How to Prevent Students From Falling Behind

Yay! School’s out…time for a break! But should we be taking a break from learning?

I recently read a book called Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. A portion of the book is devoted to looking at summer vacation in relation to education and why students fall behind.

In Baltimore, the city decided to give a group of 650 low, middle, and high-income first graders the California Achievement Test at the end of every school year and just after summer break ended. By analyzing the tests at the end of the school year and the end of summer break the scientist, Alexander Karl, could see how much a student learned over the school year and then how much was learned during the summer. He discovered that low-income students were out learning the wealthier children during the school year, and lagged behind the middle-class students by just a little bit. However, when Karl looked at the end of summer test scores he discovered that lower-income students fall far behind higher-income students because typically, no learning is occurring during summer for the lower-income students. This is called the “summer slide.”

This case study is not saying that your child will be smarter if you are wealthy or doomed if you are not wealthy. I shared this study with you to explain that the advantage that the “smarter” students had over the other students is that they kept learning. School was out, but they continued to read and practice their math skills and explore their world.

The summer slide doesn’t have to be an issue, no matter your socioeconomic status if you don’t want it to be. It’s up to us to decide if we will help our children continue learning during the summer. I do believe that our brains need rest and relaxation, but two months without stimulation isn’t good for the brain either. Summer time is your opportunity to learn the way you and your child want! You don’t have to have a full 7-hour school day planned for your child, instead, learn through experiences. Even if you don’t have a ton of money you can read books together, do difficult puzzles together, go to a museum, do experiments, go to the library and even reinforce the math skills they learned the previous school year so that there are no gaps in the upcoming grade. Just choose to keep those brains active; don't let them lose all the knowledge they gained in preschool or school during the summer. Or you can prepare them for the adventure that's in store for them in the upcoming school year. Check out my books that provide a fun way of activating the brain.