As the Mount Olive Success Academy summer program coordinator, I essentially serve as the administrator for our district’s summer school program for grades K4. At the Mount Olive Township School District, we see our summer success program as an important refresher on what students have learned the previous school year and a defense against the summer slide—but, more importantly, as an opportunity to prepare them for the academic year ahead.
We like to keep the new concepts and skills they’ve recently learned fresh, and also give them a leg up as they encounter the new standards. The academy, which we call “MOSA,” also provides social-emotional learning opportunities.
Our K4 students from our four elementary schools all come together to participate in the program. They work collaboratively with their peers from throughout the district. MOSA provides a safe place, where our students can receive the same love, attention and support they get from our amazing teachers during the school year. Here’s how the program works.
Grade-level summer success
Our summer success rogram runs on a shortened day schedule Monday through Thursday for five weeks. All students in grades K4 with an IEP are invited, along with students who underperform on their math and ELA June LinkIt benchmark assessments. All students receive both math and language arts instruction, as well as SEL instruction with our guidance counselors. They also have the opportunity to attend art classes and gym, so it is quite similar to their normal school day.
MOSA is not designed to push students to master the concepts of the coming year, but rather to help students recognize these concepts in the hope that they form positive relationships with them before the first day of school. For example, a student who is about to enter fourth grade likely wouldn’t have mastered the skills to manipulate fractions, but we want them to know what a fraction is, understand the parts of a fraction and have foundational information before they encounter it during the school year.
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All students are exposed to grade-level standards, regardless of their ability. Our teachers work to differentiate the work to meet the needs of our students. For example, if the grade-level standard is rounding numbers to the nearest thousand but some students need additional practice with place value, they will work in a small group to practice rounding to the tens place, while students who have mastered place value might work on rounding to the thousands place.
Keeping it familiar
Our summer school students come from all over our district to a single location, so the school, the teacher and even their classmates are often entirely new to them. For this reason, we try to bring in as much familiarity as we can. We also keep our class sizes small to help nurture camaraderie, help students build familiarity quickly, and provide a learning space with a low student-to-teacher ratio.
We chose ST Math Summer Immersion as our math program because students across our district uses the platform during the school year. They may not know their teacher, their classmate, or the building, but they already know JiJi the penguin, who guides them through the program’s math puzzles.
We also use a program called SILAS for social-emotional learning. The lessons only take about 10 minutes and they focus on activities that help build relationships, like talking about likes and dislikes, what it means to be a friend, or what cooperation looks like. The goal is to keep the environment and tone relaxed—it’s summer, after all.
For English language arts instruction we use Lexia Core 5, another program familiar to students from their regular classrooms. It provides skill-building activities targeted to each student’s needs.
Keeping students engaged
To keep students engaged, which can be especially challenging during the summer, we use a station rotation model of instruction. The station rotation model allows for students to rotate through stations where they receive personalized learning opportunities. An example of this instructional method may involve a student meeting with their teacher for 15 minutes, then the next 15 minutes working on ST Math Summer Immersion, and lastly, spending 15 minutes working on a hands-on activity and collaborating with their peers. We also believe that personalizing learning and allowing students to make choices about the work they do are important keys to keeping them focused on what we want them to learn.
ST Math Summer Immersion features a mix of teacher-facilitated and student-centered lessons, and also gives students the chance to play instructional games on the computer. It meets them where they are and allows them to progress at their own pace, and it fits well with our station rotation model. It’s also fun. Throughout the program, students create their own board game based on the math concepts they’ve been working on, which is celebrated and shared with our students’ families during the last week of the program.
The results so far
To date, the summer math program has been a success. Students are eager to come to class, complete puzzles, and work on their board games every day, and that kind of engagement is a big win.
Along with the daily lessons and puzzles, I also ask teachers to give a pre-test on the first day and a post-test at the end of the program. Our data has shown individual students progress ranging from 50% to 95% growth. We also administer shorter pre- and post-tests each week, and those also tend to show consistent growth throughout the program. These formative assessments allow for teachers to make data-informed decisions on their small group instruction.
The overall academic goal of the program is academic growth. We want our students to leave our program with confidence and anticipated excitement for the new school year. Each year we continue to see growth from our students. At the end of the program, that growth is also visible in the board games they build. They show incredible creativity, perseverance and understanding of the grade-level standards.
The summer program teachers tell me that their students also build confidence throughout the program, and that their ability to problem solve improves dramatically. Rather than simply being able to solve a specific math problem, students finish the program better able to use manipulatives to find their way to an answer, to collaborate with a classmate, and even to explain their thinking and approach to a particular problem—all of which will be huge assets for them in the coming school year.
To make a summer school program a success, you have to be prepared and flexible and have a wonderful staff working with you. Most importantly, however, I think a summer school program has to be enjoyable and enticing. Cultivating the love of learning helps students find the joy in learning that will sustain them throughout the regular school year, even when things become a little more challenging.
During the summer, there are no standardized tests or grades; only formative assessments to help drive instruction. It’s an opportunity simply to help kids grow while working on foundation skills and grade-level standards. That’s rare in education and a special opportunity for educators and students.
