DREAM is a 27-year-old community-based youth development organization that serves more than 2,200 young people each year. Its mission is to provide inner-city youth with opportunities to Play, Learn, and Grow. We use the power of teams to coach, teach, and inspire youth to recognize their potential and realize their dreams. We are dedicated to serving low-income youth, providing quality educational and enrichment supports, and exposing them to college and career options that have allowed their more affluent peers to thrive.

REAL Kids is DREAM’s longest running program that has received national recognition for its impact on summer learning loss. REAL Kids is a free, six-week summer program for DREAM youth in the South Bronx, East Harlem, and Newark. In REAL Kids, youth in grades K-5 spend their summer on a baseball or softball team and participate in literacy enrichment and team-building activities to develop academic, social, and emotional skills in a fun learning environment. All program components are integrated to create a meaningful summer experience that engages youth in learning academic skills and building life-long habits. In 2017, REAL Kids served 746 youth across our three sites, and over 99% of participants successfully maintained or improved their literacy levels. Given the dismal summer literacy statistics for youth across the country, we are particularly proud of our work, year over year, to eliminate summer slide.

Participants’ days are filled with a holistic set of services that incorporate multiple pathways to learning. In the morning, they are in the classroom receiving academic literacy enrichment to avoid summer learning loss, as well as social emotional learning opportunities to build social skills and self-confidence. Academic activities, such as literacy centers and guided reading are enhanced by the use of technology including SMART Boards and Chromebooks. Children are not only engaged, but learning is made fun for them. Afternoons are spent on the baseball field where participants learn the fundamentals of the game and play T-ball, baseball, or softball with DREAM’s experienced coaches.

One of the unique program components of REAL Kids is that high school participants in grades 9-11 at DREAM work as REAL Kids’ assistant coaches and assistant teachers all summer long. The program employs 100 youth with paid part-time summer position, giving them real-world experience in applying for and succeeding in a job.

Summer programming ends with a very successful culminating event, an exhibition day, that brings out families to observe student work and then watch team performances and videos that capture the REAL Kids summer youth experience.

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Help Every Child Find “Just Right” Books This Summer

To support reading growth through the summer months, it’s ideal for children to read books of their own interest matching their reading level. “Find a Book” is a free, fun, and easy way to identify books based on a child’s reading level (Lexile® measure) and interests. Use “Find a Book” to build custom book lists for readers at all ability levels, and then locate their selections at their local public library. Access the tool at fab.lexile.com or learn more from this informational flyer.

Free Program to Help Fight Summer Math Loss

A child, regardless of socioeconomic status, loses more than 2.5 months of math skills during the summer. As a fun way to keep math skills sharp, students can enroll in the Summer Math Challenge, a free program designed for students who have completed first through eighth grade. For six weeks, parents receive daily emails with fun activities and links to educational resources. They’ll use students’ Quantile measures to access exercises that are right on target and fun to work on. When the program ends, parents can print an award certificate to celebrate their child’s summer math accomplishment! Access the tool at quantiles.com/summer-math or learn more from this informational flyer.

In summer 2016, Public Education Partners and Scholastic teamed up to increase access to books and opportunities for summer learning for K–5 students in Greenville County Schools. Here are the results for the Make Summer Count initiative (MSC).

 View the Infographic

Kids Read Now is a non-profit organization whose mission is to eliminate the K-3 summer reading slide. Since 2010, Kids Read Now has delivered over 160,000 new books to help nearly 27,000 K-3 students build a love of reading.

How It Works:

In the spring, teachers help students pick nine books from a list of over 120 best sellers. Each school hosts a Family Reading Night where students get their first three books and parents learn how to help their kids over the summer. All books are free to families and become the child’s own property.

Kids Read Now stays in touch with families through calls, texts, emails, or Facebook messages, asking which book their child read that week. When they respond, Kids Read Now mails another book to the student’s home, addressed directly to the child. Each student who reads all nine books gets a certificate when they return to school in the fall.

NSLA Special Offer:

School districts in the New Vision for Summer School Network will receive a five percent discount on the Kids Read Now summer reading program list price. For more information on pricing and details on how to get Kids Read Now in your district, contact 877.536.0130 or email info@kidsreadnow.org.