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When you think of how you want to spend your summer vacation, sitting in a classroom is probably not the first thing that comes to mind. However, summer school can be a great way for you to get ahead in high school and give yourself an advantage in college admissions.

These days students with all kinds of grades take summer classes. You might take summer school to understand a particular subject better, to free up more time in your schedule during the school year, or to take an advanced class at your high school, nearby college, or online.

Read this complete guide on summer school for high school students to learn everything you need to know about what summer school is, why people take it, and how you can use it to get ahead.

What Is Summer School?

You probably know that summer school refers to classes that students take during the summer, outside of the regular academic school year. However, more specifically, summer school for high school students can be a lot of different things: It can be a way for you to retake a class you found difficult, take specialized courses in areas that interest you, get a head-start on prerequisites and college classes, and more.

Summer school can be classes done through your high school, at a community college or local university, or through a program that includes classes, such as a summer camp.

Online summer school, where students take classes primarily on a computer at home, is becoming more popular. Many of these classes require students to visit the school once or twice to take exams or turn in final projects, but some classes are also offered completely online. Online classes may be offered through your high school, a college or university, or through a specialized online high school program.

Why Do Students Take Summer School?

Reason 1: to improve their grades.

Historically, the most common reason that people took summer school was that they needed to improve their grades in one or more classes.

There are still many students who take summer school for this reason, and many of them find it easier to earn better grades during the summer because summer school often has smaller classes, more one-on-one interaction with the teacher, and fewer distractions, such as other classes, school sports, or clubs to worry about.

Reason 2: To Take Specialized Classes

Sometimes, students will also take summer school classes in order to take a certain class they wouldn't be able to enroll in during the school year. This could be a class they don't have room in their schedule for or a specialized class, such as a course on a specific subject or an intensive foreign language course. Some schools also offer short certificate programs over the summer. These can cover a variety of topics, such as entrepreneurship, computer science, and more.

Sometimes schools offer classes during the summer that they don't normally offer during the school year. You will likely have an even wider variety of summer school class options if you look at classes at community colleges or online . Taking a specialized class can allow you to learn more about a topic you're interested in and help you gain new skills and knowledge.

Reason 3: To Prepare For College

Summer school can also help you get a head start on the rest of your education, including college.

Some students take summer school as a way to get prerequisites out of the way so that they can take more advanced classes during the school year. At my high school, every student was required to take a basic typing class before they graduated, and many students took this class over the summer because it wasn't very challenging and could be taken online. This gave us an extra space in our schedule to fill with an elective we wanted to take.

You can also take community college classes over the summer, which you may be able to get high school or college credit for. These classes can help you get more used to what college classes will be like so that you feel more prepared and confident once you start college. Having college classes, even introductory classes from a community college, will also strengthen your college applications because it will show schools that you can handle the rigor of a college course.

How Can You Do Well in Summer School?

Whatever the reason you're taking summer school classes, it's important that you do well in them. They're using up some of your important summer time, and you want to make sure you don't waste that time by doing poorly in the classes. Summer school classes are a bit different from classes taken during the school year, and there are a few strategies you can use to maximize your chances of success.

Tip 1: Take Fewer Classes at a Time

Unless you absolutely need to take multiple classes in order to graduate, it's a good idea to only take 1-2 classes at a time during summer school. Summer school classes are often shorter than regular classes (often 6-8 weeks long, compared to a whole semester), so they are usually more intensive and require a greater time commitment.

Taken fewer classes is especially important if you are retaking a particular class because you'll be able to be able to focus more of your time and energy on getting a higher grade this time around if you don't have other classes to worry about.

Tip 2: Create a Study Schedule

Taking summer classes can be hard. There are probably a lot of things you'd rather be doing like seeing your friends, being outside, playing sports, etc., and it can be easy to get distracted.

Either before or right after you start summer school, create a study schedule that lets you plan when you will put aside time to study and do homework. If you can set aside the same time every day, like 4:00-5:30pm every afternoon, that can make it easier to stick to your study schedule and plan other activities. Set goals for what you want to accomplish each day or week, whether it's a project you need to complete, papers to read, or just general studying and homework.

On the other hand, make sure you are giving yourself enough time to take a break and relax. Summer school can be demanding, and if you overtax yourself, you may end up burned out by the time the school year starts, which you don't want to do because it could cause your other grades to suffer. If you need help creating your study schedule, ask a parent or teacher for some guidance.

Tip 3: Ask For Help Early

Summer school classes are often smaller than regular classes, and this means you'll have more interaction with the teacher.

Use this to your advantage by asking for help early if something confuses you or doesn't make sense. Particularly if you are retaking a class you struggled in before, you want to make sure you don't repeat the same mistakes you did the first time. Teachers are happy to help students who ask, and they won't think any questions you ask are dumb, so don't be afraid to let them know you need something explained more or in a different way.

If you've already taken the class before and know which areas you struggled in, you may want to tell this to your teacher early on so they can prepare you for the topic better and possibly give you some additional material to look over to make sure you understand the subject.

Asking a teacher for extra help as soon as you don't understand the material can help you keep your grades up in summer school.

Should You Take Summer School?

If you're wondering whether or not to take summer school, ask yourself the following three questions. If any of the scenarios apply to you, then you may want to consider summer classes. For each scenario, the best way to take these summer classes is also mentioned so you can be sure you get the benefits you want out of summer school.

Question 1: Do You Want, or Need, to Improve Your Grades?

Is there an especially low grade on your transcript that you wish you could erase? If you did poorly in a certain class, summer school is a great way to redeem yourself and retake the class for (hopefully!) a better grade.

Even just one especially low grade, such as a D or F, can really bring down your GPA and hurt your chances of getting into competitive colleges. Even if the class shows up as a retake on your transcript, if you got a good grade in it the second time around, that will look much better than having a very low grade.

Best option: If this is the case for you, you will probably take your summer school classes through your high school in order to improve your grade in a particular class.

Question 2: Are There Specific Classes You're Interested in Taking?

Is there a class you'd like to take that is only offered in the summer or you don't have time to take during the school year? Summer school could be a way to fit it into your schedule. You could get creative here and take a class in photography, wilderness skills, a foreign language, or a different interest you have. Summer school doesn't have to be boring!

Best option: Depending on which classes you're interested in, you can take them through your high school, at a community college, at a summer program, or online. Talk to your academic adviser if you're not sure which classes to take and want to know what your options are. If you take classes at a place other than your high school, make sure you understand exactly if and how you will receive credit for them.

Question 3: Do You Want to Get Ahead on Classes?

Are you trying to get prerequisites out of the way or want to take advanced classes to improve your chances of getting into a competitive college? If so, taking summer classes can be a way for you to have more space in your schedule for other classes, strengthen your transcript, and be more prepared for college.

Best option: If you're trying to take some prerequisites over the summer, you'll probably take them through your high school because courses through other schools may not meet the prereq requirements. If you want to take classes to prepare you for college, you will likely take these at a community college or nearby university. You may also be able to take advanced summer classes through your high school.

Should You Do Online Summer School?

Online summer school for high school students is becoming more and more popular, and it's easy to see why. Online classes often allow you to do schoolwork on your own schedule and reduce the time and hassle of traveling to class. However, is online summer school a good idea for everyone?

Online classes can have several drawbacks including the following:

• Less direct interaction with the instructor
• Requires more self-motivation
• Can be more challenging to understand

If you're trying to decide whether or not to take summer school online, you should talk to people who know your study habits, such as teachers and parents, to help make the best decision. However, in general, you shouldn't take online summer school classes if you struggle to motivate yourself to study and complete work on time, or if you struggled with the class before and want more guidance from and interaction with the instructor. Both of these issues can be exacerbated with online classes.

You should also base your decision on how difficult you expect the class to be. For a relatively easy class, you need to take as a basic graduation requirement, such as typing or health, online classes will likely cause you fewer problems than if you were taking a more challenging course. Because the class you're taking isn't that difficult, you'll be able to handle the issues that online classes can sometimes create, and you'll be able to easily get the class out of the way and focus on tougher classes during the school year.

• There are many reasons for students take summer school, whether it's to improve their grades, take a certain class they couldn't take during the school year, or become more prepared for college.
• Summer school can be taken through your high school, at a community or local college, or through a company or organization that offers summer classes. Most summer classes are in-person, but online classes are becoming more popular.
• You don't want to waste your summer taking a class you end up not doing well in. In order to make sure you get good grades in summer school you should limit the number of classes you take, create a study schedule, and ask for help early on if you don't understand the material.
• If you're not sure whether you should take summer school or you don't know what classes to take, talk to a teacher, parent, or academic adviser to figure out what the best option for you is.

What's Next?

Want to learn more about online high school? Check out our guide to online high school and learn if it's the right choice for you.

Is there a certain class you want to take, but it isn't offered by your school or doesn't fit into your schedule? You may be able to take an independent study! Read this guide for everything you need to know about independent study classes and how to take one yourself.

Trying to decide whether to take an AP class or a class at a community college? We go over the pros and cons of each to help you make the best decision.

Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points? We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now:

Christine graduated from Michigan State University with degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography and received her Master's from Duke University. In high school she scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and was named a National Merit Finalist. She has taught English and biology in several countries.

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What Summer School Can and Can't Do

• Posted April 22, 2021
• By Jill Anderson
• Disruption and Crises
• Families and Community
• Inequality and Education Gaps
• Informal and Out-of-School Learning
• Student Achievement and Outcomes

Despite talk about using the summer to make up for lost learning time during the pandemic, Catherine Augustine knows a lot more goes into planning a summer school program than meets the eye. As a senior policy researcher at RAND Corporation, she has spent many years studying what makes summer school a success. It’s not as simple as picking a curriculum and offering a program, especially on the heels of COVID.

“[Schools] need to recruit teachers who want to be there, who are motivated to focus on the kids in the summer, who have the right background skills and experiences. That might be particularly challenging this year, if teachers are more stressed and burned out than they typically are,” she says. “Getting the curriculum right for the summer is also a challenge. There aren't a lot of off-the-shelf curricula that districts can purchase for the summer. There are some, but of course a district wants to be sure that the curriculum they use in the summer aligns to their own standards and to those kids' needs.”

In this episode of the EdCast, Augustine shares the many different ways summer school can benefit children and what makes can make a program effective.

TRANSCRIPT:

Jill Anderson: I'm Jill Anderson, this is the Harvard EdCast.

There's been a lot of talk about summer school as a way to make up for lost learning time during COVID. Catherine Augustine wants to remind that summer school isn't magic. She has long studied summer school to better understand what makes these programs effective. Many children benefit academically from summer school programs, and there's many ways to consider how helpful these programs can be. I wanted to know more about what summer school can and can't do. First, Catherine filled me in on what summer school actually looks like today.

Catherine Augustine: Even the old fashioned kind of summer school, which is not in vogue now but the kind that you and I might remember from our childhood, where we were sitting, if we went, in un-air conditioned classrooms, going through academic material by rote memorization, even those worked. Their goal typically tends to be getting kids to advance to the next grade level, that happens after kids go through those types of remedial summer programs even today. Those kinds of programs work. The kind that we studied, which are voluntary summer programs, we also saw that they were effective. Now, the caveat there is that students needed to attend them, because those programs are voluntary, unlike the remedial summer school.

Certainly, there are other kinds of summer programs like career programs for high school students that have amazing outcomes in terms of reductions in crime and graduation from high school and success in the workforce later in life. There are all sorts of summer programs that do work, and so as districts and states are thinking about what to do, they should familiarize themselves with the structure of these programs, which ones work, and for those that do, how exactly they work.

Jill Anderson: Talk to me a little bit about the attendance issue and what can be done to mitigate that.

Catherine Augustine: It depends on how you think about attendance and success. In our study, for example, which was the largest RCT done on summer programs to date, we saw over the course of four years that each summer, about 20% of the kids who enrolled never showed up and those who did attended about 75% of the time. We saw that in order to benefit academically from these programs, they needed to attend at least 20 of the 25 days, and 60% of the kids did that. Then half of those kids came for a second summer. So you tell me, is that a success or is that a failure? Depending on the size of these programs, it's a lot of kids. If you have 60% of the kids attending and then benefit, that's actually not bad when you look at other types of education interventions.

It's not perfect, and when I talk about these rates with other school districts, many of them say, "Oh, we could do better than that," and maybe they can. We saw in the programs we studied that kids attended at higher rates if the programs themselves were what we called warm and welcoming with a positive climate, if kids were greeted at the door and I don't know if this would happen post COVID, but if they were hugged when they arrived, if they were walked with in the transitions between classes, if the teachers ate lunch with them in the classroom. If the kids really felt like they were bonding with adults and with the other students, they tended to come back and they had higher attendance rates than these averages that I just shared with you.

Jill Anderson: That's so interesting. What about incentives to get their kids to come to summer school?

Catherine Augustine: The districts we worked with tried a number of incentives, and you are right, one of the districts gave those incentives to parents. If the kids attended so many days, the parents would get a gift card to a local grocery store. Other districts gave the incentives directly to kids, so if you attended X number of days, you could take a big field trip at the end, like the kids in Jacksonville, Florida got to go to Disney World. Others gave smaller incentives, but for a particular class instead of the individual kids. If everybody attended within a class for four out of the five days or every day in the week, there'd be an ice cream party on Friday.

Now, all three of those types of incentives worked to some degree. The incentive for parents was very expensive and probably not replicable. The smaller incentive for the ice cream parties, that also worked because kids were putting peer pressure on each other to come back and it was a short term benefit that they could foresee actually happening in their near future. I think that districts need to get to know their own kids best and what would work for them and motivate them, but those incentives were not as strong in motivating attendance as was having a positive, warm, and welcoming climate.

Jill Anderson: What are some of the big roadblocks that districts face when they try to put in a summer school program? Catherine Augustine: Well, we recommend planning them quite early. Putting on a summer program is akin to planning an entire school year, but you're just planning it for five weeks, right?

Jill Anderson: Right.

Catherine Augustine: Many districts, particularly large urban districts like we studied, serve thousands of kids in these programs. They need to bus them, they need to hire the teachers, they need to have the curriculum ready, they need to train the teachers in advance, they need to recruit the students. Most districts start that planning in the fall, sometimes as late as January, but if they're just starting now, they might not be able to put on as ambitious of a program for this summer as they otherwise could. Planning early is really important, particularly for larger programs.

We found that if a district is focusing on both math and reading it, for elementary school-aged kids, those are caveats, then the programs should last for at least five weeks. That can be a challenge for districts, because teachers want to have a break after the school year ends, or perhaps a break before they go back. Other things need to happen in the summer in districts, buildings need to be repaired, teachers need to go through training, so finding those five weeks can be a challenge.

