The Advantage of Having Small groups at Summer Activities
When looking for summer activities or even summer camp for your child, many different questions come up. What kind of summer activities are available? How long does it all last? Is it possible to have something overnight? What ages attend this type of program?
One factor that often gets constantly overlooked is the number of attendees. Small group sizes are the most important aspect of any summer experience for your child this summer so always check how many children will be participating. Why?
Safe Personal Environment
Having a smaller number of children allows staff to have a great control over safety aspects connected to children. Specifically, in these current times having a smaller group supports staff in establishing a truly COVID-19-free experience for children based on recommendations given by the American Camping Association.
With a 5:1 camper to counselor ratio, a total of 40 children at each camp and a maximum of 12 children in each individual age group, campers truly get the individual attention they deserve and need.
Our staff work together with certified sports instructors to ensure your children remain safe at all times during their staff. Whether it be in the water, air, or land your child is always under the watchful eyes of trained and certified camp staff where at times there is even a 3:1 ratio. What is more, having such small groups allows our staff to put into place our extremely specific and extensive approach to Covid-19 thus ensuring your child is safe.
Individualised Learning
It’s clear that small learning environments help grow learning and collaborative skills and that learning in groups leads to improved memory and understanding. This is because students remember more from group discussions than if they listened to the same content in a more instructional format.
Our 1:5 staffing ratio to ensures that every child has the individual support they need to grow socially and emotionally in a scaffolded environment.
Our staff can focus on individualized growth plans for each camper in order to help them become the best version of themselves. Beyond just the number of “adults in the room”, taking the time to understand child, parent and community goals is important. Pre-camp in-home conversations, parent and professional surveys, and solid communication help to provide an environment where meaningful social-emotional learning can happen. We create a specialized growth plan for every camper so that we can specifically address their social goals during our program, and we ask for professional and parent input to help craft these plans. Looking at a strength-based approach can build upon what a child is good at, enjoys or is high interest as a means to coordinate and expand their horizons.
Small-Group Instruction Encourages Inclusivity, Collaboration, and Teamwork
The phrase “two heads are better than one” certainly has some merit. Researchers found that if students are able to work together, for example on a problem-solving task, they are more likely to experiment with different techniques in order to try and solve it. Children also learn better by discussing and questioning each other’s opinions and reasoning as this allows them to develop different perspectives of how they can go about completing a task
Being a truly international environment, Explorer Camps has created the perfect diverse backdrop for children to develop cultural awareness, and their teamwork skills.
Our campers get to experience a bond with others who share similar strengths and benefit from developing empathy with those who are working on similar things as well. They feel like they are a part of a group who understands them and are more open to sharing their experiences and working together with others towards their shared goals because they are specifically in this type of social-emotional learning environment.
Aids in Proper Confidence Building
Most of us can remember an occasion during our schooling where the teacher would ask a question, but we were hesitant to answer because we were afraid of voicing an incorrect answer in front of a large group of peers. Social anxiety is a natural fear, but a small group setting helps to minimise those anxieties and build confidence without the risk of being lost as a face in a crowd, or marginalized by hanging around the periphery of a social situation.
Through structured discussion-based teachings and hands-on activities, every camper is given a voice and is heard helping build their self-confidence and happiness.
Our staff at summer camp encourages participation and use positive reinforcement to help our campers develop their self-efficacy and confidence in their abilities. Being an international camp, it empowers our children to learn understanding in a truly culturally diverse community, where working together is championed above anything else.
Allows Opportunity for Constructive Feedback
Inside the classroom, it can be very difficult for teachers (even award–winning ones like members of our leadership team) to set aside enough time to address every student individually on a regular basis. Even in parent-teacher conferences, it can be difficult to address both the good and the bad, and as a result, important feedback can get missed in larger groups.
At camp we put an emphasis on positive reinforcement and constructive feedback by addressing social growth opportunities in the moment.
Through our small-group setup, our staff are able to address the good and the bad- to nurture our campers and help them grow. Having a dedicated staff team whose sole roles at camp are to build, foster and empower social-emotional success, our SST team (scaffolding success team) provides individual and small group in feedback. All along the way, parents remain an integral part of the process, constantly being updated before, during and after camps.
Small-Group Instruction what Explorer Camps is all about
At Explorer Camps, we believe in helping our campers get the benefits of small group instruction, and our staff are specifically trained to help our campers get the most out of our supportive community. It is more than the teachers, social workers, counselors and Camp Psychologist who develop the staff training curriculum. It is more than the podcasts and distance learning that staff participate in before they arrive on site. It is more than the countless training sessions our staff go through. It is more than the certified 1st Aid training all staff complete before camps.
Explorer Camps is about a truly personalised and caring experience for your child. Having small groups is the key to providing that.
