Loop It Up Savannah

Looping literacy together - in 2024, our looping literacy together program expanded to serve 52 classrooms across nine schools in chatham county. A total of 1,380 students in pre-k, kindergarten, and first grade participated in weekly lessons that used the arts as a powerful tool to inspire a love of reading. Students engaged in hands-on creative activities intentionally designed to align with selected children's books, helping to bring stories to life through artistic expression. The year also brought a major curriculum update to our kindergarten llt lessons. The revised curriculum broadened its focus to include a wider range of artistic disciplines, such as theater, visual arts, music, dance, and mindfulness. It was carefully designed to expose students to multiple forms of creative expression and to support literacy development in diverse ways. Recognizing the evolving needs of chatham county schools, loop it up piloted its first esl-focused llt class at brock elementary. This pilot was made possible through a partnership with savannah arts academy's ap spanish students, who supported weekly kindergarten llt sessions by offering translation services and building meaningful relationships with spanish speaking and bilingual learners. In 2024, looping literacy together continued to grow and adapt, which included changes in how it served preparing students with autism for classroom education, or pace, classrooms in chatham county. Loop it up restructured pace lessons to focus on a mindfulness-based approach, creating a more intentional and calming learning experience for students with specialized needs. Our book box library project also reached new heights in 2024. More than 7,000 books were given to over 700 students throughout the year. In this project, each student decorates a wooden crate to use as a personal home library. They then attend a loop it up book fair filled with donated books and choose 10 titles to take home. The project is designed to help foster a love of reading and support literacy and language development at home.

School garden steam - in 2024, our school gardens program grew to include partnerships with 30 schools throughout chatham county. These gardens have become vital extensions of the classroom, serving as spaces for family engagement, counseling, small group programming, and outdoor learning that supports both social- emotional and academic growth. The produce grown in these gardens contributed directly to the well-being of school communities. Harvests were used in food giveaways, cooking classes, and student meals. Loop it up provided standards- aligned garden education at partner schools, delivering hands-on lessons to 1,385 students throughout the year and reaching approximately 300 students each week. 2024 also brought new approaches to student engagement and teacher involvement through the launch of our school gardens workshops. Beginning in november, we hosted 14 co-teaching workshops that reached 295 students and 14 teachers. Workshop topics included composting, winterizing the garden, ecosystem exploration, changes in earth's surfaces, plant-animal- insect interactions, and the garden's role in the larger food system. Additionally, throughout 2024, our school gardens team actively engaged with the broader savannah agricultural and food community. We participated in the savannah food policy council, helped organize the inaugural savannah urban agricultural fest, and contributed to the planning and presentation of the 2024 chatham farm to school workshop.

Afterschool and special programs - loop it up continued its proud partnership with the savannah-chatham county public school system's 21st century program, providing after-school and summer camp enrichment programming at 24 title i public schools across chatham county. In addition to offering loop it up-staffed workshops in the realms of art and steam, we significantly expanded our network of community partners that plug into the 21st century program, offering a wider array of creative learning experiences to thousands of students. Notably, loop it up began coordinating field trips to ships of the sea maritime museum and launched a summer camp at fort pulaski, funded by a grant from the national park foundation. During the camp, students explored mindfulness, stewardship, and community care through nature- based activities and fishing, ending with a family fishing license voucher to support continued engagement.