July
Summer Learning Newsletter
Download our summer learning newsletter—it’s packed with tips to help your family make the most out of the summer vacation!
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Five Myths About Summer & Learning
Myth 1: Kids need the summer off to recharge.
While the school year can be tiring and mentally demanding, kids actually thrive with the daily routine and framework that the school year provides. A break from the school-year routine can be invigorating for a short period of time, but a too-long break (ie: summer) doesn’t help students feel recharged: it leads to boredom.
Without replacing the school day structure with summer camps or other programs, children can become bored very easily. Video games, texting, movies, and lounging by the pool are fun, but there is only so much relaxation and downtime that kids can deal with before they get tired of that, too. And boredom is rarely a pre-cursor to a willingness to jump back into learning.
Providing mentally stimulating summer activities that are reliable and routine is the best way to avoid summer boredom and keep kids charged up and ready to take on a new school year.
Myth 2: If summer was not intended to be a break, school wouldn’t shut down.
The most common school year as we know it—from September to June—exists because of two main historic reasons: At the turn of the last century, agricultural societies required children to help out with farming chores during busy growing seasons and, in cities, schools were unbearably hot during summer and made teaching and learning in poorly-ventilated buildings a health hazard. The current 180-day school calendar is still in place, even if the reasons for it are no longer valid.
In fact, many school boards have made the move to year-round schooling, offering several shorter break periods throughout the year, rather than one long one in the summer.
School boards don’t intend summer to be a “break” for students—policy makers are simply continuing to follow a system that has been in place for many years, and, coincidentally, one that has come to be beneficial to cash-strapped school boards.
Read more about the history of the school year.
Myth 3: Summer isn’t part of the school year.
Summer is just as important to a student’s overall learning experience as what is learned from September to June. In terms of the brain, learning runs 24-7, all year round.
The time away from school is a very important opportunity for many students to fill in learning gaps, make sense of material learning during the school year, and improve/develop important learning skills such as reading comprehension and organization. It’s the time to get extra help that there may not be chance to get while school is in session. It’s the chance to experience in-class lessons first hand. And, it’s the only chance that students have to adequately prepare for the year ahead.
It’s time to stop thinking about the school year as September to June: there is no final bell on a student’s education.
Myth 4: Summer school is for students who get bad grades.
While summer school may have at one time been reserved for those students needing extra help, that is no longer the case. From Calgary to Chicago, reports are showing that summer school attendance is on the rise, and it’s not because students are performing poorly throughout the school year. Students looking to get ahead, to tackle extra credits, and get a competitive advantage by signing themselves up for summer school.
New Trend Alert! With education becoming increasingly competitive, and increasingly global, summer is the perfect time for students to pull ahead. Without having to balance the workload of the regular school year, students can make impressive academic gains and reduce school- year stress. We foresee a rise in summer school popularity. It’s time to get over summer school misconceptions and get ahead.
Myth 5: Summer will makes students refreshed and ready to learn in the fall.
This is the scariest myth about summer learning. After a summer spent relaxing, students may feel refreshed, but they are far from ready to learn. Research into summer learning has shown that after taking a two-month break, students have lost approximately 20-30 % of their academic learning momentum: they’ve gone backward in terms of learning. These studies also show that teachers typically spend up to six weeks re-teaching last year’s material. Students aren’t ready to learn after a summer off: they’ve lost their learning momentum after two months of video games and relaxing at the beach. The summer slide, the brain drain, or summer learning losses—whatever you call it, it can be easily prevented. A few hours a week of active academic style learning keeps the brain sharp, so that when falls rolls around, students actually are ready to learn.
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Slides Fun for Summer Games, Bad for Summer Learning
Ah, Summer! For many students, summer is the perfect time to chill out and relax.
It’s the perfect time to catch up with friends.
It’s the perfect time to lounge by the pool and hit the beach.
It’s also the perfect time to develop bad habits, to get off track, and to lose academic standing.
In summer, one of two things can happen to the average student:
- They can lose learning momentum, fall behind, and end up starting the new school year at a disadvantage.
- They can catch up in trouble areas, and get a head start on the new school year.
Enter summer learning. Summer learning is not a new concept, but it is becoming increasingly important. Education is becoming more competitive. Students don’t have time to slack off…not even for a couple of months.
Summer school is no longer a punishment for under-performing students; it’s an opportunity for students to improve their learning abilities and get a jump on their classmates. In fact, statistics show that summer school enrollment is up—and not just for students who need extra help: students looking to get ahead and make the upcoming school year easier are choosing summer school in lieu of traditionally popular summer activities.
While there are many ways to keep the brain active during the summer,(see the ABCs of Summer Learning) the best way to avoid the summer learning slide is to engage in some type of formal academic learning all summer long.
After all, the brain never stops learning, so why should students?
In terms of a child’s education, summer is just as important as the rest of school year. Oxford Learning has many great summer programs available to help students avoid the summer learning slide. Contact your local Oxford Learning centre for more information.
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Oxford Learning and FC London
Oxford Learning is a very proud sponsor of the Forest City London soccer team. GO FC!
Photo Credit: Cam Vassallo
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Why Phonics Builds Better Readers
Your three-year old daughter has memorized all the words to her favourite bedtime story.
Your three-year son plays with the refrigerator magnets and asks you to name the letters for him.
It’s time to teach your child to read.
The first step is to take a trip to the library to pick out books together; it’s an important part of the reading process—it helps kids feel a sense of ownership and an excitement to read. But more important than selecting what books to read is the method used to teach a child how to read.
That’s because of the two main reading instruction methods—whole language and phonics—only phonics teaches children how to become active thinkers as they begin the process of understanding written language.
Infants first hear language by listening to their parents. They hear sounds, learn to distinguish the differences between these sounds, and then learn to blend these sounds together. Once that skill is mastered, children begin to understand what the individually blended sounds (words) stand for.
Once children can speak, the next step is to learn the alphabet. The building blocks of words are letters, and there are only 26 of them.
Phonics, as an instruction method, uses the same structure that children have already been using to comprehend language: it breaks words down into their component sounds. To kids, this makes sense, because they have learned language using the same structure.
On the other side of early language instruction, the “whole language” method teaches that words themselves—not letters—are the building blocks of the language.
This approach can be confusing for young children because it isn’t intuitive—it’s just memorization. Can you imagine having to memorize by sight every single word in the English language?
The whole language method encourages a number of practices that can be detrimental to future learning. It encourages and rewards memorization, as well as estimation—if you don’t know the word, guess. Phonics, on the other hand, teaches that there is precision and a logical flow to understanding how things work. It teaches that persistence leads to understanding.
Not only does the phonetic method of language acquisition lead to stronger reading skills, it leads to better thinking and learning abilities. It teaches kids to have confidence in their abilities. This pays dividends in the classroom.
When it comes to reading, the best way to ensure that young readers don’t get frustrated is to sound it out.
For over 25 years, Oxford Learning’s Little Readers® program has been using the phonetic method of language acquisition to help young readers develop the skills that they need to be strong readers for life.
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