Closing the Gap, ELA and Math Refresher for 4th & 5th Grades

Major League Baseball partnered with us to develop this learning game.

Every summer, students take a break from school, resulting in crucial knowledge loss from no practice. English and Math are the most critical learning topics, where without ongoing practice, students lose critical progress over the summer. Learning loss is most prevalent between 4th-5th grade, creating an achievement gap between students of different socioeconomic statuses. In fact, 2/3 of the income-based achievement gap is attributed to summer learning loss by the beginning of high school.

When students return in the fall, teachers often have to spend time reteaching content students already learned the previous year. This course, developed in partnership with Major League Baseball, is designed to combat summer learning loss.

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This course provides students with continuous content accessed through fun and engaging a baseball themed game while also preparing students to enter the next school year on track.

This program is 18 weeks long and content unlocks at regular intervals. There are 36 series total, each series is comprised of 1 math game and 1 English game. Each game takes approximately 5 minutes to complete and each week 2 new series unlock. Students will spend 20 minutes a week on math and English, unlocking new content in small digestible lessons, helping them retain more knowledge throughout the summer. The topics covered are:

• Units of Measure
• Place Value
• Arithmetic
• Geometry
• Spelling
• Phonemic Awareness
• Vocabulary
• Comprehension

Whether they are demonstrating comprehension by ordering a sentence to perfect their lineup or identifying equivalent values to strike out a batter, students remain immersed in a fully gamified learning experience. This program provides targeted hints and just-in-time instruction giving students extra support when they need it. Instructors can easily track students’ progress through an online grade book that shows which students and topics require the most attention. This course aligns with state and national standards in math and literacy.

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Since 2017, this program has reached more than 140,000 students, ages 8-11, in the U.S. and Canada. The project also won a 2017 International Serious Play Awards Silver Medal.

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