Be Happily "U"

Halfway through summer. A time for fun in the sun, endless days of play, and vacations galore. The only downside to summer vacation is the possibility of summer learning loss. A nonacademic summer can cause students to digress two to three months academically without some form of learning over the break. Allotting between thirty minutes to an hour daily can help close learning gaps and a higher level learning performance during the upcoming school year. Although summer is a time to relax, summer is the perfect time to strengthen their skills. Who said learning can’t include summer fun? Making Time for Learning Set aside time for your student to read each day during the summer break 15 to 30 minutes per day is all it takes! During the summer, students have more time to read for enjoyment, which also offers a great opportunity to preserve and strengthen their reading skills. Your summer activities should include taking your child to the public library. Visiting the library can also provide opportunities for fun and increase student interest in certain topics. A great way to track how much reading your child is doing during the summer months is a tally on your regular activities calendar. This will help keep the daily reading time from being overlooked because of other summer activities. Parents of students reading below grade level should read with their children in order to assist with sounding out words they might not be able to decode themselves. In addition, keep a dictionary or online source close by to help students figure out those words by using the phonetic spelling provided. Develop Math Skills Though it may not seem fun to them at the time, working on just three to four math problems per day during the summer can prevent students' mathematical skills from getting rusty. Working on just a few problems daily can help students of all ages close the gaps in their math skills, preserve what they learned during the previous school year, and prepare for the upcoming year. Improve Reading Comprehension To help your children better understand what they're reading, consider offering them a reading comprehension workbook to work on several minutes daily. These can be found at teacher supply stores or many online outlets. Students of all grades and ability levels can benefit scholastically by working with material that offers self-quizzes and high-interest stories. This practice helps develop their fact-retaining and inference-making skills. Encourage Creative Writing Creative writing is a great way to improve your children's written language skills while giving them a fun and imaginative activity during the summer! Have your student write a creative paragraph each week. As a parent, you can help by assisting him or her with choosing a topic to write a paragraph about. Students can also benefit from using a thesaurus and changing several common words to more interesting words. This will make their writing more interesting while learning great new words at the same time. Summer Camp Another easy way to make the summer both fun and intellectually productive is to sign kids up for summer camp. Although in many locations across the U.S. it may be too late to hop on a full session for summer, there is still plenty of time to enjoy half of the season or more. Most children have already signed up for some sort of camp this summer involving sports, dance, or exploring other new skills. But there are many great camps that will not only provide a fun way to keep your children busy for a week but keep their minds busy as well. Over the summer, students and parents who practice the above tips can see great improvement in scholastic skills, and avoid digressing two to three months in learning. Summer learning can be fun and challenging at the same time. By implementing a summer plan and igniting your child's passion for learning, the learning gap can be closed. ~Mr. T

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