They also need to recruit teachers who want to be there, who are motivated to focus on the kids in the summer, who have the right background skills and experiences. That might be particularly challenging this year, if teachers are more stressed and burned out than they typically are. Getting the curriculum right for the summer is also a challenge. There aren't a lot of off-the-shelf curricula that districts can purchase for the summer. There are some, but of course a district wants to be sure that the curriculum they use in the summer aligns to their own standards and to those kids' needs. Figuring out who to invite to the summer program and then how to tailor the curriculum can be a challenge as well.

Jill Anderson: I guess I'm wondering how realistic and feasible it might be to implement some type of summer school program off the cuff at this point. Are schools too late to actually do this?

Catherine Augustine: In all honesty, I think they're probably too late to launch the large multi-subject programs that we studied. But if they had such a program in the past, it's not too late, if they're simply going to repeat something they've offered or revive something they've offered recently. I do think that districts could provide a less ambitious program. It could be reading only combined with reading-related activities, like playwriting or something else that requires reading but is fun for the students. It could be a math/STEM program only, where students are focusing on math but also building something using robotics or doing something else that is also fun and engaging and active. I do think districts can certainly make use of the summer, for sure, but they should probably focus on one subject, unless, like I said, they're skilled at doing this and have done it in the recent past.

Jill Anderson: Does it make sense to mandate summer school for all kids, considering the unique circumstances of COVID, or does it not make sense to do that?

Catherine Augustine: In my opinion, it does not. Other people might disagree and might have good reason to do so. The programs that we studied had 15 or fewer kids per class, and those were the kids whom the district and teachers, principals, identified as really needing this time in the summer, and for lots of different reasons, in addition to perhaps falling behind academically. Teachers told us they were really able to focus on kids in small groups, sometimes one-on-one. Obviously, tutoring is being advocated now, and for good reason, and that happens in programs with smaller class sizes. Mandating summer for all kids is the equivalent of extending the school year, right?

Jill Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Catherine Augustine: That could be beneficial for sure. It's obviously not going to address achievement gaps within a school district. I send my daughter to a public school and she's actually doing well, but so many of her friends and kids she knows are not. There are kids who've not showed up yet at all in the past year, which is a tragedy. Kids who are really struggling if they've been online all year or even in a hybrid situation, so why not take the summer to focus on the kids who need it the most. My daughter wouldn't need it, but other kids in her exact same school would. In my opinion, extending the school year for all is a missed opportunity to focus on the kids who are most disadvantaged.

Jill Anderson: Then making that voluntary for that population of students, would you say?

Catherine Augustine: Here's the challenge with having a mandatory summer program. As I said earlier, they have been shown to work, but they really require a strong stick. In most cases, it's your kids got to go or they're going to be retained in grade. Parents today, if given a choice, don't want their kids to go to a mandatory summer program that the parents see themselves as not having a say in and it brings back memories of awful summer school programs from their past. What parents want is they want a program that is going to advance their kids academically, but also is going to allow them to have fun. Attracting parents by promoting a summer opportunity that does both is, based on our research, the best way to get parents to sign up.

Now, I should remind you that we studied elementary school programs, so I know less about middle school or high school programs, although, most of those programs are not mandatory unless you consider a credit recovery program at the high school level to be mandatory. I would not make the programs mandatory unless there is a really strong stick. If a district has the ability through board policy to retain kids in grade and plans to do that unless they've reached some kind of standard, absolutely, yeah. Make sure parents know about that and that will be a way that they get kids to attend, but in general, I would recommend that the programs be voluntary.

Jill Anderson: Can you tell us a little bit about, or help parents figure out, when summer school might make sense for their kid?

Catherine Augustine: Yeah, absolutely. I get a lot of questions from parents about what they should do with their kids this summer, primarily because of the pandemic. I try to reassure them a little bit by reminding them that everybody had a terrible year, all kids did. I don't think the vast majority of kids learned as much this past year as they would have otherwise, or last spring for that matter. That anxiety is certainly justifiable, but their kids aren't going to be further behind their peers, necessarily. If their kids have done pretty well, all said, during the pandemic compared to their peers, they probably don't need an academic summer program, but it really depends on what the kid's own needs and goals are as well as what the parents want and what their goals are.

I mean, these summer programs that we studied were free, offered by the school districts, provided free transportation on a bus, which takes away a big barrier, provided lunch, breakfast and a snack, provided sports activities, swimming, biking, canoeing, rock climbing, sand volleyball, I could go on and on, as well as the arts. They benefited kids in a lot of ways, not just academically. If a parent needs that, and I hate to say it, I hate to say if a needs childcare because nobody wants to think about an educational opportunity as childcare, but it's the reality for parents of little kids and they need a program that's free, and they not only think their child would benefit academically, but perhaps also socially by being around their friends early on, by bonding with teachers, there's a lot of good reasons to send your own child to a district-offered summer program.

But certainly not every parent should panic. I don't think their child is necessarily going to be worse off just because of the pandemic. Certainly, some children are worse off for an any host of reasons and not just academically, but mentally, socially, emotionally, et cetera, and there are other summer programs that address other needs too. Finding an opportunity for one's child in the summer, the district program might be the best choice, but certainly another choice might be better.

One thing that I like to tell people or remind people is that summer programs are not magic. We did find that they benefited kids academically. Basically, kids learned in the summer program about 15% of what they learned during the school year. Now, should that surprise anyone? No. Because why? Because summer programs are about 15% of the length of the school year. Kids learn in these programs. I mean, yes, they have to attend, and yes, not every child does, but there are kids benefiting from these programs at the same rate basically that they learn during the school year. No one, policymakers, parents, should think they're magical, that a child will attend a summer program and gain three months of learning, but people shouldn't dismiss them either. They are a tool. If there is funding available now that wasn't available in the past, be creative, get kids engaged. There are a lot of exciting things that these district programs were doing and they do benefit kids. They're not magic, but they are beneficial. I think they're a good option along with others, as parents, districts, policymakers are thinking about how to help kids now.

Jill Anderson: Well, thank you so much. This was really informative.

Catherine Augustine: You are welcome.

Jill Anderson: Catherine Augustine as a senior policy researcher at the Rand Corporation. I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast, produced by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Thanks for listening.

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LESSON PLAN

Should schools give summer homework.

Analyzing Authors’ Claims

Read the Article

YES: Harris Cooper, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University NO: Nancy Kalish, co-author, The Case Against Homework

Analyze the debate.

1. Set Focus Frame the inquiry with this essential question: What factors should officials take into consideration when creating curriculum?

2. R ead and Discuss Have students read the debate and then answer the following questions:

• What is the issue being debated? How does it relate to current events? (The issue is whether schools should assign homework to students over the summer break.  The issue is timely because disruptions to education stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic have resulted in significant learning loss for many students.)
• Evaluate why these two authors might be interested in and qualified to comment on this issue. (Harris Cooper is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. Nancy Kalish is the co-author of a book that argues against assigning homework.)  
• Analyze Cooper’s view. (Cooper argues in favor of schools assigning summer homework. He says that a long summer vacation without schoolwork leads to forgetting and results in teachers having to waste time reviewing old material in the fall. He says summer homework can minimize these negative results the way summer school has been proven to.)
• Analyze Kalish’s view. (Kalish argues against assigning homework over the summer. She says that doing so might result in more harm than good, such as by stealing time away from play and other forms of learning, reducing time spent on being physically active, and turning reading into a chore. She says students should start the year refreshed.)

Extend & Assess

4. Writing Prompt In an essay, evaluate one of the debaters’ arguments. Assess whether the reasoning is valid and whether it’s supported with evidence. Point out biases or missing information.

5. Classroom Debate Should schools give summer homework? Have students use the authors’ ideas, as well as their own, in a debate. 

6. Vote Go online to vote in Upfront ’s poll—and see how students across the country voted.  

Download a PDF of this Lesson Plan

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Should Your Child Go to Summer School?

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Signs Your Child May Need to Go to Summer School

Reasons for summer school, reasons against summer school.

• Deciding What's Right for Your Child

The break between school years can be a long one for parents and trying to determine the best way for your child to spend it has its challenges. Do you keep them home and try to entertain them between meetings, or send them off to a sleepaway camp ? Perhaps summer school is an option you've thought about, but aren't quite sure exactly what it entails or if it's the right choice for your kid.

Summer school is an academic program that kids can attend over their summer break. While day camps usually include activities like swimming, hiking, or playing group games , summer school has dedicated time for reading, writing, and math. It might not be exactly like the school year, though. Some summer programs have fun activities in the afternoons and frequent field trips as well as book learning.

Parents who are considering summer school for their child might want their kid to get extra academic support or they might just want to keep the learning going. Summer school can make a big difference for kids who are struggling so that they enter the new school prepared and confident. Other kids benefit just as much from taking a break from the school routine.

Summer school has benefits and drawbacks. Read on to learn more about whether summer school is the right choice for your child.

If your child is struggling academically, they may benefit from a structured summer school program. "With the COVID-19 pandemic, many students have fallen behind with their learning," says Elizabeth Fraley, MEd, CEO of " data-component="link" data-source="inlineLink" data-type="internalLink" data-ordinal="1">Kinder Ready , a program that prepares students for private schooling. "Many parents are looking into summer school to help their children bounce back from learning deficiencies."

Here are some signs that your child may need to go to summer school.

They're Behind in Math

Math is a subject that builds on the basics . It grows progressively more complex, and each new skill requires kids to draw on their previous knowledge.

If your child has not mastered their multiplication, or times tables, for example, trying to complete long division problems may prove to be more difficult. "After grade three, the intensity of math increases, and most of the remedial work I see with students is actually around third grade or later," notes Fraley. "Math is very important to master as it only increases in intensity as students age up."

Summer school allows your child to catch up or get extra support in the areas they need it most in, allowing them to enter the next grade with more confidence.

They Need Help With Executive Functioning Skills

Summer school isn't limited to purely academic subjects. If your child has trouble keeping their desk clean, often forgets to do their homework, or can't seem to carry through with studying for a test, summer school might help them improve their executive functioning skills.

"Students need support with staying organized, and through a summer program they will get more time to keep their coursework organized and work in their assignment book to prioritize and plan for both long- and short-term assignments, tests, and projects," says Fraley.

They Struggle With Reading

In kindergarten and first grade, students are mastering the ability to read. As they progress through school, they need to make the shift from learning to read to reading to learn. By second or third grade, low reading ability can severely hinder your child's overall progress in all subjects.

If your child is reading below grade level, summer school can help them catch up. "Learning to read and being a skilled reader usually is more time intensive compared to other subject areas like math, science, or social studies," notes Fraley. "Reading has so many components that students need to master including vocabulary, comprehension, sight words, phonics, and fluency."

Summer school has many benefits for kids.

Helps Kids Catch Up on Basic Skills

As the rest of the class progresses from unit to unit, students who haven't mastered previous content can fall more and more behind. This might lead to low self-esteem and compound the problem.

Summer school can help your child practice and refine their basic skills so that they can keep up with the pace of the next grade . "With more focused practice through direct instruction and independent practice, students can make the gains necessary to likely reach grade level or show improvements across the board," says Fraley.

Keeps the Learning Going

Whether or not your child is behind in school, it is important for them to keep practicing.

"Learning should be year-round," says Allen Lee, the principal of John Yehall Chin Elementary School in San Francisco with 24 years of experience as an administrator. "In many classrooms, teachers and students have to grapple with learning loss during the first couple of months of each school year. Summer school, which does not necessarily have to be for the whole summer, can mitigate or even eliminate the learning loss."

Summer school does not have to be the only way for learning to continue over the summer. "If parents [or] guardians can provide their child(ren) opportunities to continue their learning during the summer, then I do not think that summer school is necessary for this child," notes Principal Lee. "Parents [or] guardians, despite their best efforts, often can't spend a lot of time with their child even during the summer due to their busy work schedules. In that case, I do think the parents [or] guardians should enroll their child in some sort of summer school."

Teens Can Stay on Track for Graduation

Older students will need to take and pass a certain number of credits in order to graduate on time. They will also generally need to pass a certain level in subjects such as math or foreign language. Taking a summer school class or two can help teens make sure that they complete the required amount of credits, especially if they have failed or withdrawn from any classes.

It can also be a good way for them to get ahead if they want to pursue dual enrollment classes or have an extra free period to work on college applications or military enlistment plans.

While there are benefits for some, summer school is not the best choice for all children. It is important to consider the possible drawbacks of summer school when deciding whether to your child sign up or not.

Not all Programs Are High Quality

Just because a program is called summer school does not guarantee that it is a high-quality program. Kids learn best from meaningful hands-on activities. "If it only involves lots and lots of dittos and nothing else, [it] will probably turn children off to learning," says Principal Lee. "Do your research before you sign up for something! When in doubt, you can always try consulting with your child's current teacher to see what they think."

Some Kids Just Need a Break

More academics is not always better. Filling in the time off from school with more school might be too much for some kids and lead to overwhelm. "Summer is a time where kids need to be kids and recharge and regroup before the school year," says Fraley. "Students need time to transition before the school year."

If your child seems stressed or overwhelmed by school, you might want to sign them up for a fun summer camp to let them decompress. For some kids, taking time off allows them to refresh and focus better the following school year. There's also always the option of doing summer school for just part of the summer.

Summer School Might Not Target Social Skills Enough

Social and emotional learning is just as important as academics. It's important to consider which areas your child needs the most support in. "For certain children who can stand making more growth on their social skills, a summer day camp may be more beneficial than summer school," says Principal Lee.

Deciding What's Right for Your Child

When it comes to whether or not your child should attend summer school, there is no right or wrong answer. Every child is different and has unique needs. Ultimately, you know your child best and you are the only person who can decide whether summer school is the right choice for them.

But, you don't have to make this decision alone. It is a good idea to consult with your child's educator or pediatrician to help you weigh out the pros and cons of summer school.

A Word From Verywell

Summer school is an academic program that takes place during summer break. It might be purely academic or it might include recreational activities as well. Kids who are behind in basic subjects, at risk of not graduating, or need to work on their executive functioning skills might benefit from summer school. It is also a way for all kids to help bridge the learning gap over the summer and prevent learning loss.

Not all kids will thrive in a summer school, though. Some kids really need some time off from a school setting to feel refreshed and ready for the new school year. If the summer school is not high-quality, it may do more harm than good. If social skills are more of a concern than academics, summer camp might be a better fit than summer school.

At the end of the day, you know your child best. You can always consult with their teacher or pediatrician if you have questions about what's best for your kid.

