Program Summary
Partnering with the Boys and Girls Club of Metro Baltimore’s Dorchester County, MD site at Leonard’s Lane to develop a literacy-focused Power Hour program as part of the club’s after-school and summer activities
- Power Hour helps club members ages 6-18 achieve academic success by providing homework help, tutoring, and high-yield literacy learning activities while encouraging members to become self-directed learners
- Includes allotted time for homework completion, printed program materials including a resource guide for those members who do not have homework, and poster-sized PowerPoint charts for tracking and rewarding participants’ progress
- Will launch its D.E.A.R. (Drop Everything and Read) program. D.E.A.R. serves to reunite club members with their love for reading. Kids are able to pick a book of their choosing and dedicate 30 minutes a day to quiet reading time. In order for them to get “credit” for reading the book, they must complete a Book Review after, which was created by a BGCMB staff member. Once the kids complete the book review, they receive tickets, which they can save for various incentives
- Will provide specific time for IXL programming with all elementary and middle school aged members. IXL will allow them opportunities to grow their knowledge in various subjects, including Math and Language Arts
Measures of Performance
For more information, please see Data Analysis section at the bottom of the page
Measures of Performance
For more information, please see Data Analysis section at the bottom of the page
Data Analysis
- Goal: To assist the new Dorchester County’s Boys and Girls Club with growing presence and programming in the area. J2W is funding the Power Hour program with the intentional inclusion of a literacy-focused strategy.
- The literacy program is called Drop Everything and Read (DEAR). During the Power Hour timeframe after school, participants will spend dedicated time reading curated books that are age-appropriate and then writing a book report to ensure comprehension and completion. Reports will be read and discussed with each child and family. The program will run several times per week.
- During DEAR, students will also have the opportunity to work with the IXL online academic enrichment program, which gives each student grade level appropriate problems to solve in both language arts and mathematics. The IXL allows each child to be given a diagnostic and then can students will be able to measure growth over time.
- At the close of its first year in December 2022, we have data on several output measures:
- The goal is to have approximately 40 kids participating in the DEAR program. After the first year, we have 40 kids in the program, earning a “green” health score.
- Our goal for the first year was to ensure each child is reading approximately 75 books per quarter and spending about 20 hours per quarter reading while in DEAR. At the end of the first year, we have been able to exceed both targets with approximately 110 books/child and 37 hours/child (both “green”).
- Our goal was to see positive growth in their IXL math and language arts performance. Our goal was to see at least an aggregated 25 point improvement in each area and both earned a health score of “green” with 35 point growth in math and 33 point growth in language arts.
- We had a year-end goal of having at least 50% of the Power Hour K-3 students being able to identify sight words (Dolch reading words). At the end of 2022, we identified 30% of the children being able to ID sight words, and thus scored this area as “yellow.”
- We developed and administered an annual social-emotional survey to this first year’s cohort of students, exploring feelings of self-identified social-emotional development, how to cope with challenges, and ways to manage stress. At the end of 2022, we established benchmarks for each with scores of 44%, 72%, and 88%, respectively. We will re-survey in 2023 to assess growth in these areas.