When students leave classrooms for summer vacation, minds wander from books to barbecues, pencils to pools, standardized tests to being stressed less.
That shift in attention contributes to summer learning loss, a challenge for educators who will have to teach new material to students when the next school year begins.
Florida State University faculty are available to provide more context on this phenomenon and how to mitigate its effects.
Matt Cooper Borkenhagen, Assistant Professor, School of Teacher Education
mcb@fcrr.org, (850) 644-8416
Borkenhagen’s research focus is learning mechanisms that underlie reading development and how aspects of the language (including print) environment can serve to accelerate development.
“Summer comes with sustained downtime and increases in high-preference activities that are mostly non-academic. This comes at the cost of maintaining the knowledge and routines that support student success in academic activities during the school year. Consistent reading routines throughout the summer can help to combat this shift during these months. These can be organized around group reading as a family as well as end-of-the-day reading for your kids after dinner or before bed. Helping your kids identify desirable reading materials will make these routines more sustainable. Trips to the local library are a great inexpensive way to give children access to books and other literacy materials they love and can seek out during reading time at home. By building in daily reading activities, you will promote knowledge building, self-regulation, and positive sleep habits, especially if built around a bedtime schedule.
Carla Wood, Professor, Director, School of Communication Science and Disorders
carla.wood@cci.fsu.edu, (850) 645-6567
Wood’s research interests include bilingual language and literacy, early intervention for English language learners, family and child outcomes of early hearing detection and intervention, efficacy of augmentative and alternative communication strategies with young children and bilingual assessment. Her goal is to improve language and literacy outcomes for children from diverse backgrounds, including children with differing abilities as well as children from diverse socioeconomic, cultural and linguistic backgrounds.
“Engaging elementary students in learning activities during the summer is crucial to prevent the “summer slide,” a decline in academic skills that can occur when students are out of school and there is a dearth of learning. Providing word meanings and pointing out the meanings of word parts (prefixes and suffixes) over the summer can help build vocabulary knowledge and skills to counteract summer slides and continue academic progress. Our research on the MAP-R (Morphological Analysis Pathway to Reading) project includes a summer enrichment program to create experiences to enhance students’ word knowledge and reading comprehension. Through active engagement in language learning activities over the summer, students can strengthen their reading and writing skills to prepare them for the upcoming school year.”