Regional Educational Laboratory Program. The effectiveness of summer school in closing achievement gaps .

Common Core State Standards Initiative. English Language Arts Standards .

Booth MZ, Gerard JM. Self-esteem and academic achievement: a comparative study of adolescent students in England and the United States . Compare. 2011;41(5):629-648. doi:10.1080/03057925.2011.566688

Deslauriers L, McCarty LS, Miller K, Callaghan K, Kestin G. Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom . Proc Natl Acad Sci USA . 2019;116(39):19251-19257. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1821936116.

By Elisa Cinelli Elisa is a well-known parenting writer who is passionate about providing research-based content to help parents make the best decisions for their families. She has written for well-known sites including POPSUGAR and Scary Mommy, among others.

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Credit: August de Richelieu

Does homework still have value? A Johns Hopkins education expert weighs in

Joyce epstein, co-director of the center on school, family, and community partnerships, discusses why homework is essential, how to maximize its benefit to learners, and what the 'no-homework' approach gets wrong.

By Vicky Hallett

The necessity of homework has been a subject of debate since at least as far back as the 1890s, according to Joyce L. Epstein , co-director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at Johns Hopkins University. "It's always been the case that parents, kids—and sometimes teachers, too—wonder if this is just busy work," Epstein says.

But after decades of researching how to improve schools, the professor in the Johns Hopkins School of Education remains certain that homework is essential—as long as the teachers have done their homework, too. The National Network of Partnership Schools , which she founded in 1995 to advise schools and districts on ways to improve comprehensive programs of family engagement, has developed hundreds of improved homework ideas through its Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork program. For an English class, a student might interview a parent on popular hairstyles from their youth and write about the differences between then and now. Or for science class, a family could identify forms of matter over the dinner table, labeling foods as liquids or solids. These innovative and interactive assignments not only reinforce concepts from the classroom but also foster creativity, spark discussions, and boost student motivation.

"We're not trying to eliminate homework procedures, but expand and enrich them," says Epstein, who is packing this research into a forthcoming book on the purposes and designs of homework. In the meantime, the Hub couldn't wait to ask her some questions:

What kind of homework training do teachers typically get?

Future teachers and administrators really have little formal training on how to design homework before they assign it. This means that most just repeat what their teachers did, or they follow textbook suggestions at the end of units. For example, future teachers are well prepared to teach reading and literacy skills at each grade level, and they continue to learn to improve their teaching of reading in ongoing in-service education. By contrast, most receive little or no training on the purposes and designs of homework in reading or other subjects. It is really important for future teachers to receive systematic training to understand that they have the power, opportunity, and obligation to design homework with a purpose.

Why do students need more interactive homework?

If homework assignments are always the same—10 math problems, six sentences with spelling words—homework can get boring and some kids just stop doing their assignments, especially in the middle and high school years. When we've asked teachers what's the best homework you've ever had or designed, invariably we hear examples of talking with a parent or grandparent or peer to share ideas. To be clear, parents should never be asked to "teach" seventh grade science or any other subject. Rather, teachers set up the homework assignments so that the student is in charge. It's always the student's homework. But a good activity can engage parents in a fun, collaborative way. Our data show that with "good" assignments, more kids finish their work, more kids interact with a family partner, and more parents say, "I learned what's happening in the curriculum." It all works around what the youngsters are learning.

Is family engagement really that important?

At Hopkins, I am part of the Center for Social Organization of Schools , a research center that studies how to improve many aspects of education to help all students do their best in school. One thing my colleagues and I realized was that we needed to look deeply into family and community engagement. There were so few references to this topic when we started that we had to build the field of study. When children go to school, their families "attend" with them whether a teacher can "see" the parents or not. So, family engagement is ever-present in the life of a school.

My daughter's elementary school doesn't assign homework until third grade. What's your take on "no homework" policies?

There are some parents, writers, and commentators who have argued against homework, especially for very young children. They suggest that children should have time to play after school. This, of course is true, but many kindergarten kids are excited to have homework like their older siblings. If they give homework, most teachers of young children make assignments very short—often following an informal rule of 10 minutes per grade level. "No homework" does not guarantee that all students will spend their free time in productive and imaginative play.

Some researchers and critics have consistently misinterpreted research findings. They have argued that homework should be assigned only at the high school level where data point to a strong connection of doing assignments with higher student achievement . However, as we discussed, some students stop doing homework. This leads, statistically, to results showing that doing homework or spending more minutes on homework is linked to higher student achievement. If slow or struggling students are not doing their assignments, they contribute to—or cause—this "result."

Teachers need to design homework that even struggling students want to do because it is interesting. Just about all students at any age level react positively to good assignments and will tell you so.

Did COVID change how schools and parents view homework?

Within 24 hours of the day school doors closed in March 2020, just about every school and district in the country figured out that teachers had to talk to and work with students' parents. This was not the same as homeschooling—teachers were still working hard to provide daily lessons. But if a child was learning at home in the living room, parents were more aware of what they were doing in school. One of the silver linings of COVID was that teachers reported that they gained a better understanding of their students' families. We collected wonderfully creative examples of activities from members of the National Network of Partnership Schools. I'm thinking of one art activity where every child talked with a parent about something that made their family unique. Then they drew their finding on a snowflake and returned it to share in class. In math, students talked with a parent about something the family liked so much that they could represent it 100 times. Conversations about schoolwork at home was the point.

How did you create so many homework activities via the Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork program?

We had several projects with educators to help them design interactive assignments, not just "do the next three examples on page 38." Teachers worked in teams to create TIPS activities, and then we turned their work into a standard TIPS format in math, reading/language arts, and science for grades K-8. Any teacher can use or adapt our prototypes to match their curricula.

Overall, we know that if future teachers and practicing educators were prepared to design homework assignments to meet specific purposes—including but not limited to interactive activities—more students would benefit from the important experience of doing their homework. And more parents would, indeed, be partners in education.

Posted in Voices+Opinion

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It’s Time to End Mandated Summer Assignments

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“Ringggggggg!”

The last bell rang. The halls are silent and students have been dismissed for the school year into the warm summer sun.

It’s time for a well-needed break from structured learning and time to engage in play and curiosity.

For too long schools have tried to control what students are responsible for outside of school doors, whether it is homework or summer assignments. Teachers have been told or have felt that these expectations foster accountability and deeper learning.

And perhaps for some, it does, but for most, it doesn’t.

Just like with homework, summer assignments highlight equity issues that go far beyond students not being capable of doing the learning. Let’s not forget that we don’t want to promote a culture that starts students in a deficit.

After having a rich conversation on social media (Facebook and Twitter) about the need for mandatory summer assignments, there seems to be a consensus that mandatory summer assignments aren’t a thing we should promote. Teachers, administrators, students, and parents shared their concerns and dismay with the practice.

Here are some of their ideas:

Gerald Aungst said, “Love them. In fact, let’s make mandatory play assignments that count upon return to school. A checklist of things students have to do during the summer or else they start off the year in the hole right out of the gate. Things such as wade in a stream, play street stickball and attend a pool party.”

Anastasia Papis said, “when I used to get them it always felt like pressure to do as many as you could and you would feel bad when you didn’t. I am all for reading but I think it would be better for kids to feel encouraged more to want to read on their own instead of being forced during the summer when they also want that time to relax or even work before they have to do it all over again in the next school year.”

Jim Detwiler said, “Big fat NO. So many things wrong with it. Equity and access issues. And don’t even get me started on grading practices. (You may have hit a nerve, can you tell?).”

Tammy Turlington Neil said, “Even if everyone did the work, what about the kid that moves in during the summer and doesn’t know about the assignment. How is that fair? Definitely a big NO.”

Kate LaRoue said, “For AP World History, where you cover 10,000 years of History, it is critical. Most students are capable of reading a few pages, taking some notes on the Neolithic and Paleolithic eras, freeing up class time for the classical period when we start. I am no longer allowed to do this, as our school ended summer assignments. I required it to be turned in two weeks after the start of school, when they could use the notes to write a base line essay. Students did better if they read, but the essay was achievable if they had not. This delay also allowed students registering late to still do the assignment. Now, I have to assign it as homework the first week, along with what I usually do. It puts a larger load on the students since we didn’t get an early start on the curriculum.”

Shoshana Seid said, “Count?! No. Of course, I encourage reading but threatening that it “counts” for something—NO. I feel the same way about HW too.”

Delilah Kellinghaus said, “As a 20-year English teacher I say NO. I have taught mandatory summer reading and the results were never positive. I always found the classroom reading and productive struggle much more beneficial for students.”

Pernille Ripp said, “That we have no right to mandate what kids do over the summer unless they voluntarily signed up for a class that requires it.”

Justin Parmenter said, “If we think teachers need to unplug and practice self-care in the summer in order to be at their best in the fall, then why would the same not be true for students?”

Steven Weber said, “I’m not a fan. Some students move to the school late in the summer. Some schools make Ss pay for the book. Some of the assignments are busy work. Some students start the 1st day of class with a C/D grade.”

Courtney Johnson said, “What? No way. Summer is summer. We get to tell them what to do 9 months out of the year. Let kids (and for the younger ones, their parents) make decisions about what to do during their summer. If they want to read, they will. If they want to read something challenging, they will.”

Michael Horton said, “Most of our high school students take one or two online college courses over the summer (by choice). AP students get prep work. Incoming 6th graders get a reading assignment. The office is open all summer if they need resources. We loan Chromebooks if needed.”

Sarah Nichols said, “Reading is a joy and shouldn’t be required but rather celebrated and encouraged by exposing learners of all ages to books that fit their interests, questions and ability levels.”

Kristen Bruck said, “Seeing the pages-long assignment my 9yo has to do this summer, I totally get when my 10th-grade students come to me hating to read. I am tempted to tell my own kids just not to do their assignments and read what they want!:

What we can do instead is provide resources for students who are interested in pursuing them and encourage them to do things that inspire them in their free time without the consequence of getting a bad grade. There are so many resources available through public libraries and school libraries for families to enjoy. Let’s promote a love of reading, but providing help and not expecting them to be used.

Steven Weber said, “I would support student choice. Students choose from a list of books. Post blog posts throughout the summer.”

Laura Mossa said, “We are hosting an in-school book swap and family book bingo night to make sure all students have books to read over the summer. Our school library will be open for check out this summer and we are using @Flipgrid to share summer reading recommendations.”

Karen Cribby said, “We use #schoology discussion boards for them to share what they’re reading (and we join in). I’m adamant though, that S’ don’t “do” anything other than enjoy what they’re reading.”

Matthew Winters said, “Modeling what summer reading looks like. On our last day I brought in the books I plan to read this summer and told the students about the importance of continuing their reading patterns. It got through to a good percentage.”

Lindsay Hall said, “By talking about books with them all year, by showing them that reading can be fun once you find the right book, and by sending them off with a list of books you think they’ll like #ReadingMatters #SummerReading .”

Jacqui Cebrian said, “I meet with my students and talk about what is in their plan. I try to send home books with them when I can. I’m very fortunate to be in a well-funded district and avail myself of all the cheap books I can find. I don’t treat it as icing. It’s the cake. I have a lot to say on this subject I guess. Summer reading bulletin board by the office...Set up an Instagram account just to post books to and add that to the summer reading recs I put out every year to encourage interaction over the summer and keep ideas flowing. And finally, new this year, I’m joining the superintendent at a farmers market booth this weekend as part of my summer reading outreach. In short ( but not really), I do everything I can think of. Also made summer reading slideshow with some book trailers embedded.”

Gina Hess said, “We have a great list of books chosen by kids and librarians in Florida, @FloridaSSYRA . I always give this list to my students at the end of the school year. My biggest goal is for them to read books that they choose, and this list gives them a good place to start.”

Let’s spend more time in school promoting a culture of curiosity and learning that transcends school, not because we want to grade kids on it or give them extra credit or punish them for not doing it, but because learning for the sake of learning is its own reward. We can foster a love of reading in so many different ways.

The opinions expressed in Work in Progress are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

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How To Finish Summer Homework Assignments: 14 Tips To Save Your Child’s Summer

• July 19, 2018

Many schools assign homework for students to complete before they return to class in September. This results in both parents and students having to learn how to finish summer reading and homework while balancing fun summer activities.

This summer, school is out and homework is in.

If your child has been putting off a pile of summer homework and reading assignments—he or she is not alone.

Reading books and writing assignments during the summer may not sound appealing to many students—or parents. Students can also get UK homework help if they need the some help with completing their assignment! But summer assignments are a great way to combat the effects of Summer Learning Loss and keep your child’s brain active over the break.

The Facts On Summer Learning Loss

Six weeks in the fall are spent re-learning old material Two months of reading skills are lost over the summer One month of overall learning is lost after summer vacation

With the right mindset, goals, and structure, you’ll have no problem finishing summer reading and homework between BBQ’s, ball games, and beach trips.

Follow these 14 steps to learn how to complete summer homework—without sacrificing summer fun.

14 Tips For Finishing Your Summer Homework Assignments

Make a game plan, tip 1: take a (quick) break.

It’s hard to go from a full year of schoolwork to tackling summer homework right off the bat. Let your child take a week off of homework at the start of the summer. This will give his or her brain a chance to relax and reset, and enjoy taking part in fun summer activities like sports.

Tip 2: Review Project Requirements

Don’t have your child dive head-first into his or her homework assignments. Review the expectations of each project with your child and discuss how much time he or she will need to complete them.

It would be a shame to waste time redoing a project because your child didn’t understand it initially. Reviewing all requirements is an important first step to starting off on the right foot.

Tip 3: Break Down Each Project Into A Series of Goals

Think about which assignments will take the longest and what your child will need to complete them during the summer. Break these larger assignments into a series of goals that need to be met to complete the project.

Examples of goals include “read 2 chapters per week” or “write essay introduction by July 15th”.

Set Aside The Right Amount Of Time

Tip 4: plan a weekly summer homework schedule.

This should be similar to a school year homework schedule, but altered for the summer. T he ideal amount of time to spend doing summer homework per week is 2-3 hours , so figure out where that time fits into your child’s average summer week.

Tip 5: Make A List Of Supplies & Resources

Your summer adventures could take you and your child to a wide variety of places. Make sure you both know what to bring with you so your child can tackle homework when not at home.

Examples of supplies include:

• Textbooks or Assigned Novels

Tip 6: Choose Assignment Topics Based On Interest, Not Length

Sometimes students are given options when it comes to topics to research or books to read over the summer. Encourage your child to make these decisions based on the topics that interests him or her most—not which is “easiest”. This will result in your child enjoying his or her work, and allow him to benefit more from it.

