Fall 2021      Volume 49, Number 4


Balanced Literacy Goes Remote: A Model for Summer Learning Engagement
By Margaret Mary Policastro, Rhonda Kimbrough, and Carolyn Franklin

Document: Article

Introductory Paragraph:  After 32 years of offering an in-person Summer Reading Clinic at our university, the thought of not offering the clinic due to the pandemic was disappointing for two main reasons:  1. The Summer Reading Clinic which has been offered for five weeks during June and July serves as the clinical practicum for our Reading Specialist program. If we couldn’t offer it, we wanted to ensure that the Reading Specialist candidates would still receive a rigorous experience in their preparation. Basically, each summer we become a small balanced literacy school where the love, joy, and passion for reading prevail through interdisciplinary projects based on learning and constructing knowledge and meaning about the world.  2. Disappointing the families who were counting on this experience was hard to imagine.  After much deliberation, we made the decision to suspend offering the clinic in person this summer. However, an alternative was offered to families enrolled which included a remote version of the Summer Reading Clinic. Over 50 children enrolled, and the ages spanned from 5 to 12 years. Most of the students were from families returning from previous summers. We were faced with gearing up and going forward into an endeavor for which we had little to no experience. For the next two months, the in-person balanced literacy model was transformed to remote learning where synchronous and asynchronous learning experiences unfolded.

DOI:   https://doi.org/10.33600/IRCJ.49.4.2021.33

Page Numbers:   33-42

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