Shifting From the “Summer Slump” to Summer Success

John Shaw

Date

August 31, 2023

Topics

Research

Area of Expertise

Researcher Dr. Joanna Christodoulou, thanks to a grant from accounting firm RSM, tripled the number of Charlestown elementary school students helped with reading and academic skills by the SPLASH program.

As the school year begins this week, more than 150 pupils who attend two Charlestown public schools will return to the classroom with freshly honed reading skills and better prepared to succeed in their new grade.

Their improvement comes from MGH Institute researcher Joanna Christodoulou’s lab members, a team of 19 graduate students in the Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology, and five supervisors from the Institute as well as the Boston Public Schools who taught reading and literacy skills to pupils in grades K-6 from the Harvard-Kent and Warren-Prescott elementary schools for five weeks this summer.

This year’s program was supported in large part by the Charlestown office of the national accounting firm RSM, which earlier this year gave Dr. Christodoulou a three-year, $300,000 grant to expand the summer literacy program. Just 50 pupils participated each summer during its first five years.

“This grant allowed us to triple our impact immediately, which was amazing given that the goal was to double enrollment over three years,” said Christodoulou, an associate professor of communication sciences and disorders who also is director of the Brain, Education, and Mind (BEAM) Lab.

“There’s such a need to foster reading and related skills over the summer months," she added. "RSM’s support allowed us to scale up on multiple fronts including tripling the number of elementary school students we reached and the number of MGH Institute graduate students who gained valuable experiences that count toward their clinical certification, as well as the multiple classroom educators who were provided instructional support for literacy-based activities.”

The summer program was originally launched with funding from a Boston Public Schools Summer School grant as well as with support from the CSD department and the BEAM Lab.

The initiative counters the “summer slump,” when students often have less access to literacy experiences and resources and often a lag in their reading progress. This program delivered over 75 hours of literacy instruction to each of the attendees, many of whom are at-risk readers. It also reduced a waiting list that continued to grow each year as word got out about the program’s effectiveness and engaging curricula.

The summer slump in reading has been quantified as 62% to 73% of students losing ground in reading, which provides a prime opportunity for effective and supportive summer opportunities like Christodoulou’s summer partnership with the two Boston public schools.

SLP students in the SPASH program — SPLASH program supervisors Marcy Chant (far left) and Lindsay Button (far right) with MGH Institute speech-language pathology students (L-R) Kesi Cania, James Sixkiller, Amelia King, Alyssa Liusie, Mecca Petross, Adrianna Calhoun, and Shannon Lortie, all of whom worked on reading and literacy skills with schoolchildren at Harvard-Kent Elementary School this summer.

elementary kids sitting at desk looking at computers — 150 elementary school children from the Harvard-Kent and Warren-Prescott schools spent five weeks this summer working with MGH Institute SLP students on reading and literacy skills during the SPLASH program.

kids wearing backpacks — Harvard-Kent and Warren-Prescott schoolchildren received backpacks, courtesy of the Charlestown office of accounting firm RSM, at the completion of the MGH Institute’s SPLASH program which was funded by RSM.

people eating ice cream — Harvard-Kent and Warren-Prescott schoolchildren enjoy a cool treat from the ice-cream truck, courtesy of the Charlestown office of accounting firm RSM which funded the IHP BEAM Lab's SPLASH program this summer.

Christodoulou noted that summer reading opportunities are especially crucial following COVID-19 school closures, which disproportionately impacted students who are younger, struggling readers, lower socioeconomic status, receiving special education services, or minorities. Many students in the program are English-language learners who can benefit from tailored instruction to ensure they are benefiting from the program. And it’s especially relevant at the two Charlestown schools: Harvard-Kent demographics include over 70% of students who are high needs, and over 60% who are low income, among the highest in Boston; at the Warren-Prescott, over 40% are reported to be low income, and over 50% are reported to be in the high needs category.

“Reading instruction over the summer is especially important during elementary school,” said Christodoulou, who has gained national prominence for her work on studying how to tap into the brain’s potential to optimize learning opportunities during the summer in particular. “Summer literacy programs like ours aim to put students at an advantage for reading growth instead of at risk for summer slump.”

Working with groups of 4-6 elementary school students, sitting around circular tables, the IHP graduate student SLP clinicians would guide and instruct them using worksheets and other learning materials as well as reading to and with them. Learning plans focused on phonological awareness, word recognition, and reading comprehension, using child-friendly examples such as one that revolved around farming and farm animals.

And the SLP students also gained additional real-world experience assisting the schoolteachers and learning how to collaborate with them in an academic setting, because many IHP students will be hired in schools after they graduate.

"This program has given me a glimpse into what working in a school environment might be like,” said Adrianna Calhoon, who is starting her final year of the SLP program. “At the same time, the summer program allowed me to help develop the reading and writing skills of the children in my class which I will continue to use the skills that I’ve learned in my school clinical placements going forward.”

Added classmate Averi Cannon, “I learned how to obtain important information about students through observation and was able to gain insights for every student that allow me to help them individually."

To Adriana Azor, a post-doc researcher at the IHP who served as the coordinator of this year’s program, it was a win-win for everyone involved. “Each one of them had so much to take out of this experience, whether it's the kids, IHP students, or the teachers because of all the activities that were done over the course of five weeks - not only on the literacy level but the engagement that we saw from the IHP students,” she said.

The assistance wasn’t lost on parents. Take Jennifer Keaton, whose family has lived in Charlestown for several generations. Her son, Rory, is a rising first-grader at Harvard-Kent for whom this was his second year participating in the program.

“Rory is already reading, and he hasn’t even started first grade yet,” said Keaton as she was picking up her son from the last session, a new backpack provided for each student by RSM and each one holding a treat from an ice-cream truck. “I attribute that to the summer program here. Truly, this place is amazing.”

And it wasn’t all literacy training that the pupils received. The second half of each day - after the IHP students completed their role - included lunch, math and music classes, and field trips to such places as the nearby U.S.S. Constitution that added another 75 hours of summer programming.

For Christodoulou, the larger cohort size will provide even more data to analyze. Since the program began six years ago, she’s discovered that students who started the program with lower reading skills made the largest gains – in other words, students who needed the help most benefited the most.

Since Christodoulou founded the BEAM Lab upon joining the IHP in 2014, the group has focused on studying reading development and difficulties, as well as on understanding the brain’s potential to change in response to experiences – for example, in terms of intervention benefit as well as potential learning loss from an educational and neurological point of view – all aimed at improving student outcomes by investigating the factors that contribute to reading challenges, identifying protective characteristics, and optimizing individualized interventions.

“Many children don't maintain the same pace or frequency of reading activities in the summer, and that’s not surprising because students are not in school and other experiences take up their time,” she said. “What we aim to do is support all students, especially those who may be more vulnerable in their reading progress, and offer opportunities in the summer of fun, engaging, evidence-based literacy practices so they have a better upcoming school year and beyond.”

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