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Youth will investigate habitats while completing hands-on, minds-on activities. This week will culminate with youth creating posters that encourage people to be conservation stewards.
Session 1
Youth will explore habitats and participate in a nature walk to investigate a habitat in their community.
Session 2
Youth will learn about terrestrial habitats and animals that live on land. They will participate in a debate to contemplate how human-wildlife conflict can impact habitats.
Session 3
Youth will learn about aquatic habitats and animals that live in the water. They will complete an oil spill simulation activity to learn more about how pollution impacts aquatic environments.
Summer Brain Gain is organized into themed, week-long modules. Each module includes five sequenced activities that culminate in an opportunity for youth to share the project they’ve created. Clubs and Youth Centers that facilitate Summer Brain Gain for all age groups will notice that, while each age group works on different projects, the theme is the same. While the sessions within a module should be facilitated in order, the themes can be rearranged and facilitated in any order throughout the summer.
Summer Brain Gain Modules (as of 2023) | |||
| Original | STEM | Read | |
| Ages 6-9 |
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| Ages 10-12 |
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| Ages 13-18 |
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For each module, you’ll find an overview and five 60-minute sessions. Some Clubs and Youth Centers choose to select a module and extend it beyond a single week. Some choose to stretch the Summer Brain Gain READ modules throughout the whole summer, to give youth more time to read the books independently.
Additional Summer Brain Gain activities are available on MyFuture.net. This web platform provides Boys & Girls Clubs with high-quality activities so members can learn new skills, earn recognition and share their work with peers. Facilitate MyFuture activities to engage youth in educational content either in addition to or apart from a full targeted program.
However you facilitate Summer Brain Gain in your Club, integrate career exploration into the experience. Summer Brain Gain materials reference a variety of career fields, including anthropology, architecture, food science, entrepreneurship, music, activism and law. If your summer program includes guest speakers, field trips or special projects, such opportunities can be used to help youth explore related career fields.
To ensure both a high-quality Club Experience and the safety of all youth, adhere to the staff-to-youth ratios outlined in the Program Basics BLUEprint. For groups of youth age 6 and older, plan for a staff-to-youth ratio between 1:10 and 1:15. For youth groups that include children younger than age 6, plan for a staff-to-youth ratio between 1:8 and 1:12. Staff-to-youth ratios should never exceed 1:25 for any activity.
Summer Brain Gain: Upper Elementary Program | ||
|---|---|---|
| Title | Skills | Lesson Overview |
| Animal Habitats | Academic Skills:
Social-Emotional Skills:
| Celebrate the beauty of the natural world by exploring Earth’s incredible environments. Youth will investigate habitats while completing hands-on, minds-on activities. This week will culminate with youth creating posters that encourage people to be conservation stewards. |
In order to enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens, Boys & Girls Clubs focus on three priority outcome areas: Academic Success, Healthy Lifestyles, and Good Character and Citizenship.
Summer Brain Gain, a foundational program in the Education Core Program Area, is designed to prevent summer learning loss. Unless young people practice academic skillsi over the summer, they lose an average of two months’ worth of math skills. Youth from low-income families also lose an average of two months’ worth of reading skills.iiSummer learning loss stacks up from year to year, broadening the achievement gap between lower- and higher-income youth.iii The achievement gap between youth of different socioeconomic levels has nothing to do with student motivation or ability. It has everything to do with access to enriching learning experiences.
The good news is that six weeks of summer learning programs can produce statistically significant gains in academic performance.iv That’s why BGCA is proud to offer these developmentally appropriate, project-based learning materials to help Clubs keep young people learning in the summertime.
As a key program supporting Academic Success, Summer Brain Gain is designed to help all youth graduate on time, motivated to learn, with a plan to succeed in today’s modern workforce.
| See the Resources tab for an overview of this module, including a list of supplies and everything you’ll need to prepare. |
Education Core Program Area
Education programs complement and reinforce what youth learn during the school day, while creating experiences that invite them to fall in love with learning. Rooted in social-emotional development practices, programs in this area enable all youth to be effective, engaged learners who are on track to graduate with a plan for the future. As an informal learning space, Clubs have an opportunity to offer both remediation and enrichment, all while inviting youth to discover and pursue passions that connect to future opportunities. Education programs include experiential learning, so that youth learn actively, through a “hands-on“ and “minds-on” approach.
