A New Approach to K-5 Summer School Aims to Deliver Big Gains in Reading

Thanks to a renewed focus on aligning with Envision Shoreline's ambitious goals for student reading skills, K-5 summer school had a whole new look this year.

Students invited to the program received daily, targeted reading support from a certificated teacher in small groups of just two to five students at a time. The goal: meet each student with precisely the support they need to make a meaningful gain in their reading skills, all within four weeks of four-day summer school.

To make the most of this investment of teacher time and students' summer, summer school principal Andy Kidd partnered with district reading specialist Rachel Trudelle to reimagine the program from the ground up, aiming to give students the biggest possible boost heading into the next school year. The master schedule was completely redesigned, new instructional materials reflecting the latest science of reading were brought into the program, and teachers were hired for both reading intervention and general classroom instruction, this time with a consistent, renewed focus on art.

That general education time took shape as what students and staff came to know as "the Art Academy." The curriculum drew inspiration from books, artists, the World Cup, and other student interests, giving students the chance to explore a wide range of media, from oil pastels, marker, and colored pencil to watercolor, tempera paint, collage, and mixed media. Students created self-portraits, 3-D soft sculpture plushies and squishies, sunglasses, model magic sculptures, butterflies, and even large-scale class trees. Each day brought a featured artist, introduced through a coloring page and then explored more deeply as students created their own projects connected to that artist's work or concepts, including Romare Bearden, Yayoi Kusama, Frida Kahlo, Lyndon J. Barrois Sr., Takashi Murakami, George Rodrigue, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Faith Ringgold. The program closed with a student art exhibit celebrating the work these young artists created over the summer.

Pairing that creative, engaging general education time with focused, small-group reading instruction gave students a summer that was rigorous in its literacy goals but never lost its sense of joy and exploration. While formal assessment scores aren't back yet, summer school teachers and staff report that students made real gains, experienced some major "aha" moments in their reading, and strengthened skills and knowledge, in both literacy and art, that will carry them well beyond summer.