Linguistics for high schoolers: A summer camp model

Abstract

Summer Linguistics Institute for Youth Scholars (SLIYS), held on The Ohio State University campus, offers intensive courses in linguistics to high school students from Ohio and around the world. Each year, nearly 100 students participate in 1‐ or 2‐week‐long camps where they engage in the scientific study of language and experience a realistic introduction to academics and university life. The programme's objectives are to provide students with the linguistic tools needed to understand their native language, become better learners of a foreign language and investigate unknown languages. Beyond academics, the high school camp immerses students into university life in a controlled environment providing a non‐threatening experience in academia to students unfamiliar with college. This article describes the evolution of SLIYS and its current incarnation, specifically how and why it works. We discuss the goals of the programme, the structure of SLIYS and how it is sustained, how the programme is assessed, and finally we share information about the general cost of the programme and our recruiting efforts that ensure that SLIYS continues in future years.

Taking language science to Zoom school: Virtual outreach to elementary school students

“…When Covid-19 was declared a pandemic in March 2020, schools closed and in-person science fairs were canceled. This posed a challenge for language science faculty and students involved in community outreach that relied on in-person interactions, such as camps and summer programs (Clark & Trousdale, 2012;Farris-Trimble & Reid, 2019;McGory & Barlew, 2020), inviting students to college campuses (Lidz & Kronrod, 2014), visiting schools (Denham, 2007;McKee et al, 2015), or staffing booths at science fairs (McKee et al, 2015) and museums (Wagner et al, 2015). We are a group of PhD students who paused our outreach efforts at the start of the pandemic and realized that we would need to adapt our outreach approaches to be done virtually when it became clear that the pandemic had created more than a short-term disruption.…”

Taking language science to zoom school: Virtual outreach to elementary school students

“…When Covid‐19 was declared a pandemic in March 2020, schools closed and in‐person science fairs were cancelled. This posed a challenge for language science faculty and students involved in community outreach that relied on in‐person interactions, such as camps and summer programs (Clark & Trousdale, 2012; Farris‐Trimble & Reid, 2019; McGory & Barlew, 2020), inviting students to college campuses (Lidz & Kronrod, 2014), visiting schools (Denham, 2007; McKee et al., 2015), or staffing booths at science fairs (McKee et al., 2015) and museums (Wagner et al., 2015). We are a group of PhD students who paused our outreach efforts at the start of the pandemic and realized that we would need to adapt our outreach approaches to be done virtually when it became clear that the pandemic had created more than a short‐term disruption.…”