At all developmental stages, Education programs will prompt youth to plan and prepare for the future. This includes observing and practicing the social-emotional “soft skills,” exploring career options, and engaging in programmatic experiences that prepare them to learn and work beyond high school. Programs and experiences supporting employability encourage youth to explore career options and the postsecondary pathways to their chosen career, develop skills necessary for success in postsecondary education and the workforce, and apply their skills through real world experiences.
Education Outcome Statement: To enable all youth to be effective, engaged learners who are on track to graduate with a plan for the future.
Education Skills: In order to successfully learn and work, youth need to build not only academic skills, but social-emotional skills as well. Social-emotional skills help youth build healthy relationships with themselves and others, recognize and manage emotions, and solve problems. All of the Education programs, including Summer Brain Gain, are designed to build the academic and social-emotional skills that enable youth to reach the Education goal of becoming effective, engaged learners who are on track to graduate with a plan for the future.
Education programs in Boys & Girls Clubs support the development of the following academic and social-emotional skills.
Academic Skills | |
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| Academic Interest | Curiosity for learning |
| Analyzing and Interpreting Information | Reviewing and making meaning of information |
| Asking Questions | Demonstrating inquiry by developing questions that guide learning |
| Career Awareness | Awareness of different possible career paths |
| Cognitive Flexibility | Mental ability to switch between thinking about two different concepts or ideas |
| Creativity | Ability to express ourselves and ideas in new and unique ways |
| Designing and Constructing Explanations | Using information to develop explanations for events or phenomena |
| Digital Literacy | Using technologies to find, evaluate and communicate information |
| Financial Literacy | Knowing how to manage money effectively |
| Literacy | Reading and writing |
| Love of Learning | Excitement and motivation to learn new skills or knowledge |
| Numeracy | Working with numbers to solve problems |
| Planning and Carrying Out Investigations | Designing and executing a method of learning more about a problem or situation |
| Postsecondary Awareness | Awareness of postsecondary education and career options |
| Professionalism | Practicing skills and behaviors needed for a work environment |
| Self-Advocacy | Speaking up for your interests and viewpoints |
| Thinking About Thinking | Awareness of one’s thinking |
| Time Management | Using time effectively and productively to complete tasks and projects |
| Working Memory | Remembering and using relevant information while in the middle of an activity |
Social-Emotional Skills | |
|---|---|
| Collaboration | Working together toward shared goals with youth and adults |
| Communication | Sharing information both verbally and non-verbally and listening well to others |
| Conflict Management and Resolution | Developing solutions to conflict |
| Empathy | Ability to understand and share in feelings of others |
| Ethical Responsibility | Constructive decisions made based on ethics |
| Evaluating | Process used to make informed decisions and identify appropriate options |
| Goal Setting | Setting and working toward personal goals |
| Identifying Emotions | Expressing feelings |
| Identifying and Solving Problems | Noticing problems and working to find a solution |
| Impulse Control | Controlling the desire to react immediately |
| Inclusion | Cultivating a welcoming environment for everyone |
| Organizational Skills | Ability to manage different situations |
| Perseverance | Strength to keep going even when something is hard |
| Perspective-Taking | Discerning or predicting what others think, know and feel |
| Planning | Creating steps to achieving goals |
| Recognizing Strengths | Assess one’s strengths and limitations |
| Respect for Others | How you feel about others and treat them |
| Self-Awareness | Recognizing one’s feelings, needs, thoughts and influence on behavior |
| Self-Discipline | Ability to control impulses in different situations |
| Self-Efficacy | Perceived capability to do a specific task |
| Self-Motivation | Ability to motivate oneself to do something |
| Social Awareness | Ability to understand social and ethical norms of behavior |
| Stress Management | Responses to stress |
| Teamwork | Working with others |
BGCA education programs support national standards such as the Common Core State Standards, Next-Generation Science Standards and the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) Standards. Each of these standards is a specific, developmentally appropriate learning goal that describes a skill youth should be able to perform after learning certain content. The Common Core standards detail rigorous learning goals in Language Arts and Mathematics, organized by grade level. Additionally, the related “Core Habits of Mind” describe key ways of thinking for learners who have achieved the Common Core standards. The Common Core has been adopted by 41 states as well as the District of Columbia, Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands.v
The Common Core standards don’t explicitly address social-emotional learning, so programs in the Education Core Program Area are also designed to support the Core SEL Competencies as defined by CASEL.
For more information about the Common Core and CASEL standards, see “Mapping Our Programs to National Standards.” Visit BGCA.net and search for "Program Basics Suite."
