Parent’s Guide to Summer Vacation

Available Year Round

Handicap Accessible

Provide parents with an informative, hands-on training that will assist in research based ideas, activities, and resources that can be used during summer vacation.

Students’ minds need to be engaged throughout the summer in order to retain what has been learned the previous school year. Parents must take an active part in keeping students’ minds engaged.

 

 

-Determine what we normally do during our student’s summer vacation.

 

-What can I do to keep my child socially and academically engaged during the summer? 
    >Resources Available for Parents
    >Tasks Parents Should require
    >Learning at Home (Hands On) 
    >Teaching Safari will provide a vendor table with materials and activities that participants can purchase today

 

-What if my child must attend summer school or will be repeating a grade based on their academic record?

 

Instructor will provide four (4) hours of training for teachers and parents over one half day of instruction. All participants will receive course workbooks. Participants will be provided with guides for future reference.

Research on Summer Learning Loss

The following information comes from Making the Most of Summer: A Handbook on Effective Summer Programming and Thematic Learning, published in 2006 by the Center for Summer Learning at Johns Hopkins University. Reprinted with permission from the Center for Summer Learning.

-2006 marked the 100th anniversary of the first known research on summer vacation’s impact on learning. In 1906, William White discovered that students’ math computation skills deteriorated in both speed and accuracy after a break from regular practice and instruction.

-White’s discovery has since been confirmed by at least 39 additional studies showing that children are at significant risk of summer learning loss or summer slide.

-Children experience learning loss when they do not engage in academic activities over the summer. (Cooper, 1996)

-Nearly all children lose about three months of math computation skills over the summer. (Cooper, 1996)

-Children from low-income families lose over 2 months of reading achievement over the summer. Children from higher-income families make slight gains in reading achievement during the summer. (Cooper, 1996)

-Summer learning loss is not the only negative impact of summer vacation. 

  

    >In the summer, children’s habits are less healthy than during the school year. In fact, children who are overweight tend to gain more weight over the summer. (Downey, Von Hippel, Powell, Rowland, 2005)

 

    >Research shows that young people who are not supervised when they are not in school are more likely to:

        +Experiment with and become addicted to alcohol, drugs, and tobacco 
        +Commit criminal and other high-risk behaviors 
        +Make poor grades 
        +Drop out of school 
        +Become victims of violent crime

(Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, 2005)

References

Cooper, H., Nye, B., Charlton, K., Lindsay, J., & Greathouse, S. (1996). The effects of summer vacation on achievement test scores: A narrative and meta-analytic review. Review of Educational Research, 66, 227-268.

Downey, D.B., Von Hippel, P.T, Powell, B, & Rowland, N.J.; (2006) Changes in Children’s Body Mass Index (BMI) During School and Summer.

Newman, S. A., Fox, J. A., Flynn, E. A., & Christeson, W. (2000). America’s After-School Choice: The Prime Time for Juvenile Crime, Or Youth Enrichment and Achievement. A Report from Fight Crime: Invest in Kids.