The summer slide occurs when students who have gone on a long break from school begin to gradually forget the knowledge they gained during the school year. It only takes a couple of weeks for the summer slide to start affecting students. However, learning loss doesn’t impact every student equally. Younger students are prone to maximum learning loss because they’re at an important stage in their development. Things like letter knowledge, word reading skills, and decoding are very likely to decay without regular practice, as are math facts such as addition and subtraction.
Also, according to summer slide statistics, some demographics are more susceptible to falling behind than others. For example, kids of under-resourced families are more prone to lose more knowledge during the summer than kids from wealthy families. Kids with learning disabilities are also susceptible to learning loss because, during the summer break, they don’t get the instructional support that they receive throughout the year.
Fortunately, the basic skills aren’t difficult to maintain over the summer break. Parents can use the following ways to keep children engaged in reading and math.
Parents should find something that their kids can read every day. They should encourage children to read online resources while playing on the computer or the comics in the newspaper every day. Kids won’t gain much from summer reading if they’re not enjoying it. Therefore, parents should ensure that children have access to different types of books that they enjoy reading and can fully understand. Parents can ask the librarian at their local library for recommendations based on their kids’ age, interests, or reading level.
Math is another subject that often gets lost over the summer break. Research shows that pupils lose around two months of summer skills over the summer break if they don’t participate in some kinds of activities during it. Here’re some tactics parents can try to incorporate math learning into their children’s summer activities.
· Searching for summer camps that use skills learned in math, such as space or robotics camps.
· Encouraging students to take science- or math-related jobs that will help them improve their academic abilities while learning crucial job skills.
· Encouraging students to tutor others in math subjects they’ve already mastered.
· Letting teens participate in trip-planning actions by calculating fuel needs, figuring out the distance between destinations, or setting a budget.
· Finding ways to incorporate math into day-to-day activities.
· Helping struggling pupils discover remedial summer work they can perform to improve their skills.
