For the past four weeks, students have teamed up with some exceptional Berkeley County School District teachers to improve their reading skills – and have a little fun in the process.
The annual Summer Reading Camp program went into full swing June 3, with students reporting to one of four different site locations around the district to receive quality, intensive instructional services and support in literacy.
The camp was held at Moncks Corner Elementary, Bowens Corner Elementary, Devon Forest Elementary and Cane Bay Elementary. The theme to the camp in recent years has been all about space exploration; in addition to honing their reading skills over the past few weeks, students got to do fun hands-on projects that focused on the solar system.
Jennifer Rutledge, academic coach and interventionist at Cainhoy Elementary, served as the camp facilitator and said many of the students who participate in the summer reading camp tend to thrive in this type of environment that includes a lot of one-on-one instruction. She said she loves seeing how eager the students are to received that extra support and build their confidence in reading.
“I think my favorite part of camp is seeing how excited the kids are to be at camp, and seeing how much the teachers enjoy camp and what they’re getting to do with the students,” she said.
Summer Reading Camp is the result of the Read to Succeed Act, Act 284, which ensures students receive interventions when they are not yet comprehending grade-level text. The students who attend camp are rising fourth graders.
Students are selected based on a combination of their SCReady scores and iReady reading scores. All students scoring Not Met 1 are invited to camp; students who do not meet a Good Cause Exemption are required to attend in order to be considered for promotion to the fourth grade. This year, the district served 181 students across the four different SRC sites. Successful completion of the camp helps students to avoid mandatory retention.
BCSD tried something new this year by combining the Summer Reading Camp with ESOL camps to better serve its Multilingual Learners. Summer Reading Camp and ESOL teachers co-taught in classrooms to ensure multilingual learners were able to get both strong literacy instruction, as well as ESOL support for English language acquisition.
As the camp’s name would suggest, students did a lot of reading; they received strong phonics instruction with both UFLI and Heggerty instruction integrated into camp. Rutledge said the summer programs are led by phenomenal teachers from around the district. 
“The teachers who join the summer reading camp are very good at what they do, so it’s a joy to be in their classrooms and watch what they are doing with their kids,” she said.
Students also worked on their writing skills and got to break away to the school libraries to do STEM/STEAM activities related to the space theme. They checked out the Star Lab and the district’s iTow Truck, among other activities. Students further practiced their reading by doing read-alouds on books that centered on space exploration.
The final week of camp consisted on final reading assessments and then having the parents venture out to the schools to see all of their children’s hard work come to fruition on the last day. The students will lead their own student-parent conferences to show all the material they covered to their parents – it also gives them a chance to practice reading aloud to their parents.
The district looks forward to continuing to see these children build confidence in literacy when they return to school in August as fourth-graders.
“The kids just love camp and they get to feel successful, and I think that’s the most beneficial part – seeing the kids be successful,” Rutledge said.