UPDATED May 30th, 2018
Ready to put a new spin on summer school ideas and attitudes? In movies, the second the bell rings kids start throwing their worksheets in the air, screaming “school’s out for summer!” and running around like maniacs without a care in the world. In reality, a lot of kids aren’t going to get much of a summer break, as they’ll be suffering through the dreaded summer school. And if your kid is one of those summer students, you’ll need to be prepared to talk about it and to help them endure their classes while the rest of their friends kick back and relax.
While summer school may seem like a rare occurrence—some reports show that only about 10% of students in the country will attend summer school, those numbers are actually on the rise. A recent article by ABC News stated that “New York is expecting 32 percent of all its public school students to attend its summer classes…and in Chicago, 46 percent will be enrolled in school.” In short, your kids are not alone. And while they might think that their friends (who are free from homework) are the lucky ones, your child may actually end up on top.
Studies show that during the summer months when school is not in session kids can lose a lot of what they spent months learning in the academic year. Research has shown that “students typically score lower on standardized tests at the end of summer vacation than they do on the same tests at the beginning of the summer.” So how much information is lost? Typically students “lose about two months of grade-level equivalency in mathematical computation skills over the summer months.” That’s a lot of lesson plans, worksheets, group projects and homework to completely forget about for the sake of some fun in the sun. As USA Today reports, Jennifer Dresmich, a middle school teacher in Pittsburgh, explains that she “had to reteach quite a bit before [she] could even get started into the new curriculum … and we don’t have time to reteach all the skills they had lost.” While summer vacation can be a dream, it can also be a big problem. The best summer school ideas start with changing one’s attitude.
