Avoiding "Summer Slide"Even though none of our children probably do any work in anyone's fields, the vestiges of an agrarian calendar, with children free to work during the summer months, continue to shape our academic calendar, even our psyches.
No matter how great a school year has been, summer provides that irresistible pull for children. Whether it is camp, a family vacation or just hanging around, summer is a time to relax and rejuvenate. Just as predictably, by the time late August rolls around, most students begin to feel the pull toward the start of an exciting new school year.
In the interim, there can be significant academic "summer slide." This means that, without any reinforcement of the hard won academic skills, students can return to school in September significantly behind where they left off in the spring, most commonly in the areas of mathematics and language arts.
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| The fifth graders were invited to lunch at Dr. De Jarnett's home. |
The antidote for summer slide does not have to include summer school or regular tutoring sessions, unless there are specific reasons and very clear objectives. A traditional recommendation is to encourage reading for pleasure. You can click here to get a list of recommended reading by grade level. Also the American Library Association has a great website with recommendations for young readers. In addition, several of our fourth grade students have been working hard on a book recommendation blog which you can view by clicking here. Students currently in grades 1-4 will soon be sharing with you a reading assessment that they have completed recently. This may also be helpful in selecting a "just right" book.
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| Click here for more information. |
In school, students are used to keeping journals for their thoughts, to record a sketch or ideas... Selecting a journal and a set of writing/drawing implements is also exciting for children. Most large bookstores have great selections. It is probably best to respect a child's privacy and look inside the journal only if invited.
Recently there has been an explosion of engaging online options for children, options that you probably will not have to push them to visit. All it takes is an internet connection and a device with a full browser.
You may be surprised how easily children are engaged in learning activities if they are presented in a lively game format in which children are motivated to track their own growing mastery.
Below are some highly recommended websites that you might check out with your child to choose what he or she might like to get involved with during the summer.
Language arts recommendations:
Book Adventure: Read, Click, Win
"Book Adventure is a fun, free way to motivate your child to read! Kids in grades K-8 can find a book, take quizzes on what they've read, and earn prizes for their reading success."
Tumblebooks: eBooks for eKids!On Tumblebooks, you have the option of Tumblebook Library and Tumblereadables. Tumblebook Library offers talking and animated picture books online. Tumblebooks are books with added audio, animation, sound and narration that makes reading more fun for early readers. Tumblereadables offers students the chance to read along with a narrator, highlighting the sentences as they're being read. This helps build reading confidence and skills.
Starfall's Learn to Read with Phonics. Starfall offers 4 selections to help kids with reading in preschool, kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and English language development (ELD, ELL, ESL)
1. ABC's
2. Learn to Read
3. It's Fun to Read
4. I'm Reading
Each offers reading for different skill levels.
General K-8 recommendations:
Funbrain.com - Price: Free!
www.funbrain.com
Math Games - This part of the site will take you to a game board where you chose your gender and grade level. The challenge is to get through all 25 games. If you lose a game in the middle of the game board, it will give you a password to use when you return. This is key so that kids don't have to replay every single game, just be sure they write it down! In this game your kids will be able to practice their math skills while playing a game that is fun and engaging.
Reading - Click on the reading section and then on "mad libs". The game will prompt you to choose verbs, nouns or adjectives to create a hilarious mad lib. When you are finished choosing your words, it will pop out a printable mad lib. Print it out and ask your child to read it. Of course this promotes reading skills and helps kids recognize the difference between nouns, verbs and adjective. This part of the site is also very colorful and animated.
Educational Website for Kids in Grades 4-7:
Discovery Kids - Price: Free!
http://kids.discovery.com/
Chomp - This is an excellent game with a fun theme that requires you to make your way through a temple. This game helps kids with work recognition and patterns, spatial concepts, math & deduction skills.
Yucky - It is not a secret that kids like gross things. Well, click on this part of the site and you will be led to barfing, belching and blackheads. You can choose to play games in this area or you can simply read facts about all things yucky. Although disgusting, it does teach kids about science and that includes human biology.
Math recommendations: (repeated from two weeks ago)
- Remember that current 3-5th graders' have subscriptions to ALEKS that go through the summer.
(Workbook Each book covers only one level,$20 per book)
www.ixl.com
(Singapore Math-aligned web-based tutoring subscription: monthly $9.95, year-long $79.95)
www.dreamboxlearning.com(Common Core State Standards-aligned, adapts the problems presented based on student responses given, multiple levels available. Has a free trial, then monthly $12.95 or 6 mos. $59.95)
Of course there are lots of opportunities to reinforce math skills as you play traditional board or card games with your child. Uno, War, Yahtzee, Monopoly offer opportunities to reinforce counting, sequencing and calculation skills. Trips to the store offer all sorts of wonderful problem-solving and mathematical discussions. Road trips can be times for reading, playing counting and observations games. Parents just need to set up the opportunities and be involved.
With a little bit of thought and advanced effort, summer slide can be avoided, and your children can have fun at the same time!
There are new blog posts for Preschool 4, Lower School Strings, Kindergarten and 3rd - 5th Grade Spanish.
Snapshots from around the Lower School
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| Don Quixote visited with the fifth grade Spanish students - in Spanish! |
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| Fifth graders visited the Middle School Experimental Design Fair |
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| The Lower School Choir sings for parents. |
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| Lower School String Ensemble playing for their parents. |
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| 8th graders read to kindergartners and preschool students during their Day of Service. |
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| Fifth graders hard a work! |
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| Fifth grader, Nick A's, art work |
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| Preschool 4 student put on a performance of "The Three Little Pigs" for their parents. |
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| The fifth graders in the Lower School Choir sing a medley from the 60s songs written by D-E alum Leslie Gore. |
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| Two of the 14 Lower School students whose parents are alumni with Dr. De Jarnett at the "Legacy Lunch" at his house. |
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