In week 4 of English Language Learner (ELL) Camp, students were invited to use a combination of their own unique lenses of experience and the almost universal logic of scientific thought to explore the world around them.

Throughout the week, students were reintroduced to quantitative study not as an abstraction confined to certain classes, but as a continued and dynamic tool and framework of thought that could be used to explore everything from the biggest items in the universe to the small and immaterial items found on a computer screen.

We started things off on Monday by exploring the very act of exploration: asking questions! Students examined the power behind interrogative language before applying that power to their own interests and formulating jumping off points for their own chains of inquiry. In true student fashion, campers took this idea and ran with it. We saw all kinds of questions about the everyday and extraordinary with examples like:

How exactly does Pokemon GO work?

or:

Why don’t volcanoes melt?

Moving past the initial stages of inquiry, students were met with the next step in quantitative study: actually counting stuff! The young researchers practiced seeing the world in terms of units and measurements that could be accurately compared. Then, equipped with metrics for comparing things, students pondered what the biggest thing was! Amidst the mental gymnastics of measuring the universe, one student poignantly decided that the biggest thing was love, and brightened a few dozen Tuesdays.

On Wednesday, students were reminded that the work of any good researcher happens not only in the lab or field, but in the mind as well. With any dataset comes the need for interpretation, and students did just that. When presented with a series of clues for a mystery, students had to pay attention to the details and the relationships between them to come up with cohesive stories and compelling answers to questions posed by circumstance.

Finally, on Thursday, students were reminded that the work of intellectual expansion is many things. It is always subject to improvement, as it is exceedingly difficult to get anything completely right on the first go. Moreover, concept and thought have real world applications as solutions to problems. These two principles manifest in the discipline of engineering, which students explored by designing ships to meet a structural challenge. Through many tries and iterations, students were able to successfully carry a certain payload over a simulated ocean. In the vein of making ideas as watertight as possible, students were also reminded of the fact that like a design, a piece of writing always benefits from another reading and edit.

~Alan Lin, 826LA Summer Associate in Mar Vista

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