The new school year is in full swing and the brisker nights of fall are starting, yet the Harvard Ed Portal still has summer on its mind as it shares the success stories from another new program.
As part of the first-ever Summer Explorations at the Ed Portal, students of all ages were able to experience programs that enriched learning, stimulated curiosity, and slowed summer learning loss, which many experts say is a key step in closing the achievement gap.
On any given day last summer you might have found a 7-year-old getting a better understanding of literature by making art, a 10-year-old learning how to troubleshoot bicycle problems and ride safely on busy urban streets, a third-grader learning to code, a seventh-grader building robots, or a 10th-grader learning about biotechnology and genetics. Some groups even took field trips to Harvard’s Physics Lab to design 3-D printed creations, or to the Harvard Art Museums to examine centuries-old artifacts.
While the Ed Portal has offered various one-off summer programs in the past, this year it offered a series of highly coordinated options that touched on a variety of subjects for students of all ages. The programs were free to students living in Allston-Brighton.