Summer camp helps newcomer kids retain their English once school is out

A summer program is in its fifth year helping newcomer students maintain and improve their English.

The SLAM (Summer Literacy, Art & Music)Camp school is run by Corinne Plett, who says she used to hear concerns that newcomer kids were losing some English language skills between school years.

"They're going up and then they're going down, and it takes maybe till November until they're back to the level they were when they left in June," she said.

"So we're losing too much learning, we're losing too much language development."

Speaking English also affects kids' ability tomake friends and integrate into their new community, she says.

"As a newcomer to Canada, the important thing they need to do is learn the language they will be functioning in because it affects everything. It affects relationships, it affects their ability to navigate the city, school, sports, everything," she said.

"If their language development isn't happening, they will find themselves further and further behind in school, and often not able to communicate."

Watch as youngsters share their struggles to learn English:

'Sometimes I even cry': Young newcomers come together to improve their English

6 years ago

Duration 1:55

'Sometimes I even cry': Young newcomers come together to improve their English

The four-week program currently serving about 20 kids is housed in a multipurpose building on Notre Dame Avenue.

The mornings focus on practising English, but in the afternoon, the students can either play sports, work on arts and craftsor take music lessons.

The participants come from "all over," but primarily countries in Africa, Plett says.

Freedom School, afull-time, specialized private school for newcomer kids ranging from Grades 8 to 12, is planned forthe fall.It will be geared toward students who could benefit from smaller class sizes to bring their English skills up to speed, she said.

"They're not thrown into a Grade 10 classroom and expected to keep up with all the vocabulary," she said.

Tuliza Shabani, a student whocame to Canada in 2015, primarily speaks Swahili at home.

"Writing is easy, but getting the idea down is kind of hard," she said of English, which she hopes to improve so she can get a good job when she's older. She hopes to become a nurse so she can help people.