Summer is coming!
In a few short weeks teachers will be saying goodbye to their students and sending them off to the next grade level. It is so easy to dive right into the important work of summer-time relaxing and recharging, but all too often students lose a portion of skills and knowledge gained in the school year during the long summer stretch.
The National Summer Learning Association cites some pretty startling facts about summer learning loss:
– Most students lose 2.6 months worth of mathematical computation skills over the summer.
– Low-income students lose more than two months worth of reading achievement during summer break.
– Teachers typically spend 4 to 6 weeks re-teaching material that was lost over the summer months.
– Most students test lower on standardized testing at the end of summer compared to their scores on the same test at the end of the previous school year.
– 2/3 of the achievement gap between students in 9th grade is attributed to summer learning loss in the early elementary years.
Teachers, students and parents all fought hard for academic gains during the year, no one wants to see all that progress get washed away with the sunscreen and sticky popsicle residue of the summer. So, what can be done?
Tips for Teachers
– Educate parents and students on summer learning loss. Prepare them to take charge of their summer and work at home on skills learned during the year.
– Encourage families to read at home, go to the library, and have a family reading night.
– Send home any extra unused workbooks or worksheets and encourage families to work through them over the break.
– Share with families websites and resources they can access from home.
Tips for Parents
– Make learning a part of everyday life. Use car trips to review math facts, listen to books, or belt out Heidi Songs!
– Keep a summer journal. Work with your child to take pictures through out the week and then write a short paragraph about what happened.
– Make reading a family affair. Take a trip to the library and then head to a park for a reading picnic. Read books aloud taking turns being the reader.
– Have children work on worksheets before meals and discuss at the table.
Tips for Students
– Be a know it all! Pick a topic and become an expert. If you like bugs, research them on the internet, check out books on them at the library, take photos and create a bug scrapbook!
– Start a book club. Meet with friends and take turns reading each others favorite books.
– Work through math workbooks or worksheets with a friend. See who can finish first.
– Dance and sing to your favorite Heidi Songs DvD.
– Challenge your parents to a math or spelling bee.
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Free Parent Letter Download
Heidi Songs products are a great solution for avoiding summer learning loss. To help families find their way to the great resources teachers have been using in the classroom we have developed a free parent letter and resource list for parents.
Here is a copy of the parent letter in two formats: You will find the pdf version here. You will find an editable version in Word format here. If you would like to send home the Summer Learning Loss infographic, look under the picture of it for the links. Thank you!
And don’t forget…. you can print out a pdf document of ANY blog post and save it, store it, send it home with parents, etc, mention it in a parent newsletter, etc., just by using the pdf generator tool at the bottom of every post!
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