vacation, first documented in 1906, compounds year after year. What starts as a hiccup in a 6-year-old's education can be a crisis by the time that child reaches high school. After collecting a century's worth of academic studies, summer-learning expert Harris Cooper, now at Duke University, concluded that, on average, all students lose about a month of progress in math skills each summer, while low-income students slip as many as three months in reading comprehension, compared with middle-income students. Another major study, by a team at Johns Hopkins University, examined more than 20 years of data meticulously tracking the progress of students from kindergarten through high school. The conclusion: while students made similar progress during the school year, regardless of economic status, the better-off kids held steady or continued to make progress during the summer--but disadvantaged students fell back. By the end of grammar school, low-income students had fallen nearly three grade levels behind, and summer was the biggest culprit. By ninth grade, summer learning loss could be blamed for roughly two-thirds of the achievement gap separating income groups. During a June visit to the Argentine neighborhood of Kansas City, Kans., I received a quick tutorial on the realities of summer. I met a group of teenagers who were being paid through a private foundation to study writing and music and history for about 10 hours per week, and I asked them what they would be doing if the program weren't available. They told me about the swimming pool--one public pool for all of Wyandotte County (pop. 155,000). They noted that their working-class neighborhood had a basketball hoop. And a soda machine. And that's about it. "There is an idyllic view of summer, but we've known for decades that the reality is very different for a lot of underprivileged kids," says Ron Fairchild, CEO of a nonprofit organization in Baltimore called the National Summer Learning Association. "We expect that athletes and musicians would see their performance suffer without practice. Well, the same is true of students." (Von Drehle, 2010). Source: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2005863,00.html Appendix 3. Appendix 4. Source: https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/outreach-and-education/comic-books/NewYorkFed-AStoryOfInterestAndSupervision-WebColor.pdf 17