ELL News Headlines

About 30 students attending a Purdue Polytechnic Institute robotics camp first turned their workshop into LEGO Land for a week and then received a visit from Billy, a robot made out of LEGOs and mechanical sensors. Lauro Ojeda, a research scientist at the University of Michigan, led a demonstration at the camp Friday featuring Billy, which he had programmed to complete a task that all kids are familiar with — drawing.  The annual robotics camp allows students, ages 8 to 14, to be immersed in the world of robotics for three hours a day during a week-long camp, said camp director Joe Fuehne, who also is director of the Purdue Polytechnic Institute in Columbus. But this year, Fuehne and his team changed the strategy behind one of the camps. For the first time since establishing it 12 years ago, Fuehne partnered with IT Robotics, which recently opened in North Vernon, to offer a free camp specifically for Latino students.

For Dorchester parent Roberto Cardoso, the pressure to find a summer camp for Lianna, his 8-year-old daughter and only child, never goes away. He"s already worried about what she"ll be doing in the summer of 2018. This summer, though, they lucked out. Lianna, an incoming fourth-grader at the Roger Clap School, is attending a free, five-week summer program at the Hale Reservation in Westwood, a place her father had always wanted to send her to but was too costly for them. This year, she is one of 2,200 Boston Public School students who were selected for the "5th Quarter of Learning," a new component of the city's larger summer learning project that combines academics and outdoor recreational activities.

Learning and laughter filled the trailer classrooms at Knollwood Elementary School last month as English as a Second Language students from across Rowan County participated in a summer camp. Sixty-four rising first-, second- and third-grade ESL students came to Knollwood to experience a summer-camp atmosphere while expanding and reinforcing the English skills they had gained throughout the school year.Sixty-four rising first-, second- and third-grade ESL students came to Knollwood to experience a summer-camp atmosphere while expanding and reinforcing the English skills they had gained throughout the school year.

Abigail Pineda, a future Kaiser High School student, was one of 145 regional students who attended a week-long camp as part of the Inland Empire Future Leaders Program at Idyllwild Pines Camp. Although the program is currently available for every student in the region, Angelica Pineda, the mother of Abby, said many parents don't know about it, thus preventing their kids from taking part in a successful program. It was founded in 1985 to motivate Latino students to finish high school and attend college, said Dr. Tom Rivera, one of the founders.

All summer, when his students in Northern Virginia are supposed to be enjoying time away from the classroom, Principal Clint Mitchell worries about whether the children who rely on free lunches during the school year are getting enough to eat. This week, the county school system launched an expanded effort to address that need through an old-fashioned method: community barbecues. All children, regardless of whether they are eligible for free meals during the school year, eat free, while adults pay $2. The lunches will be served every weekday until Aug. 26, except for Monday and the following day, the Fourth of July.

After she realized there weren't enough girl superheroes in the world, Cynthia Leonor Garza created one. She talks with NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro about her new book, Lucia the Luchadora.

The public television series "POV" opened its 30th season this week with an education-themed documentary that could not be more timely. The first show airing is "Dalya's Other Country," a 75-minute film about a schoolgirl and her family who fled the violence of Syria in 2012 and settled in Los Angeles. 

This comic from NPR visual journalist LA Johnson tells the story of Merari, a first-grader enrolled in a dual-language program.

Ten Republican state attorneys general on Thursday urged federal authorities to rescind DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), a policy set by former U.S. President Barack Obama that protects from deportation nearly 600,000 immigrants brought into the country illegally by their parents, known as "Dreamers." In a letter on Thursday, the Republican attorneys general asked that DHS abolish the DACA program going forward, while noting that the government did not have to rescind permits that had already been issued.  If the federal government does not withdraw DACA, the attorneys general said they would file a legal challenge to the program in federal court in Texas.

On Thursday evening, after the last day of classes at the Onondaga Nation School here, students and families plan to gather at the Tsha’ Thoñ’nhes, or sports pavilion, to celebrate the eighth graders. There will be singing and dancing. Parents will give the eighth graders beaded necklaces signifying their clans and the younger students will give them presents. While it will not be an official graduation ceremony, the families in the nation, south of Syracuse, hope to make it as festive as possible, to put an exclamation mark on the end of a year that is otherwise ending in uncertainty and discord. Since June 16, most parents have kept their children home from school. They are protesting what they see as disrespectful actions by the local school board, which manages the school under a contract with the state but has no Onondaga representatives. The families say that they and the nation's leadership have been excluded from decisions about hiring and budgeting.