Summer Climb Reading Program

About the Program

Category: Children and Youth (Best in Category)

Year: 2015

“Effective learning in the classroom depends on the teacher’s ability…to maintain the interest that brought students to the course in the first place.” – S.C. Erickson. The Summer Climb Reading (SCR) Program was based on the concept that students must be interested in the subject matter to experience the most success while infusing academic enrichment and literacy into their daily activities. Research frequently shows that students who do not have academic support and enrichment throughout the summer regress academically from school year to school year. To combat the phenomena, SCR utilized a two part curriculum, created in partnership with Orange County Public Schools, designed to engage students in performance tasks based on their particular areas of interest. Students also participated in the Digital Reading Lab which were sessions designed using the web-based curriculum, Achieve 3000. Reading gains for students were measured through pre- and post-testing. Taking into consideration that the most current research from Meta Metrics shows that middle school students who perform at grade level during the school year increase their lexile score by an average of 76 lexile points, our data indicated an average growth of 125 lexile points over 5 weeks in the Summer Zone program.