SARASOTA – The Van Wezel’s summer learning program is helping students across the Suncoast combat summer learning loss.
Educators call it the “summer slide” before heading back to school
“The opportunity to continue learning as they had during the school year and make sure they don’t lose any of that learning and that they start the school year ready to go without having to catch up,” said Executive Director of Education & Lifelong Learning at the Van Wezel Foundation, Kelli Maldonado.
During the summer, the program served 18 schools and more than 875 students across Sarasota, Manatee and DeSoto County. The learning approach taken by the program ensures students gain meaningful learning experiences in the arts while improving their engagement and learning in reading and language arts.
“Every activity that we do is engaging and super fun, the kids are learning in different ways especially through drama and visual arts and it goes back to reading,” said Pine View School Teacher, Freda Williams.
3rd grade Pine View School teacher, Freda Williams says learning through art helps kids learn in a fun way
“The kids are just excited about it, a lot of times the kids are learning the same content and now they have water color brushes in their hands or instead of writing on notebook paper they get a gigantic half poster board to work on so I think that it adds more of that engagement and it gives them more of a focus,” said Williams.
Overall the goal is to ensure all students are able to read before entering the third grade.
“So that that they are not just learning to read, they are able to read to lean so that is the real goal of this particular program and summer slide being one of those pillars to make sure that students, especially those from low income are able to succeed in school,” said Maldonado.
For more information on the Van Wezel Foundation, you can visit their website here.