Help Your Child Do Work On-The-Go

Tip 7: adjust your homework schedule for trips & vacations.

Exploring new places is an amazing learning experience, so don’t feel like you should sacrifice them for more homework time. Instead, plan your child’s homework schedule around these day trips and vacations.

If you know your child won’t have time to complete work while you’re away on a longer trip, make up those hours in the weeks before and after your trip.

Tip 8: Tackle The Work Your Child Can Do On-The-Go

While writing an essay is a project to save for when you return home, there are assignments that your child can tackle from just about anywhere. Options for homework to do on vacation include projects that are doable in small chunks—like reading a book or completing a math worksheet.

Tip 9: Bring Your Child’s Supplies With You

Remember that supplies list you created? Make sure you pack that backpack and bring it with you on your trip! It’d be a waste to find a spare hour to finish that math assignment, only to realize your child left his or her calculator at home.

Tip 10: Capitalize On The Quiet Times

Even the busiest trips include some quiet time. If you’re early for a dinner reservation, have your child complete a chapter of reading while you wait. Or, encourage your child to wake up 20 minutes early to answer some math questions without disruption.

Build A Support Team For Your Child

Tip 11: schedule a weekly workdate for your child & a friend.

There’s no reason your child has to work through summer homework alone. Make a weekly work date with a friend where they can tackle summer assignments together. If that friend is in the same class as your child, they can even discuss questions and challenges together. Build A Support Team For Your Child

Tip 12: Review Your Child’s Progress Every Week

Each week, speak with your child about the work he or she accomplished, and what is planned for the week ahead. If you know your child will be busy soon, work together to reorganize his or her homework schedule.

Tip 13: Touch Base With a Tutor (Or Enrol In Summer Learning Program)

A new set of eyes can make all the difference in making sure your child gets his or her summer assignments done efficiently and effectively. Your child’s tutor will be able to give constructive feedback and turn this feedback into goals for the upcoming school year.

If you want an extra head start for your child this school year, enroll him or her in a Summer Learning tutoring program to get started on the right track.

And Most Importantly…

Tip 14: reward your child with summer fun.

While schoolwork is important during the summer, it doesn’t have to come at the sacrifice of having fun. Whenever your child completes a new project or achieves a goal, reward him or her with a treat or fun summer activity.

Work Hard—And Play Hard—This Summer

Summer might seem like it will last forever, but the school year will be here before you know it. Don’t let your child fall into the habit of procrastination—instead, make a plan together and stick to it.

If you follow these tips, your child will finish summer homework and summer reading in no time…and develop great learning and study habits that will already be in place for next year!

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Summer Homework: A How-To Guide for Parents and Kids

It’s become a predictable yearly debate that rolls around every June:

Should my kids really be getting summer homework?

And if they do, how should we approach it so they actually learn something over the summer (rather than just doing busywork)?

Here’s the thing:

At some schools, kids are routinely overloaded with multiple books to read, and big math packets to complete.

At other schools? Nothing is assigned.

My personal opinion is that the right balance lies somewhere in the middle… Yes, we want kids to keep their minds sharp, but not at the expense of having fun over the summer.

So in this post I’ll cover:

• My opinion on the age-old summer homework debate (in the video below)
• How to handle the different types of work assigned to students over the summer
• Some specific recommendations for what you can do as a parent to keep your kids engaged in the process, including a recent interview I did with WTOP’s Every Day is Kid’s Day podcast on the topic

And you’ll walk away with a better understanding of how to make the most out of homework (or lack thereof) this summer.

You can click one of the links below to jump to one of the sections of the guide:

How much is too much summer homework? How to tackle summer reading (The Amazon Method) How to handle math packets and workbooks Creative ways to make Summer Learning fun

Or jump right in with the video below.

How much is too much? What the research says…

When kids do nothing at all in math and reading, the research shows that they can lose two to three months of learning progress over the summer.

Just think: That’s almost as if they decided to end the school year in March!

And if left alone, those losses accumulate over time with respect to their peers.

A 2007 study out of John’s Hopkins University showed that while students (on average) make similar gains in reading comprehension throughout the year, students without access to learning opportunities make no progress over the summer, while students with access outpace them year after year.

Ultimately, by the time they reach 5th grade, disadvantaged students are the equivalent of 3 full grade levels behind their advantaged peers in reading ability!

But, this trend need not apply to your son or daughter…

Because studies also show that kids who read just four books over the summer are able to almost completely eliminate that summer learning slide.

So here’s my take:

If your son or daughter is being required to…

• Read three books, probably classics that they really don’t want to read
• Write multiple essays
• And complete stacks of math assignments

… that’s probably a bit overboard.

Yes, we want kids to keep their minds sharp, but not at the expense of having fun over the summer.

So my recommendation is to create a balance. Get your summer assignments done, but try to structure it in a way that makes learning fun.

Here’s how to do it…

Required vs. Recommended Summer Homework

First off, we can break down summer homework assignments in terms of required vs. recommended .

Most schools send out a recommended reading list, and sometimes subject review packets to their students to complete over the summer.

And some actually require that their students complete a certain amount of those assignments over the summer, which are included in their grade for the upcoming school year.

Now, it does make sense to prioritize required assignments over recommended assignments… especially if your school went overboard with what they handed out.

But as long as it’s not too much material, regardless of whether reading is assigned or not, I recommend working with your child to map out a plan of attack for the summer to get it done (on their terms – see below).

How to tackle summer reading (The Amazon Method)

By far, the most popular category of summer homework assigned are reading lists.

And although most schools have a recommended reading list, they tend to be very broad ( umm, should my 8-year-old really be reading MacBeth right now? )…

Specific reading requirements

Sometimes though, there are specific books that your student needs to read over the summer (see the “required” section above), especially high school students, and you’ll need to work with them to figure out a plan of attack.

Block off some time at the beginning of summer (don’t let it wait until July!) to sit down and ask them:

“You have these 3 books you have to read this summer. How would you like to tackle these?”

And then let them answer. Help them formulate a (realistic) plan with their input, and they’ll but much more likely to follow it… and not end up in the last-minute reading rush on August 30th trying to get their summer reading done!

Flexible reading requirements

But on the other hand, if you do have some flexibility in terms of what your student is assigned to read over the summer, what I like to do is create a reading list tailored specifically towards the age or interests of your student.

And one of the best ways to do this is: Amazon!

Step 1: Go to Amazon.com and type in “Books for… [insert description of your child]”

For example, if I had a 7th grader at home I would search: “Books for middle school”

Or if I was looking for something more girl-oriented for my daughter I would search: “Books for middle school girls”

It’s amazing what books will pop up on the top of the list for kids…

Step 2: Review the list and make sure that the results are relevant (sometimes they require a little tweaking), and pay attention to the options on the sidebar where you can filter by subject, age rage, etc.

Then run them by your child and ask: “Which one of these do you want to read this summer?”

Look over the summaries and let them pick the books they want to read.

Word of caution: It’s not your responsibility as a parent to pass judgment and say:

“You know what honey, this year you’re not reading a graphic novel. You can only read books with words, no pictures.

We don’t want to do that as parents. We really want to let our kids decide, because when they’re invested, they’re much more likely to meet that four book goal over the summer.

Step 3: Either order online or head out to the library…

Make sure to do this before July 4th so the summer doesn’t get away from you, and use your list of books that you picked out.

Then, when you get your books back home…

Step 4: Sit down with them and make a plan.

Don’t assume your child will gleefully run up to his room and begin flipping the pages. They’re much more likely to read consistently if you have “READING TIME” marked off on the calendar at a consistent time each day.

You can even make it a family routine! Having everyone in the house reading at the same time will help encourage your child to get their reading done, especially if they’re reluctant or easily distracted.

Now, many kids are reluctant readers and may need a parent to help them get started… And you need to be willing to make the time to lend a hand.

This can be in the form of “you read a page, he reads a page” or for a really reluctant reader, “you read two pages and he reads one,” until he’s into the story.

Make this a habit, and before long you’ll have a bookworm on your hands!

How to handle math packets and workbooks

The same principles hold true for other assigned work as well.

Don’t assume your child will be chipping away at those math packets one day at a time (and the thicker they are, the more daunting they’ll seem).

Truth be told: we get lots of calls from parents mid-August, panicked that their kid hasn’t read and annotated a three-hundred-page book and completed a bunch of review worksheets – even though the parent has reminded him at least ten times!

This situation isn’t unique.

The value to any summer learning is doing a little bit at a time over a long stretch. The brain retains information best in bit sized chunks, not by cramming.

And this is even more important for math because it’s a subject that continually builds on itself. So if you miss something early on, you’re probably going to have to back-track when you run into that same concept again in the future.

So just like with reading assignments, if your son or daughter are assigned a math packet (or any other type of subject packet) over the summer, make sure to site down and set the plan early.

Aside from your typical reading lists and workbooks though, you can also encourage learning in other (more fun!) ways this summer…

Creative ways to make Summer Learning fun

Below is a recent interview I did with WTOP’s Every Day is Kid’s Day podcast (interview starts at 0:53) on how to bring a fresh perspective to summer learning, and make things more fun and interesting for your son or daughter this year.

Give it a listen for some more tips on:

• Using the Amazon Method to make summer reading more fun
• Alternatives to summer workbooks that are actually fun and effective
• Whether you should spend the time to try and “preview” material they’re going to see in the coming year
• And a whole bunch of other useful ideas for staying engaged over the summer

Here are some of those great ways to get your child into learning, outside of school recommended assignments:

For writing: use a dialogue journal.

One of the best ways to get your child comfortable with writing on a regular basis is to make a game out of it.

So try designating a “special” notebook or journal that lives in your kid’s room that you can use to communicate with them through writing.

Then, simply leave them a note each day, that they read and respond to.

Maybe you say something like, “I noticed how you helped your brother pick up those puzzle pieces. What a nice idea. How did you know he needed your help?”

Leave the journal on his bed and allow him to write back that evening. The next day, you respond.

And be sure not to fix grammar or spelling, just let these be a carefree way to practice writing and even illustrations.

At the end of the summer, not only will they have improved their writing skills, but you’ll also have an amazing keepsake to look back on for years to come.

For reading: listen to audiobooks!

Don’t forget that audio books can be very helpful for developing comprehension and fluency.

Studies show that when kids want to read a book just above their level and listen to the book while following along with the lines, they improve their skills more than if they read independently.

So using a site like Audible.com or going to your local library website to download audio versions of the books your son or daughter has picked out (or has assigned) for the summer isn’t cheating, it’s just another way to “open the door” to getting them involved in reading.

Plus, it’s great for long summer road trips!

For math: play (math) games on the iPad.

For most of us, it’s a constant battle to keep our kids AWAY from the devices over the summer… but it need not be either or.

One of the best ways to “bridge the gap” is to give your child the opportunity to use educational apps or websites on their phone or iPad that will keep them learning, without feeling like math always has to involve drudgery.

Multiplication.com is great site for staying sharp on math facts. And pretty much every elementary schooler needs to practice their addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division over the summer to stay sharp.

Funbrain.com is also perfect for allowing a little screen time in-between reading or homework sessions, while still learning at the same time.

For learning that’s fun: find local adventures!

Yes, you could have your kids spend their summer doing workbooks and refresher material, and that would probably help them stay sharp… but most kids find that to be a drag on their motivation to learn.

Instead, find a local museum or science center and take field trip!

Use the outing to ask your kids to guide the learning session and pick out what they want to explore… and then tell you about it.

And then watch in amazement at how excited they are, not even realizing that they’re “learning,” but just enjoying the moment and experiencing something new.

Summer camps are great for this too, so do some Googling and find out what’s going on in your area.

Now let’s hear from you..

How have you handled the balance between required summer schoolwork and fun?

What have you done that’s helpful in your family to keep summer learning alive without going overboard?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments below!

Should Kids Get Homework?

Homework gives elementary students a way to practice concepts, but too much can be harmful, experts say.

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Effective homework reinforces math, reading, writing or spelling skills, but in a way that's meaningful.

How much homework students should get has long been a source of debate among parents and educators. In recent years, some districts have even implemented no-homework policies, as students juggle sports, music and other activities after school.

Parents of elementary school students, in particular, have argued that after-school hours should be spent with family or playing outside rather than completing assignments. And there is little research to show that homework improves academic achievement for elementary students.

But some experts say there's value in homework, even for younger students. When done well, it can help students practice core concepts and develop study habits and time management skills. The key to effective homework, they say, is keeping assignments related to classroom learning, and tailoring the amount by age: Many experts suggest no homework for kindergartners, and little to none in first and second grade.

Value of Homework

Homework provides a chance to solidify what is being taught in the classroom that day, week or unit. Practice matters, says Janine Bempechat, clinical professor at Boston University 's Wheelock College of Education & Human Development.

"There really is no other domain of human ability where anybody would say you don't need to practice," she adds. "We have children practicing piano and we have children going to sports practice several days a week after school. You name the domain of ability and practice is in there."

Homework is also the place where schools and families most frequently intersect.

"The children are bringing things from the school into the home," says Paula S. Fass, professor emerita of history at the University of California—Berkeley and the author of "The End of American Childhood." "Before the pandemic, (homework) was the only real sense that parents had to what was going on in schools."

Harris Cooper, professor emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University and author of "The Battle Over Homework," examined more than 60 research studies on homework between 1987 and 2003 and found that — when designed properly — homework can lead to greater student success. Too much, however, is harmful. And homework has a greater positive effect on students in secondary school (grades 7-12) than those in elementary.

"Every child should be doing homework, but the amount and type that they're doing should be appropriate for their developmental level," he says. "For teachers, it's a balancing act. Doing away with homework completely is not in the best interest of children and families. But overburdening families with homework is also not in the child's or a family's best interest."

Negative Homework Assignments

Not all homework for elementary students involves completing a worksheet. Assignments can be fun, says Cooper, like having students visit educational locations, keep statistics on their favorite sports teams, read for pleasure or even help their parents grocery shop. The point is to show students that activities done outside of school can relate to subjects learned in the classroom.

But assignments that are just busy work, that force students to learn new concepts at home, or that are overly time-consuming can be counterproductive, experts say.

Homework that's just busy work.

Effective homework reinforces math, reading, writing or spelling skills, but in a way that's meaningful, experts say. Assignments that look more like busy work – projects or worksheets that don't require teacher feedback and aren't related to topics learned in the classroom – can be frustrating for students and create burdens for families.

"The mental health piece has definitely played a role here over the last couple of years during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the last thing we want to do is frustrate students with busy work or homework that makes no sense," says Dave Steckler, principal of Red Trail Elementary School in Mandan, North Dakota.

