What is the summer slide? This is not the slide at the park, where most kids will be this summer. Instead, this is a real thing. It is where students tend to fall behind from their academics while not being in a school setting. I have seen this first hand. My kinder babies who have worked so hard to be on grade level all year long, go home for the summer and slip a reading level or more. Before becoming a teacher, I didn’t realize this was a thing. I assumed that whatever a student learned carried over with them to the following grade. This is not the case.

As a teacher it is important to have conversations with your parents about this topic. I have already sent out, in my weekly newsletter charts showing this to parents. There are several ways you can keep parents involved through the summer. It may be more work on the teacher, but overall it is all about the kids and the progress that they continue to make towards their success.

Here are some ideas to help students avoid/reduce the summer slide:

1. Connecting parents with the public library
2. Advocating that your school library remain open (certain days)
3. Start a reading challenge with your students (offer prizes/candy for when they return to school). You can use the Bloomz App to give shout outs to those students who are completing the challenges each week or month
4. Using the Bloomz App, message out fun games or scavenger hunts each week
5. Send out weekly/biweekly videos on yourself reading favorite books to the students asking them “thinking questions”
6. Allow parents to put in a “Summer reading” Scholastic book order (These can now be shipped to their homes)
7. Create a Summer Take Home kit for each student
8. Give parents ideas on what websites/apps are best for their grade
   (For kinder, I suggest Starfall and GetEpic)

These are just a few ideas. Although I mainly focused on reading activities you can also do most of these for math too. At my school, we asked to purchase a set of mini dominoes, 2 dice, foam counters, and a spinner for each kindergartener for a “Math Take Home Kit”. During the summer I will continue to email out ideas where the parents and students can utilize these kits.

Do you have any ideas to share? Add them in the comments below.

• Photo by Sylvia Szekely on Unsplash