The students of KIPP Sunshine Peak Academy (KSPA) worked together to create “news briefings” to share what they have done over the last month in CAP club, including their recent Field Day to Denver’s Johnson Habitat Park. A mixture of professionalism and silliness ensued as the students got into “newscaster” mode with their scripts:

After a brief vocalized intro song, freestyled by Miguel, David kicked off the news stories: “During [CAP] Club on February 25th, we learned about glaciers. We learned that people travel on glaciers, which are big frozen ice fields in the mountains that sometimes get big cracks, called crevasses, that have to be crossed.”

“Yes,” Enrique continued with a straight face, “and then we had to practice working together as a team to cross a glacier. Not a real one, but we went outside and had to figure out how to get everyone from one side of a fake crevasse to another without anyone falling. All we had were a few safe spots that we could step on, so we had to hold on to each other and share the spots.”

Collecting her composure, Josselyn then shared, “On March 4th in CAP Club we took a leadership quiz with all of our teammates. We, as a group, scored our leadership styles which allows us to know more about our strengths and how to be a good leader.”

“On March 11, 2019,” Olivia followed, “we thought it would be a good idea to prepare for an Action Project at the South Platte River.”

“We wanted to pick up trash at the river so that it would be nice and clean. Fun fact: the South Platte river runs 380 miles across Colorado before going into Wyoming,” added Janet matter-of-factly.

“So,” Arely wheezed as she held back a laugh, “on our field trip day on March 16th we first walked to the Johnson Habitat Park. When we got there we played for a little bit with our friend Almond [a Beanie Baby bear who attended KSPA CAP’s Winter Field Day]. We then went to get the pH of the river water and take some data.”

“Don’t forget, we had to help Almond by giving him CPR when he fell off the jungle gym!” Montse blurted out with a smile.

“Getting back on track,” Olivia chimed in, “we looked for macroinvertebrates and we tested the pH and the turbidity of the water so that we could determine the health of the water.”

“We saw a lot of little water animals, like little red and white worms [which we identified as thread worms]. Lots of red ones—they were a lot faster and more energetic than the white ones,” Josselyn explained excitedly.

“The bugs tell us how healthy the water is too,” Montse stated proudly.

Olivia’s eyes then lit up as she remembered, “We also had a bag fashion show! I wore a compost bag scarf.”

“Ms. Eva wore a trash bag cape and I was the photographer,” Josselyn added.

Explaining why the group had enough bags for a fashion show, Arely said, “something else that we did was clean up the trash around the river. There was a lot. It was mostly stuff that we could recycle though, so that is good.”

Olivia was happy to add, “Most of the trash was styrofoam, so that is good we picked up a lot of that.”

The vocal band that had developed throughout class (a.k.a. 4 boys combining various rhythms in an amusing way with their voices, desk drums and air guitars) concluded our water/snow unit with an improvised grand finale song.

Written by KSPA CAP Instructor Eva, with help from her students!

See more photos from the trip here!