Homework on material that kids haven't learned yet.

With the pressure to cover all topics on standardized tests and limited time during the school day, some teachers assign homework that has not yet been taught in the classroom.

Not only does this create stress, but it also causes equity challenges. Some parents speak languages other than English or work several jobs, and they aren't able to help teach their children new concepts.

" It just becomes agony for both parents and the kids to get through this worksheet, and the goal becomes getting to the bottom of (the) worksheet with answers filled in without any understanding of what any of it matters for," says professor Susan R. Goldman, co-director of the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Illinois—Chicago .

Homework that's overly time-consuming.

The standard homework guideline recommended by the National Parent Teacher Association and the National Education Association is the "10-minute rule" – 10 minutes of nightly homework per grade level. A fourth grader, for instance, would receive a total of 40 minutes of homework per night.

But this does not always happen, especially since not every student learns the same. A 2015 study published in the American Journal of Family Therapy found that primary school children actually received three times the recommended amount of homework — and that family stress increased along with the homework load.

Young children can only remain attentive for short periods, so large amounts of homework, especially lengthy projects, can negatively affect students' views on school. Some individual long-term projects – like having to build a replica city, for example – typically become an assignment for parents rather than students, Fass says.

"It's one thing to assign a project like that in which several kids are working on it together," she adds. "In (that) case, the kids do normally work on it. It's another to send it home to the families, where it becomes a burden and doesn't really accomplish very much."

Private vs. Public Schools

Do private schools assign more homework than public schools? There's little research on the issue, but experts say private school parents may be more accepting of homework, seeing it as a sign of academic rigor.

Of course, not all private schools are the same – some focus on college preparation and traditional academics, while others stress alternative approaches to education.

"I think in the academically oriented private schools, there's more support for homework from parents," says Gerald K. LeTendre, chair of educational administration at Pennsylvania State University—University Park . "I don't know if there's any research to show there's more homework, but it's less of a contentious issue."

How to Address Homework Overload

First, assess if the workload takes as long as it appears. Sometimes children may start working on a homework assignment, wander away and come back later, Cooper says.

"Parents don't see it, but they know that their child has started doing their homework four hours ago and still not done it," he adds. "They don't see that there are those four hours where their child was doing lots of other things. So the homework assignment itself actually is not four hours long. It's the way the child is approaching it."

But if homework is becoming stressful or workload is excessive, experts suggest parents first approach the teacher, followed by a school administrator.

"Many times, we can solve a lot of issues by having conversations," Steckler says, including by "sitting down, talking about the amount of homework, and what's appropriate and not appropriate."

Study Tips for High School Students

Tags: K-12 education , students , elementary school , children

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How to Squeeze the Most Out of Summer Homework

We know it takes the adolescent brain a few weeks or more to get back up to speed after the long summer break. Many teachers, particularly in the high school grades, try to reduce their students’ brain power regression by trying to keep them busy over the vacation. How can summer homework, particularly reading, benefit students without seeming like a chore? The answer is complex, and it partly depends on how helpful you feel about homework in the first place.

Tips to Make Summer Homework Worthwhile

Just like classroom and home learning during the school year, if summer homework tasks are inauthentic (e.g., busy work), they will serve little to no purpose. But, the brain drain of the summer months is real. So, how do we ensure that our students are firing on all cylinders when they walk through our doors in the fall? Here are some things to keep in mind when assigning summer homework.

1. Make Sure the Tasks Count for Something

Nothing will generate ill will amongst students faster than telling them their summer work was all for naught, but you wouldn’t believe how many teachers forget their students even had anything assigned over the summer break.

Students have read your books or have done your homework in good faith. The summer homework needs to be included or even dominate your first unit of the new school year. Otherwise, you might have some trust issues to address.

2. Make Summer Work Tasks Authentic

Students, especially older ones, can quickly sniff out busy work; they are less likely to give their best effort when they sense it.

If it’s something you wouldn’t assign during class—but might give to a substitute if you’re out—don’t assign it over the summer break. The goal is to prepare students for their upcoming studies just as much as it is to keep them from forgetting what they learned in the previous school year. Find a mix of the new with the old, and make it as engaging as possible.

3. Allow Some Summer Homework to Be Self-Guided

It’s no secret that the more input the student has in the task, the more engaging the lesson becomes. Because you’re not necessarily worried about mastery of new material and aren’t focusing on academic standards, there’s no harm in letting the students choose from a list of possible projects or books to read. Try assigning a “ Passion Project ”, where students choose a topic of personal interest and create a project or presentation around it.

4. Utilize the Ultimate Flipped Learning Opportunity

Perhaps you’re a flipped learning veteran or may still be just dabbling. Either way, summer break is the perfect opportunity to assign some lesson videos from your own library or an online resource.

Have students watch some TED Talks or lectures from Coursera or instructional videos from Khan Academy . They might not come in with complete mastery of the assigned topics, but they will be much better prepared to begin learning the material than if they were just doing worksheets from last school year’s work.

5. Celebrate Achievements and Milestones

If you have the resources, include a voluntary option for students to track their achievements and milestones online. Doing so can help students stay accountable in completing assignments while giving teachers the opportunity to motivate their students to continue their learning journey. You can experiment with virtual awards ceremonies, certificates of achievement, or personalized feedback messages. Consider acknowledging everyone again in person at the beginning of the school year to include those who were unable to participate online.

6. Encourage Peer Collaboration and Support

Another option to consider is incorporating group projects, peer review activities, and collaborative discussions into summer homework assignments to encourage students to actively engage with course content and develop essential teamwork and communication skills. Peer collaboration also fosters a sense of camaraderie and accountability among students, as they work together to achieve common goals and support each other's learning journey. For example, try facilitating peer review sessions where students provide feedback and support to their peers on their homework assignments. Students can exchange drafts of their essays or presentations and provide constructive feedback on areas for improvement. Suggest using free online platforms like Google Docs or Padlet for peer collaboration.

Looking for other fun ideas to encourage learning over summer break? Check out Edmentum’s free 30-Day Summer Challenge . Our flyer includes creative ideas designed to keep students engaged in their learning. With 30 days’ worth of fun activities, facts, and resources, learners are bound to learn something new each day and make the most out of summer break.

This post was originally published in June 2013 and has been updated.

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The New York Times

Room for debate | the crush of summer homework.

The Crush of Summer Homework

Updated, Aug. 31, 11:45 a.m. | Harris Cooper offers more details about research on the link between homework and student achievement. Scroll down to read his added explanation .

For many young Americans, going back to school might seem like rest and relaxation. In the last week before Labor Day, how many students across the country were racing to finish their summer homework, from “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” to math refresher exercises?

The pile of books and other vacation assignments appears to grow every year. Is all this homework beneficial or should children be given a break? An article in The Times on Sunday described a debate over assigned reading throughout the year. Some educators argue that students should be given wide latitude in deciding what they want to read, while others defended the “Moby-Dick” model. How should this issue be treated in summer, when some schools insist that everyone finish “The Old Man and the Sea,” while other schools say that “Gossip Girl” helps satisfy the requirement?

We asked some experts for their perspective, now that the summer homework is due.

• Harris Cooper, psychologist, Duke University
• Nancy Kalish, co-author, “The Case Against Homework”
• Mark Bauerlein, author, “The Dumbest Generation”
• Denise Pope, Stanford University School of Education
• Richard Allington, education professor, University of Tennessee
• Elizabeth Birr Moje, education professor, University of Michigan
• Tyrone Howard, education professor, U.C.L.A.

Forgotten on Vacation

Harris Cooper is chairman of the department of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. There is growing concern about the summer vacation’s possible negative impact on learning. Many educators argue that children learn best when instruction is continuous. The long summer vacation disrupts the rhythm of instruction, leads to forgetting, and requires time be spent reviewing old material when students return to school in fall.

Research evidence bears out these concerns. A group of colleagues and I conducted a review of 39 studies, and it confirmed that, on average, achievement test scores declined between spring and fall, and the loss was more pronounced for math than reading. The reason for this subject matter difference is simple: kid’s out-of-school environments provide more opportunities to practice reading skills than math.

Students, regardless of economic status, lost roughly equal amounts of math skills over summer.

Also, the research indicated that the impact can differ based on a child’s economic background. All students, regardless of economic status, lost roughly equal amounts of math skills over summer. However, substantial differences were found for reading. On some measures, middle-class children showed gains in reading achievement, particular word recognition scores, over summer. Low-wealth children showed losses.

In addition, while research evidence is scarce, educators argue that the long summer break can have a greater negative effect on the learning of children with special educational needs. The long break also can add an extra burden for children who do not speak English at home. Not only might they have to relearn academic material, they also must reacquaint themselves with the language of instruction.

Read more…

With the great pressures that educators feel nowadays to help all children achieve at their optimum level, the practice of assigning “summer homework” has increased. These assignments can vary from giving kids a voluntary opportunity to get a head start reading books they will cover in next year’s English class to textbook assignments that they will be tested on when they come back to school in fall.

I know of no studies that have directly tested whether kids who get summer homework do better in school the next school year. I do know that summer school can be highly effective and summer homework might be considered a “low dose” of summer school. Of course, given that there is no teacher supervision and the hours spent on summer homework are typically much fewer than attending summer school, it is risky to leap from on conclusion to the other.

My suspicion is that summer homework can have a positive effect on kid’s achievement. But, like everything teachers do, it’ll work best if it is focused on explicit goals and is well-constructed with clearly instructions. It also shouldn’t be so overwhelming it crowds out the other activities that make summer special. Resentment is not conducive to learning.

And, parents need to be behind the effort. Some parents complain that kids must have time to be kids. Summer is the best kid-time of all. Many children go to summer camps where they learn lots of important skills not covered in school. Many adolescents take on jobs that teach responsibility and provide them with money for leisure time during the school year.

My advice? Teachers, you need to be careful about what and how much summer homework you assign. Summer homework shouldn’t be expected to overcome a student’s learning deficits; that’s what summer school is for. Parents, if the assignments are clear and reasonable, support the teachers. When your child says “I’m bored” (what parent hasn’t heard this on a rainy summer day?) suggest they work on an assignment. Kids, don’t wait until the week before school starts to think about what you need to get done.

What Homework Can’t Do

Nancy Kalish is the co-author of “The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It.”

Summer homework sounds like a good idea…until you see how miserable a child looks as he slogs through that pile of book reports, math packets, journal entries, and other typical assignments. The summer load has grown significantly since we were kids. But a little hard work never hurt anyone, right?

Well in this case, it might. Schools should rethink summer homework, and not just because it stresses out kids (and parents). The truth is, homework doesn’t accomplish what we assume it does. According to a Duke University review of more than 175 studies , there is little or no correlation between homework and standardized test scores or long-term achievement in elementary school, and only a moderate correlation in middle school.

Do we want our children to start the year refreshed and ready to learn? Or burned out and resentful?

Some studies claim that students lose skills they don’t practice over the summer. However, if a child can’t regain his grasp of fractions with a brief review, maybe those skills weren’t taught well enough in the first place. Doing a mountain of math sheets without a teacher’s help — and perhaps incorrectly — is not the answer.

But there are a few things summer homework does accomplish effectively: It steals time away from other important aspects of learning such as play, which helps kids master social skills and teamwork. In addition, writing book reports means kids spend fewer hours being physically active, which is essential for good health and weight control, not to mention proper brain development.

Perhaps worst of all, summer homework affects how kids feel about learning and school. Do we want our children to start the year refreshed and ready to learn? Or burned out and resentful? It’s something every teacher should carefully consider.

Reversing the Summer Brain Drain

Mark Bauerlein is a professor of English at Emory University and the author of “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future.”

To the general question of whether or not schools should assign summer homework, the answer is, “Yes, most assuredly.” What the assignment consists of will vary with the student population, but some extension of learning into vacation time is sorely needed.

The reason stems not only from the brain drain of summer and the fog of texting that enwraps youths during leisure hours. It relates also to an attitude young people take toward education. In a word, they regard learning as a classroom thing, that’s all. They tie knowledge to the syllabus, not to themselves. They read and study to write the paper and ace the test, not to furnish their minds. Learning is to earn a high score and good grade, not to form responsible citizens and discerning consumers.

Students regard learning as a classroom thing, and spend their leisure hours text-messaging. Here’s how we can deal with that.

A good measure of the attitude is how often they talk to teachers outside of class. According to the 2008 National Survey of Student Engagement, the rate of college seniors who “Never” or “Sometimes” (two or three times a semester?) discuss readings and ideas with teachers reaches 72 percent.

At the secondary level, according to the 2007 American Freshman Survey, the rate of high school seniors who went on to college (the high performers) who talked to teachers less than one hour per week came in at 53.4 percent. That’s a 10 point rise over 1987’s tally.

The free-ranging, back-and-forth conversation with teachers that signifies a student’s interest in the subject didn’t strike the majority as important. And why should it, when the system encourages them to respect only how learning shows up on a transcript or a test result?

The outcome is unsurprising. Once the assignment is finished and class ends — poof! The knowledge goes away. It’s done its work. Why retain it? This explains why on assessments of general knowledge learned in high school, college freshman often score higher than seniors. Time hasn’t yet taken so high a toll on their learning.

To halt the decay, teachers need to change the attitude. This means inserting more out-of-class engagement with teachers and materials, including summer homework, but not linking them so closely to a grade. The goal is not to pile on more tasks and instill more “achievement-thinking.” It is, instead, to make knowledge firmer, and to attach a message which says:

“Life is short, and the years of school pass in a rush. This is your only chance to encounter deep ideas and complex histories with a mentor to help you through. The works of beauty and truth are not chores to slog through. They are the raw materials of mind and character, and they should shape not only your resume, but you, too.”

Procrastination and Busywork

Denise Pope is senior lecturer at the Stanford University School of Education and co-founder of Challenge Success , a research and student intervention project.

The problem with summer homework is a lack of buy-in from one of the main constituencies: the students. During the school year, the students don’t necessarily enjoy doing homework, but they understand it is part of their daily routine. In the summer, students expect, and often need, a break from this routine and the daily pressures that usually accompany it.

Why should we care if the students are bought in? We know from research that motivation plays a central role in engagement with learning and, subsequently, student achievement. If students are given choice and voice in the learning process, for example, they are more likely to want to learn the material and more likely to retain it.

Summer should be seen as a gift, an important time to explore new hobbies, work a summer job, gain independence.

When students are not motivated, the teacher –- or in the case of summer, the parent — often needs to become part of the homework equation, monitoring, reminding, cajoling to make sure the work gets done. In my community, many parents complain that they don’t want to serve as “homework police” in the summer, and many admit that they are as frustrated as their kids when it comes to summer assignments.

