The Council of Directors will be, for the first time, rolling out an Ontario Summer Learning Program in every school board across Ontario, allowing children between the ages of 5 and 8 to enhance their literacy and numeracy skills in a fun, recreational program that has been proven to prevent summer learning loss.
CODE wanted all boards to benefit from the sharing of resources and tools that had been developed since the inception of the program, and we were uniquely positioned to solve this problem, having been involved in the very first summer literacy camps that were piloted by TVO.
We conducted stakeholder interviews with regional leads to understand the types of content and resources that would be shared, and then we developed a process and technology solution through which each board would be given access to a cloud server where they could upload resources and associated meta data. We designed a responsive website that not only allows boards across Ontario to share best practices and resources, but the website serves as an online learning community of practice where board members, principals, and teachers can find articles and information to support their camps.
The resulting website, ontariosummerlearning.org, is poised to become a useful tool and a go-to place for over 165 active contributors and counting. Resources available span the spectrum of camp organiser needs, from parent engagement resources, to presentation and letter templates, to curriculum resources. And the availability of the website to both french and english speakers across all devices has made it an invaluable resource for CODE with years of future use in store.
