Preventing the Summer Slide

Summer is a great time for students to relax and enjoy not having to focus on schoolwork five days a week for six to eight hours. However, this break can also cause students to forget some of the information they learned during the school year. It is crucial for students to keep up with what they worked on all year long.

First and foremost, students need to be reading every day. I cannot stress this enough—every day. After reading, I always love having students write a sticky note summary. For a sticky note summary, a child writes one or two sentences to state what happened in the chapter. Here, we are looking for the big idea, not every little detail.

For writing, I like to have my kids keep a journal. At the end of each day, they write 5-8 sentences about their day and check their work with CUPS. (Read my post about editing to learn more about CUPS.)

In math, I have my kids work on their math fluency each day through a game. (Read my post about math fact fluency to find out what games your child might enjoy!)