One parent complained that her third grade son had to read five books and write five book reports over the summer. The problem was that he hated the books and kept procrastinating, and the stress on the child and on the entire family over the nine weeks became “unbearable.” Other parents admit that their kids wait until the very last minute to sit down and do the work, usually a day or two before school starts up again, and then they are cramming to get it all done.

I have seen the research that shows that students lose valuable skills when they are not in school during the summer months. And I worry especially about the kids who will spend most of the summer inside, in front of TVs or video games, and will be wasting the value of this free time. However, summer homework fails to serve its purpose if it causes undue stress on kids and families, if it is done all at once in a last minute rush, or if it is viewed as meaningless busywork.

Summer rest and exploration is especially important these days, given the increased pressure on students from high-stakes testing, the increase in homework during the school year, and the busy-ness of the extracurricular lives of many of our kids. Ideally, summer should be seen as a gift, an important time to explore new hobbies, enjoy the outdoors, read for fun, work a summer job, take on an exciting challenge, gain independence, and foster deeper connections with family and friends. The learning that happens during these experiences is as important as the skills and content learned during the school year.

If we want students to use this time wisely and appropriately, we ought to educate them about the benefits of summer time and encourage them — perhaps even give an “assignment” — to use the break to pursue interests of their choosing. Then, when they get back to school in September, they can write about, discuss, or present their “summer learning” in a way that is meaningful to them.

The Risk of Falling Behind

Richard Allington is a professor of reading education at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

In some schools, it is common for students to be assigned teacher-selected books for the summer vacation months. I know of not a single study supporting this practice, but I do know of studies showing the various methods students use to convince teachers they did the reading even though they didn’t.

A basic problem with this old, and desperate, model of summer reading assignments is that only rarely do teachers (or schools) assign books that a typical kid would ever want to read.

Low-income kids lose about three months in reading proficiency every summer.

At the same time, research has also demonstrated, including with New York City school students, that students from low-income families rarely read during the summer while middle-class kids typically do. This difference accounts for roughly 80 percent of the gap in reading achievement that exists between rich and poor kids. By grade 9 that reading achievement gap is three to four years wide.

Middle-class ninth graders, on average, read at the ninth-grade level. Low-income ninth graders, regardless of ethnicity, read at the fifth- or sixth-grade level. On average, students from low-income families learn as much during the school year as kids from wealthier families — even in New York City. But every summer the lack of reading practice produces losses in reading proficiency, while doing some reading during the summer produces small gains.

The evidence is clear that how kids spend their matters. Low-income kids lose about three months in reading proficiency every summer. That means every three years they fall a year behind middle-class kids, even when their teachers are just as effective as the teachers middle-class kids have.

Several research studies have shown that simply giving low-income children books on the final day of school can stem summer reading loss. But these books must be books they can and want to read. Our studies allowed students to select the books from 500 or so titles we had picked to match student reading levels and interests. We spent about $40 per child per summer (about the same cost as a test preparation workbook). The kids each selected 12 books, which they got to keep.

I know there are readers thinking, “Why not just have these kids go to the public library to get their book?” While public libraries are essential, and good outreach programs from public libraries can increase summer reading for all children, those efforts may not get all kids to check out a dozen books every summer.

Parents (and teachers) are right to worry about whether students read during the summer. But assigning books is about the least effective strategy to achieve that goal. It is past time for schools to provide children with easy summer access to books they want to read.

Choosing Your Assignment

Elizabeth Birr Moje is a professor of education at the University of Michigan.

The question of how to prevent summer learning loss has plagued U.S. schools for years. There is no question that some level of skill is lost or diminished for a large number of children and youth over the summer months. In many cases, these skills are easily renewed as soon as students begin school again. But in some cases, the loss chips away at learning gains; this is particularly true for children and youth who find school learning difficult during the academic months as well.

Whether assigning vacation homework would help to diminish the effects of the summer learning loss is an open question, but an equally important set of questions revolves around what such “homework” would involve, how it would be “regulated” (i.e., would students choose or would they be forced to do homework?), and how it would be supported.

In general, we know that assignments that merely drill students on basic skills is less useful than homework that supports them in meaningful thinking and activity. Summer homework, in particular, needs to provide choice with guidance, be embedded in projects or activities that have a real purpose, connect students to networks that support making sense of the activities, and ensure that youth from all backgrounds and socioeconomic levels have equal opportunity to participate.

For example, if schools want to promote the maintenance of reading skills, then they should consider assigning reading lists that offer choices. Such lists should not only promote the reading of novels, but should include informational texts, short stories, poetry, newspaper and magazine articles and web blogs in both paper and digital forms.

Providing children and youth with guided choice reduces the likelihood that they will resent being forced to do the work over the summer months; encouraging wide reading prepares them for the reading demands of upper grades by building world and word knowledge.

Schools (or parents) should also build opportunities for students to discuss the readings, either through face-to-face or on-line discussions. Offering opportunities for discussion and even application of concepts can push students to read beyond their initial preferences as they offer texts to one another, thus diminishing the need to “force” students to read particular texts.

Without discussion, children and youth may complete assignments just to check them off the list, not really engaging with the ideas or learning new critical skills or knowledge.

Another possibility for summer homework is community service or work projects where students can learn new academic skills, and also practice those they have learned during the school year. Combining the use of these skills in meaningful social and workplace activity can be motivating for even young children. This kind of “homework” is more challenging to monitor, but the benefits to young people and communities are high.

Whatever the form of summer homework, it is only a good idea if efforts are made to make it meaningful, engaging, and accessible to all.

What Low Achievers Need

Tyrone Howard is an associate professor at the U.C.L.A. Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.

The utility of homework has been a sacred cow in many education circles for years. I think homework has become a practice that has continued on because it has been normalized in educational behavior. Homework should help to reinforce content or materials that teachers have taught or covered in class. But in many cases today, homework has been reduced to busy work that posseses minimal value in developing deeper understanding.

That said, assigning summer homework is a good idea in theory. Some researchers have documented that some students lose grasp of key reading and mathematical principles when they have not used them for a two to three month period.

A better approach than homework is to have more intensive, small learning community-type summer school programs that last four to six weeks.

But the issue becomes one of accountability and reinforcement of understanding. If teachers cannot get students to turn in homework during the school year, when they see them every day, what is the likelihood that they will get them to do it, and with accuracy, when they do not see them?

I do think that there is a need to reinforce key academic concepts and skills, especially for lower achievers, who tend to be students of color, and students from poor backgrounds. A better approach than homework over the summer is the more intensive, small learning community-type summer school programs that last four to six weeks. These programs allow students to have access to teachers in a smaller learning environment for three to four hours a day. The benefits, I believe, would be far greater than more mind-numbing homework.

Homework and Achievement

Harris Cooper offers more details about the link between homework and student achievement:

Homework’s effect on achievement is best gauged by experimental studies comparing students who are purposely assigned homework with students purposely assigned no homework but who are similar in other ways. The results of such studies suggest that homework can improve students’ scores on the class tests that come at the end of a topic. In five such studies, students assigned homework in 2nd grade did better on math, 3rd and 4th graders did better on English skills and vocabulary, 5th graders on social studies, 9th through 12th graders on American history, and 12th graders on Shakespeare.

Less authoritative are 12 studies that link naturally-occurring (not manipulated) amounts of homework to achievement. On the positive side, these studies used sophisticated statistical models to control for lots of other things that might influence the homework-achievement connection. The controlled factors have included the student’s ability level and family background and the teachers’ experience. These studies have the added advantage that they are often based on national samples and use measures of achievement such as grade point averages and standardized tests. They find a similar positive link between time on homework and achievement. But most of these studies were done with high school students.

Yet other studies simply correlated homework and achievement with no attempt to control for student differences. In 35 such studies, about 77 percent found the link between homework and achievement was positive. Most interesting though, these results suggested little or no relationship between time on homework and achievement for elementary school students. These inferior studies are at odds with the more trustworthy experimental studies mentioned above. But, if we assume that the experimental studies involved relatively short assignments, they do suggest too much homework for young kids might not be a good thing. (Too much homework might also not be good for adolescents but studies show assignments can be longer before reaching the point of diminishing returns.)

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When I was fourteen years old, I was working almost 60 hours a week. This is because, on top of the 40 hours of work we did at school, our teachers each assigned us one hour of homework per night. Four classes, times five days, equals another 20 hours of work.

I was conscientious enough to do this work; most of my fellow students blew it off, of necessity. If you were going to play a sport, or an instrument, or even have a social life, you had to. I barely had time after school to go for a quick run for fifteen minutes, and to wash the dishes after supper. That’s all I did, besides schoolwork.

This was not good for me or my fellow students. For the people who didn’t do the work, it taught that you could just blow off responsibilities. For me, it taught me that if I obeyed the teachers, I couldn’t play music, or a sport, or goof off at all after school.

I say: structure school so that the necessary work can go on during school hours. And for goodness sake, leave kids alone during the summer!!

In the summer children should be running and playing and swimming and camping and learning important interpersonal skills by creating activities of their own with their friends and sometimes peers who are not so friendly. They should go to the library and read as they please, IF they please. Travel to new places. Structured activities stifle creativity and stunt natural thought processes. Looking at the sky or a bug or a leaf or just day dreaming are not uselss activities. Time to wonder is VERY good for developing minds.

Think of all the inventors in our history who must have had time to wonder, “What if…?” Maybe Edison wanted to read into the night and the light of a candle wasn’t enough. Ben Franklin must have been curious about lightning. DaVinci must have been curious about everything. Children don’t have to have ALL their time regimented in order to become well educated. What is wrong with our society that we want to take the joy out of EVERYTHING?

No. Homework should NOT be assigned during the summer. But when it is assigned during the school year, I feel that discussions of homework should focus on the quality of the work instead of on the quantity or time limits set for it. For example, if homework was not graded and used only rarely and only when it really helped turn the kids onto learning, it could be a useful tool.

Too much homework that my own kids have done in the last ten years has been bland, non-creative, non-inspired, teacher-assigned busywork. Most of it seems to be about how well kids can follow the teacher’s directions, instead of how well kids can think for themselves. Is this really the best way to prepare our kids for the 21st century?

Check out my blog: East Bay Homework Blog – //eastbayhomework.blogspot.com/ and check out the film Race To Nowhere, //www.RacetoNowhere.com

The problem with summer homework is that there is little supervision or help. The children will do the works, but they’ll forget about them soon afterwards. If we really want to get serious about summer memory loss, we should send our kids to summer schools or tutoring.

I think it is more pertinent to ask what the purpose of such assignments is. If you are trying to inculcate a reading habit amongst these youngsters, you are a far way off. Burdening them with reading assignments is never going to work. This is particularly true of specified readings. I think it would be a better approach to let them set their own targets, of course after stipulating a bare minimum. Homework help at aafter.com

My answer to this question in general is NO. I am a rising junior at Bronx Science and I am dreading it. I have homework for three different classes. About 28 essays for AP US History , English assignments plus Research assignments as well. By going to this tough school, the school year is a pain in the glutens! i was hoping i would be able to relax and unwind my mind this summer by focusing on what I plan to do in the future but doing all these things inhibits my brain functions of thinking like a normal teenager. It is so sad teens who go to this school miss out on all the joy of being a teenager. It just sucks big time, I would rather write articles for the NYT criticizing anything in the world, besides doing summer homework!

I remember my days of school in India where the students would go to 4-6 hours of private tuitions everyday to try to finish their whole syllabus for the entire year BEFORE school even started just to get an edge.

So, if the US wants their kids to compete, assignments are hardly even enough ( bare minimum if you ask me)

Or you could just go on as always and hope for the best. The immigration policies have already made it impossible for International students with advanced degrees ( like me) to get jobs. Maybe that will protect American kids in the future too.

Yes, mandate summer homework if you want to train children to be available to their “job” every day, all day, even when they’re not compensated. (The new global economy!)

If I take a vacation, I expect to be on vacation. Children should have the same expectation of their free time. If educational theorists wish to create interesting, multi-sensory experiences (i.e,. camp, travel, nature walks) into the summer for a certain group of children, go to it. But, lay off the required summer reading lists, book reports, etc. It’s absurd. Children need more play opportunities, which will help them grow and mature, and give them a necessary break.

Nancy Kalish makes it seems like if kids have hw, they can’t go outside and have fun. There are 24 hrs in a day. It’s not like you would be spending 8 hrs a day doing summer hw. There is plenty of time for both. If you set aside 2 hrs a day for summer hw, that leaves the child 22 hrs to sleep, play and eat. I don’t see how those 2 hrs of hw would hurt the child.

I have taken summer school since I was in second grade. Every summer from June till 1.5 weeks before the new school year, I was in city summer school. I took two classes, one fun and one academic from 8am – 3pm. I do not know whether I would lose my math or reading skills over the summer since I was utilizing them year around. I am not good at math. If I didn’t take summer school, I am pretty sure that I would forget math pretty quickly. The subjects you don’t enjoy, you forget the fastest and the easiest.

I do not think that a math homework packet and doing 2-3 book reports during the summer for a third grader is unreasonable. The teacher could have a list of 50 books that the child could select from.

Children in American have 2.5 months of free time. 2.5 months to do 2-3 book reports and a math packet isn’t very much. The child procrastinating is the parent’s fault. It is up to the parent to make sure that the child is on track with his or her learning and homework. If you let your child wait until the last minute to do the homework, you are causing your child undue stress.

It is not a strange a idea to have the child set 1/2 – 1 hr a day to read. Maybe instead of video games or playing with the computer, the child could read a book.

Summer hw is done in other countries as well. In Japan, every kid has summer homework.

One size doesn’t fit all. Some kids may well benefit from summer homework, but others won’t. I expect that this would work best when the student has a role to play in selecting the assignment, or at least a choice from several alternatives.

Children can run , play and swim on the weekends. School should be 12 months a year. I think how different my life would have been if it hadn’t been for that 3 months of mostly inactivity with nothing to challenge the mind but countless rounds of gin rummy, and getting into trouble with the neighbor children. There can be JOY in learning. Nowadays, there is too much JOY in drugs, alcohol and trouble from neglect . Save our children, keep them in school.

Commenters ## 1 and 2 get it.

But the dramatic idea of Richard Allington, to give students a few books of their choice — any choice — sounds just right to me. If they take the books, it’s their lookout to read them or not. And since they have them right there, and chose them for themselves, they’re likely to read at least some. Without pressure. That’s what reading should be.