Positive youth development is an intentional, prosocial approach that engages youth within their communities, schools, organizations, peer groups, and families in a manner that is productive and constructive; recognizes, utilizes and enhances young people’s strengths; and promotes positive outcomes for young people by providing opportunities, fostering positive relationships, and furnishing the support needed to build on their leadership strengths.vi
Youth development practices that support teaching and learning are essential for quality Education programs. Education programs, when facilitated with high-quality youth development practice, will help youth develop the attitudes, behaviors and skills needed to become effective, engaged learners who are on track to graduate with a plan for the future.
Youth development professionals help youth become more effective and engaged learners when they:
Youth development professionals help youth stay on track to graduate with a plan for the future when they:
Inclusion is a core component for building a safe, positive environment in your Club or Youth Center. In order to fulfill our mission, Clubs must create safe, positive, and inclusive environments for all youth and teens – including every race, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, ability, socioeconomic status, religion and cultural belief. By creating inclusive environments at our Club, we improve the overall experience for all young people.
When staff practice positive youth development, they help ensure all youth:
As you implement Summer Brain Gain, consider and use strategies that will help youth feel affirmed, safe, and engaged with Club experiences that meet their needs and abilities. For more information on building and sustaining an inclusive environment, visit Program Basics on BGCA.net.
All programs, including Summer Brain Gain, offer opportunities for staff to model, recognize, reinforce and reflect upon character development.
Positive youth development provides direction for how you interact with, engage and model behavior for youth. You get to shape the lives of young people every day. As a result, you set the expectations and show youth what the essential character traits – caring, citizenship, fairness, respect, responsibility and trustworthiness – mean and how they look. These character traits come to life when youth practice social-emotional skills like teamwork, conflict management and emotional regulation. Young people use skills to lead themselves and others, as well as demonstrate positive attributes in citizenship, like community engagement and voting.
You can start to build character using “caught and taught” approaches. Youth “catch” social-emotional development skills when they observe staff modeling appropriate behaviors and skills, and when they interact with peers. Youth can also be “taught” skills to build good character when the skills are explicitly introduced and practiced through program sessions and activities. Use this formula to understand how character develops over time:
To build character traits, include many opportunities for youth to practice social-emotional skills. These include skills related to:
For more information, see the Reference Handout: Practicing Social-Emotional Skills to Develop Character in Program Basics BLUEprint. It will show you the specific social-emotional skills young people should practice in order to demonstrate positive behaviors as described by the six essential character traits.
Staff facilitating Summer Brain Gain can model good character in the way they support all learners, offer feedback rather than criticism, and encourage honesty and responsibility.
When Character Development Is Present:
When Character Development Is Absent:
Education Programs and Resources
BGCA provides developmentally appropriate Education programs and resources for all age groups, as shown in the chart below.
| Middle Childhood Ages 6-9 |
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| Late Childhood Ages 10-12 |
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| Early Adolescence/Tween Ages 13-15 |
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| Adolescence/Teen Ages 16-18 |
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Research spanning 100 years shows that when young people do not engage in educational activities during the summer, they experience learning losses. Over the summer months, students lose an average of two months of grade-level equivalency in math; students from low-income families also lose more than two months in reading achievement.viii Over the course of a young person’s education, these yearly losses add up, contributing to a widening achievement gap between students from low-income families and their wealthier peers, who are less likely to experience summer learning loss.ix Ultimately, this “summer slide” leads to lower high school graduation rates among youth from low-income families; that, in turn, has been tied to fewer economic prospects, higher rates of poverty and poorer health.x
To address this need, Boys & Girls Clubs of America developed and tested Summer Brain Gain. The program integrates engaging educational activities into the typical summer camp experience for youth ages 6 to 18.
Research into several key strategies informed the development of Summer Brain Gain. The curriculum and supporting tools were designed to support the following strategies.
In 2013, Boys & Girls Clubs of America selected Metis Associates, a national research and evaluation firm with special expertise in education and youth development, to conduct a multi-year evaluation of the Summer Brain Gain initiative. Metis completed a formative evaluation of Summer Brain Gain in 2013 and 2014 to learn about program quality, implementation challenges, stakeholders’ perceptions of the program, efficacy in preventing summer learning loss, and changes in youth outcomes over the course of the program.
Metis selected a stratified sample of Clubs, completed case studies, conducted reading and math pretests and post-tests, conducted pre- and post-program participant surveys, analyzed data from daily and weekly instructor implementation logs, and conducted a staff survey.
