When the final bell rings at the end of the school year, students celebrate three months without classes. However, it seems students’ brain cells don’t do as much celebrating about the learning lost during the summer months.
Summer learning loss has long been documented as a hardship of American education, going back to at least the 1970s. While it allows for vacations, sports programs, large events like county and state fairs and a general break from classrooms, the summer break also creates a barrier to building consistent math and reading skills.
Elizabeth Hoksbergen, the executive director of instruction services at Apples of Gold Center for Learning said the amount of exercise, sleep, nutrition and hydration many K-12 students receive is often adequate, and a break from screen time is important as well. However, she also said research shows students who take breaks completely for about three months tend to suffer academically, so balance is also essential.
“Reading skills are built on language skills,” Hoksbergen said. “And thorough math skills involve being able to show your work and really build a strong core before moving higher.”
Hoksbergen said research shows a student loses 2.6 months of math loss over the summer, and about two months of reading loss for children from low socio-economic households or who have learning disabilities. Children from families in higher income brackets tend to have proactive support for summer reading, she said.
It takes about six weeks each fall for teachers to re-teach some of those skills fall, she said.
“It takes two to three hours of work per week in the summer to prevent any learning loss,” Hoksbergen said. “Physical fitness paves the way for good learning, but without engaging in direct learning activities, that paving does not help reading and math skills.”
The National Summer Learning Association praises state programs in Connecticut, Minnesota and South Carolina that encourage summer reading, and praises progress-report programs in Colorado and Virginia, along with Iowa’s third-grade reading proficiency model.
However, an NSLA study shows only 14 states mention at least one best summer learning practice, with the average number of practices mentioned at 2.2.
Hoksbergen said students who have experienced learning loss by the end of their sixth-grade year will be about two years behind their peers. This is a common issue among socio-economic challenged families, she said.
The solutions can come from the type of intensive assessment and two-month intervention program performed by Apples of Gold, she said. Intervention and specialized education addresses the real roots of a student’s difficulties, Hoksbergen said.
However, the biggest key is parents and students must be willing to work hard and get back to basics.
“Putting pencil to paper is much more intellectually stimulating than screen time,” Hoksbergen said. “The connected movement to cursive writing is even better; it’s like brain therapy.”
Building reading and math skills is very much an interactive, one-on-one, individualized process, she said.
“It’s about teaching a child how to think,” she said.
Contact Jason W. Brooks at
641-792-3121 ext. 6532 or
jbrooks@newtondailynews.com