Written by Jamie Bessette
As the school year is winding down many parents ask themselves what they can do to keep their kids from experiencing the summer slide.
If you aren't sure what a summer slide is let me quickly explain. When kids do not complete any academic work for an extended period of time (like summer vacation) they lose some of the skills they learned during the school year. Typically a student loses about 3 months of academic skill. This is why September is often a review of what happened last year. It's sort
This is also why some teachers recommend summer school for students as it decreases their summer slide.
While summer school is a great way to keep up on skills and if you choose to have your children attend awesome! However, there is a group of parents that this will not work for or they don’t want to commit their kids to a half day summer school program, so what do they do?
If you can commit to 6 hours a week (5 days of work and 1 trip to the library), I will explain to you what I do with my children to prevent the summer slide. If you have internet access you can use this system for your children as well. Your child will spend 20 minutes on each: reading, writing and math each week day during the summer. Let me tell you how to set up each area, reading takes the most explaining so let I’ll start there...
Reading:
Before school lets out, ask for the current reading levels for your children. Your teacher should send you a number such as 3.2, this stands for 3rd grade, second month. If your teacher says beginning 3rd grade you should assume that means 3.0-3.3, mid3rd is 3.4-3.7 and ending or late 3rd grade is 3.8-3.10. You can apply this for each grade level up through 8th grade after that they say high school level. If your teacher gives you a letter such as “level P” click here https://www.fountasandpinnell.com/textlevelgradient/ for the conversions.
Now take that number/letter and go to the public library. Some libraries organize their children’s section of the library by the number or letter system. If your’s does you lucked out! If they don’t you have these other options to find the reading levels of the books your child is interested in reading. These are two resources that you can look up a book to find out the reading level.
https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/bookwizard/ or you can download an app for your phone at
https://www.arbookfind.com/UserType.aspx?RedirectURL=%2fdefault.aspx or you can search and download their app
You should have your child pick a few books that are within .2 up or down of the provided reading level. If your child is given a letter you should try to stick to that letter, as you get later into summer you can go up a level. Then you allow your kids to pick whatever books they want until they have a total of 10 books for kindergarten, 1st grade and 2nd, 5 books for 3rd-5th and 2-3 books for 5th and above. Go by reading level not your child’s actual grade level. The reason being as your child’s reading level goes up the books get longer. If you have a child reading way above their grade level make sure to check the books because the content may not be appropriate for them.
20 minutes need to be spent on reading a book at their level and anytime after that they can read whatever book they want.
Writing:
Go to the store and buy whatever notebook your kid thinks looks cool. Or if they prefer to type, allow them to use the computer. They need to spend 20 minutes a day writing. They can tell a story, if it takes multiple days to write a story have them mark where they got to each day. They can journal about what is happening in their lives. If your child needs more guidance you can give them a writing prompt. If you google ‘writing prompts’ you will get a ton of suggestions.
Once my kids hit 5th grade I allowed them to substitute their 20 minutes of writing for 20 minutes of learning a language. You could do this at an earlier age if you so choose as long as your child is able to write complete paragraphs focused on one topic with good conventions. This was a free resource that their school districts provided to students as resource options, it usually found on the schools webpage. Every school district I have worked for has had one of these pages so most likely yours will as well, take a few minutes to search your schools webpage resources. Most kids already know how to access this page so ask your child.
Math:
Again, ask your child’s teacher where their current math level is so you can determine where your child should begin their work. If your child is working below grade level you will want them to pick up summer work at that level (this will make sense in a minute) if your child is above grade level and participates in advanced math then also you will want to pick up at that level. With that said your child may be working at above grade level but participates in grade level math then follow the following sentences. If your child is working at grade level for math you can give your child two options. 1. They can review the difficult parts of the grade level they just finished or 2. They can start work on the next grade level. My suggestion for math is to go to https://www.khanacademy.org/ and register for math. Again your child should spend 20 minutes a day working on math. I like Khan academy because it has video tutorials to teach the concept so parents don’t have to know how to do the math. The videos are followed with practice problems. As the parent all you have to do is monitor their work.
There you have it, this is how I have been setting up my kids “summer school”. By doing this my kids maintain or increase their academic skills over the summer. This version of summer school also allows us to complete work wherever we are and it allows us to pick the time that works best for us. If you have questions please let me know and I will do the best I can to help you.
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