Metis found that, while the average U.S. student from a low-income family lost at least two months of learning during the summer, the average Summer Brain Gain participant did not experience learning loss, and instead maintained their reading and math skill levels. Some Club members actually experienced gains in learning – especially in vital 21st century social-emotional skills such as teamwork, collaboration, critical thinking and problem-solving.xi
In 2015, Metis conducted a more rigorous evaluation designed as a randomized control trial. A sample of randomly selected Clubs served as treatment (implementation) sites, and a sample of randomly selected Clubs served as control (comparison) sites. The evaluation specifically focused on the Elementary modules, as the majority of participants fall into that age range. The evaluation further confirmed that youth benefit from participating in Summer Brain Gain. Youth participants experienced no significant losses in early literacy, math or reading, and in fact, there was a notable increase in math skills for members at the Summer Brain Gain sites. As activities are updated each year, the overall approach to Summer Brain Gain is consistent and continues to be informed by the findings in the Metis evaluation.
All of BGCA’s Education programs, including Summer Brain Gain, are designed to build the academic and social-emotional skills that enable youth to reach the Education goal of becoming effective, engaged learners who are on track to graduate with a plan for the future. In order to successfully learn and work, youth need to build not only academic skills, but social-emotional skills as well. Social-emotional skills help youth build healthy relationships with themselves and others, recognize and manage emotions, and solve problems. Summer Brain Gain specifically focuses on the following social-emotional skills: communication, collaboration, identifying and solving problems, planning and carrying out investigations, evaluating, and recognizing emotions.
Research has shown that the evidence-based foundational skill development embedded in Summer Brain Gain can lead to short-term, intermediate and long-term outcomes. Summer Brain Gain was designed to help youth achieve the following.
| Objectives | All youth will be effective, engaged, adaptive learners who are on track to graduate with a plan for the future. Clubs will not only prevent summer learning loss, but will provide enrichment experiences each summer. |
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| Short-Term Outcomes (0 to 3 months) | Youth participate in fun, educational programming during the Summer. Youth collaboratively engage in project-based learning with an emphasis on literacy and STEM. |
| Intermediate Outcomes (3 to 6 months) | Summer learning experiences increase academic and social-emotional skills, cultivating in youth a love of learning, academic perseverance and postsecondary educational opportunities. |
| Long-Term Outcomes (12 months or more) | Youth attendance, behavior and course progression demonstrate that they are on track to graduate with a plan for the future. |
This year, BGCA’s education team worked with staff from local Boys & Girls Clubs to co-create the content for Summer Brain Gain. We are grateful to those staff for developing engaging activities to promote both social- emotional skills and academic skill building in this critical summer learning loss prevention program. Local Club staff lent their valuable insight to the entire creation process – from envisioning new modules, to designing the program’s scope and sequence, to writing and reviewing each lesson. The result is a guide to summer learning that is flexible enough for Club staff to use with their young people, wherever they may be located.
We are grateful to the hundreds of Club professionals who offered their advice and suggestions. Their investment has resulted in a summer program that is both educational and fun. We thank those who served on the Summer Brain Gain Taskforce, giving up weekends and working over the holidays to ensure Clubs would have a clear roadmap to high-quality summer learning experiences for youth.
Summer Brain Gain Taskforce
Angela O’Neil, Boys & Girls Clubs of North Alabama, Ala.
Anna Piccirilli, Boys & Girls Clubs of Annapolis and Arundel County, Md. Kristy Robb, Boys & Girls Club of Elkhart County, Ind.
Maxwell Fenster, Boys & Girls Clubs of Southern Nevada, Nev.
Tiniquia Adams, Boys & Girls Club of the Capital Area, S.D.
Dustin Anderson, Boys & Girls Clubs of the Northland, Minn.
Christina Baker Smith, Boys & Girls Clubs of Tennessee Valley, Tenn. Mary Miller, Boys & Girls Clubs of Columbus, Ohio
Markyta Holton, Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Atlanta, Ga.
Tamara Korth, Boys & Girls Clubs of Spokane County, Wash.
BGCA Staff
Elizabeth Fowlkes, Senior Vice President, Youth Development
Jennifer Bateman, National Vice President, Youth Development Programs Danielle Morris, National Director, Youth Development Programs
Chrissy Booth, Senior Director, Education
Susan Ciavolino, Director, Education
Lesa Sexton, Director, Education
Stacy Ruff, Director, Education
Brandie Barton, National Director, Creative Services and Brand Management Chip Bailey, Director, Creative Projects and Brand Management
Matt Stepp, Senior Graphic Designer
Special thanks to Nicole Crosby of Crosby Creatives for her leadership in the editorial and publication process.
