Summer Slide to Summer SHINE
Summer Slide to Summer SHINE
Summer is finally here! The kids are off school, weekends are spent at the beach, there’s lots of family time, and maybe even an exciting vacation is planned. Though there is so much excitement surrounding summer, maintaining academic growth from the previous year has always been a struggle. During the summer children lose up to 20% of their learning from the previous academic year. Though this can be concerning, we have a few tips to help your child prevent the summer slide so they can confidently enter the new school year!
What is the “Summer Slide”
The summer slide is when a student loses skills they attained in the previous school year over the summer due to the lack of practice. Though this does not affect all students, it is incredibly common and particularly impacts literacy. Like all skills in life, when a skill is learned it needs to be practiced in order for it to be maintained.
Research claims two months of reading skills and two-and-a-half months of math skills are lost over a single summer. Summer learning loss is cumulative, so by the time a student reaches middle school research shows they have lost nearly two years of learning due to the summer slide.
Our Tips to Prevent the Summer Slide
Luckily, maintaining academic skills over the summer can be simple and easily implemented into everyday activities! Here are a few of our favorite tips to prevent the summer slide:
Reading regularly
Keep your child reading regularly, make it a part of their bedtime routine, or make a summer reading log for them so they can keep track of how much they are reading and how many books they can get through over the two months. This can be a great way for them to set goals and achieve them while seeing their progress.
Listen to audiobooks and podcasts
From running errands to traveling, your child is going to be spending lots of time with you commuting. All this time commuting can be used to your child’s benefit! So try swapping out the iPad for an audiobook or podcast that the whole family can listen to and discuss!
Research Day
Find a few days throughout the summer and designate them to be research days. Your child can pick any topic that they want and they are going to research and learn more about it! Let’s say your child really loves sloths and wants to learn more about them. Pull up a youtube video, article, podcast, and book on the subject and dive into learning more about their favorite topics! This can open them up to being even more curious and eager to learn about all the subjects and interests they enjoy.
SMART Play
The goal of SMART play is to create a positive relationship between parent and child through play while engaging in activities that are beneficial to your child’s academic skill retention. Here are some of our favorite methods of SMART play:
“Who is bigger?” card game: Both players have their cards face down. They say “1, 2, 3 flip” and flip over the top card. The player with the bigger number wins! If your child has already mastered recognizing numbers, spice this up by flipping over 2 cards at one time to see who has the greatest sum. There are a ton of ways to modify gameplay to keep math skills sharp!
Guess Who: This game is the classic board game that everyone loves. Each player selects a mystery character and uses Yes and No questions to figure out who their opponent's mystery character is! The first one to guess the mystery character correctly wins the game.
Imaginative play: Playing pretend is incredibly beneficial for your child, so let that imagination run wild! It is a great way for kids to not only learn about themselves, but it is a great way for adults to learn about their child’s perspective!
Building: There are so many benefits to building or construction play, this can be done with blocks, legos, or magnatiles, the options are limitless!
What You Can Do
Combating the summer slide is actually quite simple. Keeping your child active and occupied with engaging activities is the best way to keep them on track. Try any of the tips above, keep your eyes peeled for our monthly suggested activities by subscribing to our newsletter, Spill the Beans, or schedule a summer 1:1 to help your child prevent the summer slide!
Summer Slide Resources:https://www.scholastic.com/parents/books-and-reading/raise-a-reader-blog/summer-slide.htmlhttps://blog.allaboutlearningpress.com/summer-slide/https://www.idtech.com/blog/summer-slide-facts-for-productive-school-break