In many countries with higher achievements for children in school. The summer breaks are even longer. The method to fix education in the US today is not to make kids study all the time but to fix the US education system. Children need room to grow, by doing other things. Do we want happy kids or workaholics?

Summer homework and assigning things over breaks in general is a bad idea. My senior high always gave summer assignments which I of course procastinated on, so all summer I was stuck with the guilty feeling that I should be working on school work and parents who were happy to remind me. All this did was make summer less fun and strengthen my ability to ignor the “I should be working” feeling.

Kalish is spouting complete nonsense. She is a direct threat to American competitiveness, a living example of technological regression.

My son completed first grade in both Japanese and American schools. At the end of the first grade, the two curricula were even in mathematics. Then the American first graders had 3 months of nothing. The Japanese first graders had 6 weeks with daily maintenance homework. The American kids will never catch up.

You don’t need a Duke study to identify the source of the lag between the U.S. and Japan.

My son is now finishing the summer break of 4th grade in Japan. Over the last six weeks, he has completed about one hour a day in maintenance homework for mathematics and language. He has also completed two small projects, a one-page ‘newspaper’ and an art project, just enough to keep his hand warm. The projects were selected from a list of 100+ provided by the prefecture. For this list, the prefecture gathered the cooperation of fire departments, police departments, water departments, parks and museums to provide a selection of subjects. Most of the cooperating organizations will exhibit childrens’ projects during September.

And my son still has had plenty of time for TV, Legos, games, play at the childrens’ hall and travel – and to sing the Star Wars theme song, the Indiana Jones theme song, or any other ditty that comes to mind.

The above conversation either assumes or fosters the notion that a summer vacation is a given; a necessary recharging of the batteries; a time for play and socialization. I suggest that we rethink this long-standing and almost uniquely American tradion in light of our demonstrable educational distance behind so many other countries.

Now, I am not arguing that play and socialization are unimportant, but that we consider other ways of structuring our educational system that would allow for both play and continuous learning. I am not a professional educator, although I did a great deal of techincal teaching throughout my career, but my experience tells me that segmenting learning into distinct modules of extended, intense learning followed by extended, intense periods of play is not efficient. Education, like the learning it is intended to impart, should be an integral part of life. It should, among other things, develop a strong sense of its own value because it is a part of life, not just something to be done during rigidly specified times to satisfy rigidly specified requirements. All of life is about learning, whether from books or on the playground, and is a continual process.

Our education system should be year-round, with more, shorter breaks. I would argue that the same should be true of our work environment, but let’s leave that for another time. What I think is important, even crucial, is that learning be a continuous, integrated process – as it is in real life.

If summer vacations were not so long, kids wouldn’t need the additional homework over their breaks. The number of in class days per year keeps shrinking and it’s little wonder why other countries with longer, more continuous school years outshine our educational system.

Rather than having a long, continuous stretch of summer holidays, why not have school all year round, with more smaller breaks?

Joy can still be in learning–but often isn’t, in typical school assignments. My 8th-grade grandson (in a different state) will start school today (8/31) with his summer homework done–but only because a diligent parent worked with him and made the learning sessions –well, not necessarily fun, but reasonably enjoyable.

That said, there are often summer school enrichment opportunities -or chances for fun and learning through park district, YMCA, day camp, library events and well-planned reading programs with corresponding activities (my public library invites kids in on certain days to read to therapy dogs…reluctant readers often enjoy snuggling with a friendly pooch and reading aloud to the dog…

Unfortunately, too many parents are time-stressed and work stressed – if they haven’t lost jobs because of the economy – too many grandparents (like me) are at least 1000 miles away from their grandkids, or I’d help with the summer homework to make it fun and interesting… and well-meaning, well-intentioned parents who’d like to get involved just may not have the money to do the extras like museums, vacations, music lessons or group playing-instruments, or even, if appropriate and desired, vacation Bible school.

These things come with fees–and often, lack of public transportation. If it’s a choice between food on the table, often because a parent has a part-time or second job, and registering a child for a learning activity, I do understand why the homework or enrichment doesn’t happen.

I haven’t any answers – even taking a child to a nearby public park often requires time a working parent doesn’t have. That said, sometimes agencies have programs that parents can seek out and get their kids into–reasonably. For instance, my Chicago suburb’s community college offers Kid Zone enrichment things that are learning, but fun, for what in the suburbs seems a reasonable, modest price. Art activities, field trips, science stuff, music (“bucket band”) etc. Trained college and high school students are the leaders, supervised by adults, of course – but these give kids something more constructive–and, what’s best of all – FUN – during summer vacation.

Jan Bone, Palatine IL

Sometimes I wonder if school is just a way of breaking a person’s spirit in order to prepare them for a lifetime of desk work. I was raised in the 1960s, when kids had actual lives and were not sent to Japanese style cram schools, Kaplan prep, or hothoused in any way. During my free time, I ran, learned to balance on a 1 inch wide fence, collected sea creatures and put them in a bucket, dissected plants, stared deeply at bugs, learned to share my toys, played “war” and cowboys (no Indians, we all had six guns, even the girls), made clothes for Barbie, and learned to knit from a 70+ year old woman who told me about what brooklyn was like at the turn of the 20th century. Try to get that with some professionally trained “child development” type who wants to make sure your flow of social studies, whatever passes for math, or texts with pictures of plants and bugs.

This is simply more proof that a school schedule designed around a farming culture ( that we no longer practice) is ill equipped to support us in our current culture. The amount of knowledge necessary to succeed has gotten multitudes larger while the amount of class time available has increased only marginally. Summer assignments need be an option for children who are doing academically well, but a requirement for those who are not.

Kids aren’t reading enough? I must have missed those 1 mile midnight lines for 800 page Harry Potter books. However in the Dumbest Generations Author’s defense I’m sure the older generations used their summer time much more wisely than these idiotic spoiled children by spending every summer vacation day reading Tolstoy, going to math camps and volunteering at the local hospital.

Speaking of which kids aren’t proficent in math? Well maybe that means that they aren’t smart enough to come up with “fullproof” math equations that explain how the value of worthless securites are actually AAA bonds.

The kids today are alright. They are definitely harder working and more service oriented than my generation. Went back to college recently and thought it would be a breeze but the caliber of students being produced is alot better than it was just 15 years ago.

I wonder if time spent staring at the ceiling, sorting interesting colored pebbles on the beach, reading a few low-brow books and building tree houses provides something fundamental and invaluable to a child’s development? There is no denying that skills developed during the school year become ‘rusty’ and it would seem that the brain (certainly in the case of my children) re-wires and relegates unused skills into a fog. However, the summer break is a time during which a child is truly free of the formalized process in school in order to drift freely in his or her imagination. This stated, the television (and computer) should be left off and the child sent outdoors (it is summer afterall!). Looking at the responses of the ‘professionals’ in this column, it is clear that there is no consensus.

I think homework is way overdone. I think a ton of homework is mindless busy work that de-motivates poor students and is an unnecessary drain on motivated students.

I don’t care about scientific studies. If you look carefully at how most social research is designed, it is virtually always designed to get the results the study designers are looking for. A friend of mine did his PhD dissertation at the U. of MI, back in the early seventies, a quantitative, scientifically rigorous study of research dissertations — and proved that study designs heavily influence, and usually determined, results.

People who want to prove that homework is beneficial design, unconsciously, studies that will prove what they want to prove.

I am increasingly discouraged by the steady decline in education in this country. The challenge of poor performing students cannot be met only in the classroom. The quality of children’s lives outside of school is in steady decline. Americans work many more hours than Western Europeans, meaning parents spend less and less time with kids. The economy continues to drain the middle class, requiring both parents to work longer and longer hours. Kids end up passing their one precious life, their one precious childhood in front of televisions, online, tweeting and texting.

Kids — and parents — need meaningful quality time, with themselves, with their parents.

I’d like to see a study that compared what great academic student stars do in the summer compared to the kids whose math and reading skills atrophy in the summertime. I bet that study would prove that kids with a rich quality personal/family life do lots of educational things in the summer only they think they are just having fun.

I grew up in Chicago. Every week of every summer vacation while I was growing up, my dad took his kids and some of their friends on an outing in the city. My dad was very proud of all the wonderful institutions in a great city like Chicago and he seriously considered it part of his job as a parent to expose his children to everything. The only thing my dad didn’t care to do with us was take us to art museums . . . but my mom is an artist and she covered art. We didn’t just go to the science museum once in our childhood: we went several times a year. Plus the dinosaur museum. We went to the zoos countless times each year. Parks, amusement parks, the beach, the forest preserves that ring the city.

Not that many of the other kids in my neighborhood did stuff like this with their folks but, fortunately, in our Catholic Irish ghetto, most kids joined the boy or girl scouts and went on good outings that way.

What do parents do with their kids these days? It seems to me that parents don’t often spend lots of time just hanging out with their kids.

My kid and I had fun when we weeded the garden together. My kid and I had fun driving to the lumber yard and planning her new shelves, discussing the design, the measurements, getting her to participate. When we first went camping together, just me and my young daughter, as soon as she learned to read, I would have her navigate our way from the entry to the state park to our camp site. . . that was her first lesson in map-reading. Gradually, I encouraged her to plot all our routes, when we took interstate trips in the car, let her navigate the whole thing. The first time I took her to NYC, we flew there but then rented a car and she was very proud to be able to navigate us around that city.

I began to teach her how to count in the grocery store. If she wanted to buy apples, I began by saying “we will buy as many as you can count’. The first time we had a math lesson in produce, we only bought one apple. . . but then she immediately made sure she learned how to count higher so she could buy more apples.

I began to teach her how to reach in the grocery store, too. She was always begging me to buy stuff I didn’t want to buy. but then I thought of this trick: I would show her what the letter ‘C’ looked like, point her towards the breakfast cereals and promise to buy Cheerios if she could find a box where the product began with a ‘C’. This worked well for a long time. I say it worked because I never wanted to buy commercial cereal. Cheerios, which many parents consider one of the better, more healthy ones, is still loaded with sugar and cheap unnutritious carbs. It took her a long time to distinguish all the symbols and images on cereal boxes. But she figured out strawberry jam fast. The s was easy, the red jam was easy, the jars were low and easier for her to read.

I didn’t turn every minute of time with my kid into a lesson but pretty much every minute I spent with my kid was educational. I was always trying to think of ways to get her to pay attention, to get her to think about what she saw.

Actually, I used to be an art docent and the main goal for the tour program at my old art museum was, simply, to get the children to look closely, to try to see what really was on the canvas, to get them to see and think.

I made it a point to take my kid to a museum at least once a month. I also committed to taking her to an arts performance once a month. Cities are chock-a-block full of free arts experiences. Public concerts, theater in the parks. I know the economy is tighter these days, there are less free things. . . but the world is still stuffed with free or almost free great things to do with kids. There are always parks, free to walk in. Hills to climb. Neighborhoods to walk and observe. Bird watching is free.

In the third grade, Charlotte, a little girl in my daughter’s class had a very small birthday party. She was allowed to invite two other girls. The party? The girls went butterfly hunting with Charlotte’s mother and at the end, the girls had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and apple slices. That was the whole party.

Our whole society keeps trying to turn everything into metrics, worshiping the god of data. It is almost meaningless to discuss the value of summer homework if you aren’t going to discuss how children and their parents spend their summers. Our economy, which worships corporations and not humans, does not need all its citizens to be multi-dimensional, well-developed human beings seriously pursuing happiness. Our economy wants mindless wage slaves that pretty much act like cogs in the corporate machinery. Wool-gathering does not benefit the bottom line plus it is time most parents could be putting pins in widgets at the plant. Mindless wage slaves don’t become parents who have fun hanging out with their kids and exploring the world together.

If most kids spent their summers having close, loving, fun interactions with their families, their math and reading skills would not atrophy over the summer.

Let the children have summers free. It is a time when they can learn a lot of things that are not taught in the classroom. Family and friends relationships, exploring the world a bit without having to worry about tomorrow’s book report (in other words, reading a book for its own value, not in order to get a good grade).

Walking in the woods, or in the streets. Playing with the cats and dogs. Helping the folks with household work.

The so-called experts who evaluate “success” based on test grades are out of touch with reality. In my pre-collegiate school days, 1955 to 1967, there were many fellow students who weren’t stellar in their academic achievement levels. Yet more than a few of them have gone on to have interesting, productive, and successful lives. In some cases, very successful lives. Predicting success cannot be based just on GPA and SAT scores. Success is based on much more than the numbers.

What's Next

Summer homework may start as early as elementary school, but you don’t have to do it the way it’s always been done! Veteran educators like third-grade teacher Alycia Zimmerman have spent time thinking about how to make summer homework meaningful and interesting enough that students buy in—and even want to do it.  

Read on for Zimmerman’s summer homework game plan and ideas for how to make summer assignments more fun for everyone.

1. Try a New Student Meet and Greet

If possible, meet your incoming students before summer break (even if it’s virtual!) to instill the importance of summer learning.

At the end of the school year, coordinate with the teachers of your incoming students to swap classes for a period. Introduce yourselves to your future students and build excitement for the fun and challenging learning ahead and the very “grown-up” summer homework you will assign.

“We’ve been far more successful in instilling the importance of our summer assignments when presenting about it face-to-face rather than just sending a packet of directions home cold,” says Zimmernan. “The students sit on the edges of their seats as we talk about the importance of summer reading and our certainty that they will do everything they can to 'keep their brains healthy, pink, and strong’ over the summer.”

2. Emphasize the Importance of Summer Reading

Talk about the best summer assignment of all: diving into books!

Reading should be a treat, not a menial assignment, so Zimmerman doesn’t feel guilty about making reading the bulk of her summer homework. Here are some of her most effective strategies for promoting summer reading:

Have students fill out a log  to keep track of the books and other texts they read over the summer. It isn’t necessary to require a certain number of books or specific titles. Simply ask that they find books they love and spend lots of time reading them.

Have your current students write book reviews of their favorite titles to send home with your rising students. Invite your current students to serve as reading ambassadors and speak to the younger students about the importance and joys of reading. When coming from slightly older peers, the message is very well received.

And of course: Sign your students up for the Scholastic Summer Reading Program ! From May 9 to August 19, your students can visit Scholastic Home Base to participate in the free, fun, and safe  summer reading program . As part of the program, kids can read e-books, attend author events, and keep Reading Streaks™ to help unlock a donation of 100K books from Scholastic – distributed to kids with limited or no access to books by Save the Children. 

3. Share Fun and Educational Activities

Direct your students to fun (and educational) activities.

When considering other homework, the best options are activities that students will be motivated to do because they’re entertaining. 

