Summer Programs

At the Beach and In the Sea

Examining “Out of School” Time Programming

During the summer of 2008, Stamford Achieves offered a traditional tutoring program for 43 students. Based on the feedback from the 2008 program, we created a new more creative model for the summer of 2009. Working with Sound Waters and our community center partners CTE, Yerwood Center, and the Boys & Girls Club, we offered a curriculum based on At the Beach & In the Sea. The program was offered to grades K-3 in community center classrooms.

In addition to literacy and reading, the children had hands on experience working in an animal/sea/beach environment which provided excellent science content. We also introduced the innovative work of David Hyerle’s Thinking Maps, a successful tool that teaches thinking and problem solving using the children’s graphic, visual and organizing skills. The program also featured a parent/tutor/staff/children outing at SoundWaters that served as a shared family learning experience in literacy and science.

Our 2009 summer program engaged more children in designed, directed activities and experiences that raised their literacy, science knowledge, reading grade levels, and problem solving and thinking skills. The positive early findings from this program support the importance of using “out of school time” to improve the academic skills of children caught in the achievement gap.

Accomplishments

Summer of 2009 marked the evolution of the Tutoring program in an attempt to bring more service to more children. Working collaboratively with the three community center partners, CTE, Yerwood Center and Boys and Girls Club, a unique push in program was proposed and supported by a collaborative group of funders that included Fairfield County Community Foundation, GE Foundation, Nellie Mae, Purdue Pharma and Pitney Bowes as well as some individual funders. Soundwaters was a key collaborator on the curriculum aligned to Connecticut Science standards and designed to teach non-fiction literacy skills through science content. It featured the use of Thinking Maps and field trips for hands on experiences at Soundwaters. Highly trained tutors and community center staff received professional development, building capacity and raising the educational value of summer recreational programming. Three Saturdays featured family hands on discovery experiences at Soundwaters in order to engage parents in learning and motivate them to continue to access community educational resources with their children.

Of the 124 participating children, 104 were both pre and post tested
Average improvement in post test scores was 8.8% at Boys and Girls Club, 14.5 % at CTE and 25% at Yerwood Center.

Interesting to note, all students at Yerwood Center attended the district summer school program in the morning and Stamford Achieves program in the afternoon. This asks an important question: Does a full day of program in the summer make a difference in possible gains in “out of school time”? Is more time necessary to address the gap?

Mastery of content was set at an 80% score on the post test. 42 out of the 103 students achieved a score of 80% or better. Thus, more than 1/3 or 40.7% of the students mastered the non-fiction science content presented in the 48 hour summer program.

Teachers often lament the setbacks all students experience over the summer. For kids in the gap with little or no access to high quality educational experiences, this is even more poignant. Although our summer program sample is too small for conclusions, it certainly points to examining further the benefit of filling “out of school” time with a planned curriculum delivered by trained staff. The use of community resources such as Soundwaters upgraded the educational experience by making it hands on and experiential. Finally, it was fun and entertaining while accomplishing serious educational goals.