Project Change
Gaining Ground provides Project Change camps after-school in the Fall and Spring and during the months of June and July. These camps provide literacy support through engaging project-based units. Students participate in authentic projects that impact their community through research, discussion, reading, collaboration, and more. Students use their voice and choice to lead themselves and others through each project. While working through the project-based units, participants in the literacy camps also spend time every day in intentional reading small groups that target students individual learning goals. Students who participated in Gaining Ground’s Summer 2023 Project Change answered the guiding question “How can I tell my story through the arts?” 89% of Project Change students met their individual literacy goal!
Home Libraries
“Children growing up in homes with at least twenty books get three years more schooling than children from bookless homes, independent of their parents’ education, occupation, and class.” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility
The research is very clear that access to books for children in economically disadvantaged areas is a significant indicator of academic success. In addition, providing students with highly engaging books and allowing student choice of books is a key component of turning students into readers!
Gaining Ground works in partnership with Tulsa area schools to build students’ home libraries. In 2023, 75,000 new books got into the hands of children through the Home Libraries program! All students have the opportunity to shop in a Scholastic Book Fair to choose their favorite 10 books to begin their summer reading. Having access to highly engaging books of choice prevents the summer slide of reading skills for each of our students.
Book Bus
The Home Library Program and Book Bus Program work hand in hand to ensure that all students have access to highly engaging books throughout the summer months. We encourage students to trade out their books each week, write about their books to win prizes and to visit with our volunteers about their books. These practices build life-long reading habits and ensure that students will not slide back in their literacy skills over the summer months.
Each week students know exactly where the Book Bus will be and what time to expect us rolling in. In the summer of 2023, the Book Bus made over 200 individual stops in the neighborhoods of our partnering schools! Rain, shine or broken down bus we show up each and every week. In addition to exchanging books each week, our Book Bus stops become a community event for the families. Young and old family members join us on the bus to visit about literacy and enjoy the music, bubbles and popsicles. We learn about the families we serve in order to better provide engaging books and other supports for each of our families. Many families tell us that this is the one thing that their children look forward to each and every week!