ACADEMICS
BASIC SKILLS SUPPORT
Oftentimes, our students lack a strong foundation in basic math, reading, and writing skills. For that reason, our after-school curriculum focuses on the development of these skills through daily activities designed to teach and enforce the skills. These include:
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Math functions flash cards (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division)
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Sight words flash cards
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Daily journal-keeping to promote writing fluency, appropriate grammar usage, and punctuation
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Response questions and reading passages to improve comprehension
Equipped with a strong basic-skills foundation, our students can then learn and incorporate advanced skill sets with more confidence and ease.
DIGITAL ENRICHMENT
In this digital age, it is important that our students are comfortable using technology as an academic resource. To encourage this, Scotland Storm provides laptop computers to students during program sessions. The computers are incorporated into daily lessons, as students are often given computer-based learning tasks to enrich their learning. These tasks include:
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Time-mediated single-player and multi-player games testing and improving knowledge of material, processing speed, and attention
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Online writing tasks to improve typing speed and accuracy
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Utilizing the internet as a source of information in research-based projects
CONSISTENT GUIDANCE
In addition to providing our students with the academic resources necessary for their success, Scotland Storm partners with volunteers to offer students one-on-one tutoring and small-group learning sessions. Volunteers are assigned to several students for each academic year, and this enables volunteers to be a constant source of support and guidance in the students' lives.
This consistent support system is crucial for our students' success, because the volunteers hold the students accountable for their academic work and behavior. Scotland Storm is authorized to access and review each student's grades, homework completions, and attendance rates, and this is an effective resource for volunteers and staff to track the progress of the students and give them the individualized support they need over the long term.
CHARTING SUCCESSES
We strive to help as many students as possible and provide them with high-quality, academic enrichment. But are our students truly benefitting from our program? Scotland Storm seeks to to answer that question in a variety of ways, so that we know which parts of our program need to change and which parts are helping our students. We:
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Quantitatively track students' grades over time, looking for improvement in some or all subject areas
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Monitor attendance records and completion and submission of home assignments to measure students' motivation in school and willingness to improve
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Qualitatively assess student progress by having check-in meetings with the teachers of our students
We anticipate student academic growth over time, and will update this website with measures of impact once they are available. Tracking student academic performance is a longitudinal process, so it takes months to years to get an accurate measure of the effectiveness of our program. Stay tuned!