Smart Ways to Spend the Summer: Keep Kids off the “The Summer Slide”
Third grade teacher Alyssa Call got a bit of a shock when she returned to her classroom in the fall and saw the test scores of her students. She had taught several of the children the year before, as a second-grade teacher, and she knew their scores had fallen considerably after taking nearly three months off for summer vacation. It’s a phenomenon so well known that teachers across the nation refer to it as the “Summer Slide.”
“It’s just kind of accepted in the teaching world,” says Call. “Most of us know the students are going to come back in the fall, and they’re not going to be at the level they were when they left in the spring, but it’s still sometimes shocking when you look at their test scores and see just how far they’ve fallen. The first month of school is usually spent refreshing what they should have remembered.”
Studies confirm what Call and other teachers see in millions of American school kids each fall:
- The average student loses approximately 2.6 months of grade-level equivalency in mathematical computation skills over the summer months. (Research compiled for an Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Conference report.)
- Teachers typically spend four weeks reteaching or reviewing material that students have forgotten over summer break, according to John Hopkins Center for Summer Learning.
- Research shows ALL young people experience learning losses when they don’t engage in educational activities during the summer.
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” says Dr. Ken Gibson, author of Unlock the Einstein Inside: Applying New Brain Science to Wake up the Smart in Your Child (www.unlocktheeinsteininside.com). To avoid the Summer Slide, Gibson recommends brain games and exercises that target cognitive skills, the underlying skills needed to learn.
Thirteen-year-old Tyler Walner knows the power of targeting those cognitive skills. He was labeled “special needs” and tried more than a dozen reading programs before he took an intensive brain training course at LearningRx (www.learningrx.com). His family says they saw life-changing improvements.
“Before the training, I would sit right beside him for at least three hours a night making sure he did his homework,” says his mom, Marti Walner. “Now, he does it all on his own!”
One way to target weak mental skills quickly and effectively is through an intensive LearningRx brain training program, says Tanya Mitchell, Chief Research & Development Officer for LearningRx. “With our intense game-like exercises we work on brain skills like logic & reasoning, attention, memory, processing speed, and visual and auditory processing. But, to help prevent the summer slide, parents and kids can use free, fun games and exercises at home, in the car, and even online.”
Simply getting your child to read every day is another powerful way to slow the Summer Slide. According to Scholastic Parents Online, research shows that reading just six books during the summer can keep a struggling reader from regressing. When choosing the six, make sure they’re the right level—not too hard and not too easy.
About LearningRx
LearningRx, headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado, is the largest one-on-one brain training organization in the world. With 80 Centers in the U.S., and locations in 45 countries around the globe, LearningRx has helped more than 100,000 individuals and families sharpen their cognitive skills to help them think faster, learn easier, and perform better. Their on-site programs partner every client with a personal brain trainer to keep clients engaged, accountable, and on-task—a key advantage over online-only brain exercises. Their pioneering methods have been used in clinical settings for over 35 years and have been verified as beneficial in peer-reviewed research papers and journals. To learn more about LearningRx research results, programs, and their 9.6 out of 10 client referral rating visit
http://www.learningrx.com/.