As the school year winds down, students anticipate a summer free of homework while teachers’ and parents’ thoughts turn to concerns of summer learning loss. But, luckily there’s wonderful camps and summer schools that include Marine Science Institute programs in their curricula.
Keeping students engaged and active during the summer is a key preventative to summer learning loss, which is a well-documented phenomenon where students lose academic skills over the summer. An equivalent of up to two months of reading skills and 2.6 months of math skills can be lost during the summer, according to Oxford Learning. For low-income students summer learning loss is even more impactful – widening the achievement gap between them and higher-income students, says the National Summer Learning Association. Also, summer learning loss is cumulative summer after summer.
The easiest preventative for parents is to enroll their students in fun, engaging and educational programs, such as the MSI’s own Marine Science Camp or a similar program. Studies have shown it takes two to three hours per week of educational engagement to help prevent learning loss, and more is obviously better.
Several area summer schools and camps depend on the Marine Science Institute to provide an educational science element to their programs. For example, the YMCA, Bright Horizons and Nature Bridge have all incorporated an MSI program into their summer line-up. Through its Inland Voyage program, MSI brings everything needed for a marine lesson to the school or camp site.
Inland Voyages deliver living marine animals directly to class with MSI’s mobile aquarium. The students learn about the local marine environments and the organisms that live in them through hands-on investigation and inquiry-based learning activities. There are seven different types of Inland Voyages for a summer school or camp to choose from. They include: Bay Fish, Bay and Ocean Invertebrates; Marine Mammals, Rocky Intertidal, Sandy Beach, Marshes and Mudflats and Kelp Forests. To learn more about our Inland Voyage and different topics click here.
We’re all geared up to help combat summer-learning loss with our Marine Science Camp and by delivering Inland Voyages to area summer schools and camps. If you’d like to book an Inland Voyage for your summer school or camp program, please contact us 650-364-2760. Our summer program availability is from June 12 to August 12 and is appropriate forages preK through 12th grade.
Smarter Summers. Brighter Futures. National Summer Learning Association. 2016.
4-15-2015. Summer Learning Loss Statistics (And Tips to Promote Learning All Summer Long). Oxford Learning. 2017
Denise Mohsenin serves as the link between Marine Science Institute and the education community. She enjoys helping schools and teachers bring marine science and environmental literacy to their students. Her current favorite fish for teaching is the starry flounder. Ask her why at denise@sfbaymsi.org.