Give your incoming students the “everything is better in moderation” speech so they understand that they shouldn’t play hours of computer games every day this summer. If possible, send them home with printable and book-based packs to polish their skills for the year ahead (you can even pair these with your own assignments): 

4. Connect Through the Mail 

Stay connected with your students over the summer through cards.

Giving incoming students the opportunity to connect with you and with each other can motivate them to complete summer assignments. Here’s one plan for connecting via letters:

Have your incoming students mail you a letter of introduction. Explain that you want to hear about their summer activities, their hobbies, their families, and anything special they want you to know before the school year begins.

When you receive letters from your students, send a postcard back with a brief response. Tell them a bit about your summer plan, and let them know you can’t wait to see them in the fall. 

Encourage them to write again!

You can also pair up students and have them write to each other over the summer. In September, they can bring their pen pal letters to class to display on the bulletin board.

Take advantage of everyone’s increasing familiarity with virtual resources by connecting online, too! Post a short video, article, or question once a week on your classroom's online platform, and invite both incoming students and rising former students to write their thoughts in the comments section. Be sure to moderate their comments and enjoy their back-and-forth dialogues as they engage with each other.

Get started by shopping the best books for summer reading below! You can find all books and activities at The Teacher Store .

• General Post

SUMMER SCHOOL VS SUMMER BREAK: PROS AND CONS OF A SUMMER SCHOOL EDUCATION

At the end of a busy semester of study, you may not be thinking ahead to summer school. That’s to be expected. Many students view summer as their chance for a break, not a chance to continue their studies.

Yet summer school can have quite a few benefits that are worth considering. If you are on the path toward completing a degree, don’t discount this option to do so a little faster. By weighing the pros and cons of summer school, you can make the choice that best fits your educational goals.

PRO: LIGHTEN UP YOUR FALL AND SPRING SEMESTER LOAD

If you consider summer school as a third semester, you might be able to take fewer classes during the fall and spring semesters. If you are nearing the end of your degree and find that the coursework is getting harder, pushing some courses to summer school lets you take a more bearable load in the fall and spring semesters. If you find that your semesters are just getting too hard, and don’t want to graduate later, then consider this strategy.

CON: SUMMER SCHOOL COURSES MOVE QUICKLY

When you take a course in summer school, you often have to complete a full semester of study in four to six weeks. This means your professors have to pack more into each day than they would during the spring and fall semesters. Sometimes the classes are longer, and other times the homework is more intense. You will have tests and quizzes with more regularity. Make sure you’re ready for this level of intensity. Make sure you use the right strategies to stay focused on your studies if you take a summer school course.

PRO: YOU CAN GRADUATE EARLY

College is expensive, and the more time you spend in college, the longer it will take to fully launch your career. When you take some classes in summer school, you often will be able to graduate early. Graduating early also means you won’t be competing with all of the classmates in your major. If you are living on campus, early graduation also lets you save some money on room and board.

CON: SUMMER SCHOOL CAN COST MORE

Sometimes summer school costs more than schooling during the regular semester. If you are on a scholarship, check the terms of the scholarship carefully. It may not cover summer courses. Similarly, if you have funds through a work-study program, your work position may not be available during the summer. You’ll may also have to pay for your room and board during the summer if you stay on campus.

One way to get around some of these added costs is to take these courses online from home or at your local community college, then transfer them to your university. If you choose this route, always check first to see if they will transfer.

PRO: ONLINE COURSES GIVE FLEXIBILITY

The rise in online education makes summer college classes more attainable in many programs. Students can study online during the summer term and still go home to work jobs and get paid for their efforts. If you are able to take advantage of online courses, this can make summer school affordable and flexible.

CON: CLASS OPTIONS MAY BE LIMITED

Summer school class options may be limited. First, professors, like students, enjoy summer break, so they may not offer as many courses during this term. Second, summer school is very popular, and so classes that are offered may fill quickly. If you decide that summer school helps you reach your graduation goals, sign up for the classes you need early.

PRO: GET THOSE GENERAL EDUCATION CLASSES OUT OF THE WAY

General education—the English, math, and history classes that everyone takes, regardless of their major—can be a bit of a drag during college, especially when you want to focus on the classes in your major that teach what you’re passionate about. Summer school gives you the ability to get those gen ed classes out of the way in a streamlined manner. By finishing these mandatory classes in summer school, you can spend your semesters focusing on learning the things that drive your passion.

CON: SUMMER SCHOOL CAN CREATE BURNOUT

College life is intense. You spend many hours of the day studying and researching. Sometimes, you just need a break. When you stick with the grind, even in the summer, you may be more prone to burnout.

PRO: SUMMER WORKS WELL FOR INTERNSHIPS

If you find yourself on the verge of burnout, don’t discount the thought of using summer to complete some educational requirement. Instead of coursework, consider the summer term as the chance to complete a required internship. You can gain valuable on-the-job training, without demanding academics, and still check off some requirements for your degree. Scoring a summer internship can be one of the most valuable parts of your education experience.

CON: SUMMER SCHOOL MEANS LESS OPPORTUNITY TO WORK

Many students use the summer months to work and raise money for the coming semester. If you take a full load of classes during the summer, and those classes are more academically intense because of their shortened nature, you may not have as much time as you need to work. If you need the income from a summer job to pay for your tuition in the fall semester, and you have a good job opportunity available, consider carefully if adding the demands of summer school is wise. That said, online courses and programs can give you the flexibility to work a job while attending summer school, so options exist that can help you do both.

PRO: LESS RISK OF “SUMMER SLIDE”

All students, from elementary school through grad school, who take a significant chunk of time off of their studies are at risk for what educators call the “summer slide.” This happens when they lose valuable learning or study skills over the summer break. When you take summer school, your brain stays engaged with your learning and this risk lessens.

CON: YOUR TEACHERS MAY NOT BE THE SAME

During summer school, courses are often taught by adjunct professors, not the full-time faculty you spend time with during the school year. These teachers are usually qualified for their position, but they may not have the teaching experience of full-time instructors. This could impact the quality of your summer education.

So, what’s the bottom line? Summer college classes can be a great way to get some of your courses out of the way, graduate early, and enjoy a less intense fall and spring schedule, but they can get in the way of rest and jobs. In the end, each student will need to weigh these pros and cons and consider their overall goals for education before deciding to take summer classes.

Source: https://www.ucumberlands.edu/blog/summer-school

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The truth about homework in America

by: Carol Lloyd | Updated: February 9, 2023

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Not excited about homework? We can hardly blame you. But how families handle homework in America can have a huge impact on their child’s short-term and long-term academic success. Here’s a glimpse at how American families approach homework, and some tips that may help you decide how to handle homework in your home.

Model how much you value your child’s education

Think of your child’s nightly homework as a time to model how much you value your child’s learning and education. Get in the habit of asking your child what homework they have each evening, looking over their homework when they’re done each night, praising their hard work, and marveling at all that they are learning. Your admiration and love is the best magic learning potion available.

Set up a homework routine American parents who want their children to graduate from high school and go to college take learning at home seriously. They turn off the TV and radio at homework time. They take away access to video games and smartphones. They make sure the child gets some exercise and has a healthy snack before starting homework because both are shown to help kids focus. When it’s time for homework, they (try to) ensure their child has a quiet place where they can focus and have access to the grade-appropriate homework basics, like paper, pencils, erasers, crayons, and tape for kids in younger grades and calculators and writing materials for kids in older grades.

Helping with homework when you don’t read/speak English

So how can you help with homework if you can’t read your child’s homework because it’s in English — or because the math is being presented in a way you’ve never seen? If you can’t understand your child’s homework, you can still do a lot to help them. Your physical presence (and your authority to turn off the TV) can help them take homework time seriously. Your encouragement that they take their time and not rush through the work also will help. Finally, your ability to ask questions can do two important things: you can show your interest in their work (and thus reinforce the importance you place on learning and education) and you can help your child slow down and figure things out when they’re lost or frustrated. A lot of learning happens when children have a chance to talk through problems and ideas. Sometimes, just describing the assignment or problem to you can help the solution click for your child.

What’s the right amount of homework?

It’s often in first grade that kids start receiving regular homework and feel stressed and lost if they don’t complete it. If your child is having trouble adjusting to their new routines, know that it’s not just your child. Families all across America are having the same issues in terms of figuring out how to create quiet, focussed time for a young child to read, write, and do math inside a bustling home. In first grade, your child will likely be asked to do somewhere between 10 and 30 minutes of homework a night, sometimes in addition to 20 minutes of bedtime reading. ( The National PTA’s research-based recommendation is 10 to 20 minutes of homework a night in first grade and an additional 10 minutes per grade level thereafter.) If your child is getting a lot more than that, talk to your child’s teacher about how long your child should be spending on homework and what you can do to help.

Comparing U.S. homework time to other countries

If you’ve come from another country and recall your childhood homework taking less time, you may think it’s because you’re foreign. The truth is, most parents who grew up in the U.S. are feeling the same way. In the past few decades homework for younger grades has intensified in many schools. “The amount of homework that younger kids — ages 6 to 9 — have to do has gone up astronomically since the late ’80s,” says Alfie Kohn, author of the 2006 book The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing. So if you feel surprised about the quantity of homework your child is bringing home, you’re not alone.

According to an international study of homework, 15-year-olds in Shanghai do 13.8 hours of homework per week compared to 6.1 hours in the U.S. and 5.3 hours in Mexico and 3.4 hours in Costa Rica. But here’s the thing: academic expectations in the U.S. vary widely from school to school. Some American elementary schools have banned homework. Others pile on hours a night — even in the younger grades. By high school, though, most American students who are seriously preparing for four-year college are doing multiple hours of homework most nights.

Not into homework? Try this.

Homework detractors point to research that shows homework has no demonstrated benefits for students in the early elementary grades. “The research clearly shows that there is no correlation between academic achievement and homework, especially in the lower grades,” says Denise Pope, senior lecturer at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education and the author of the 2015 book, Overloaded and Underprepared: Strategies for Stronger Schools and Healthy Successful Kids .

On the other hand, nightly reading is hugely important.

“One thing we know does have a correlation with academic achievement is free reading time,” says Pope. “We know that that is something we want schools to encourage.” Since the scientific evidence shows the most impact comes from reading for pleasure, don’t skip bedtime reading. If your child is not being given any homework, make sure to spend some of that extra time reading books in either English or Spanish.

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Home > Student Resources > How Does Online Summer School Work

How Does Online Summer School Work

Summer is right around the corner. While everyone is undoubtedly excited about the summer weather, many students are preparing for online high school courses. First-time online school students may be wondering how online summer school actually works. We have the rundown for you.

First, we can tell you what online summer school isn’t.

Online summer programs do not mean that students lose their summer. On the contrary, students are able to set their own schedule, move at their own pace, and take summer courses wherever they have an internet connection. They can enjoy all of the wonderful things that summer offers while also learning full time.

Summer courses aren’t just for those students who need credit recovery. While online credit recovery courses are great to take during the summer, they aren’t the only things online school offers. Online summer school allows students to get a jumpstart on advanced academic courses so that they are adequately prepared for college.

How It Works

Unlike traditional schooling during the school year, online summer school often requires a completely separate application and admission. Because online schooling offers the opportunity to work from anywhere at nearly any time, the separate application will allow online school corporations to track, record, and grade students effectively so that each student receives the credit(s) they have earned.

Online summer school providers will likely have prospective students or parents create an account before moving forward with an application. This is largely to ensure that enrollment is safe and secure for all parties involved.

Then, prospective students or parents will complete an enrollment application, likely with general information about the student, the family, access to the internet, and why the student would like to enroll in the program. The student and parent(s)/guardian(s) will then be told if their student has been successfully enrolled in the online program.

Also during this process, students will likely have to know what summer courses they’d like to take. Online summer school programs often offer courses in math, English, social studies, science, and more depending on the program. This often means planning during the school year well in advance of the registration/enrollment date.

Once summer classes begin, students and parents will need to stay up to date with all assignments, assessments, and teacher communications through whichever online portal the summer school program uses.

Student success is always going to be the goal of any online education program, and courses are designed to facilitate that student success. Even though interactions may not be face to face in online education, students and parents can rest assured that they will get quality one-on-one help with any struggles.

What Students Should Expect

Students in online school programs often have worries about what they should expect from the experience. After being accustomed to traditional full-time schooling, the transition to online schooling can be a bit of a shock. For many first time online students, virtual schooling comes as a welcomed change.

Online students should expect to have far more freedom than a traditional school. Students will largely be able to select the times they spend on courses, the pace at which they complete their work, and how they choose to organize their work.

Students can expect to make organization a priority in their online schooling. Staying organized is essential for success in more than just online high school courses. Because students have no face-to-face interaction with teachers or peers, it’s on each individual student to stay organized and up to date with their courses, homework, and teacher/peer communication.

Communication is key during an online course. Because students don’t interact with their teachers directly, active and open communication is even more important than in traditional schooling. Each student works at their own pace and in their own style. Communicating that pace and work style with their teachers is crucial for online learners.

Students can also expect distractions to occur while they are trying to work on their online schooling. In the age of technology, this is completely normal. However, online students will need to be able to effectively reduce distractions around them in order to succeed. This is easier said than done, but it is achievable with the right discipline.

Why Choose Online?

Students who attend a virtual summer school receive accredited courses online, rather than attending school at a physical location.

State-certified teachers deliver a rigorous curriculum that correlates to state standards and provides students with a variety of innovative learning materials and good resources. Teachers are heavily involved in each student’s learning experience and prioritize tailoring instruction to fit each individual student’s needs and learning style.

Students participate in a virtual classroom from the comfort of their own homes – or anywhere else Internet access is available. There’s no school bus ride – and there’s no making up snow days.

Due to the flexibility online summer school provides, many students also enjoy being involved in outside extracurricular or volunteer activities or pursuing their athletic or creative talents and passions, without being stressed or over scheduled.

At Achieve Virtual, we put students first. Our comprehensive approach to online education allows us to give students the freedom they need to achieve the goals they set. Whether a student is taking summer school for credit recovery or to get ahead, Achieve Virtual can help.

Achieve Virtual Education Academy is Indiana’s first public virtual high school operated by a local Indiana school district. Students have the option to accelerate learning, recover lost credits or earn a complete Indiana Core 40/Academic Honors High School Diploma. Study when it’s convenient. Attend full-time for free. Get help from teachers as you need it.

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• LASA Summer 2024 Strength & Conditioning
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Athletics would like to welcome you to LASA parents and students!  We will have Summer Strength & Conditioning on campus beginning June 3rd through July 25th.  It is open to all LASA Students and incoming students, not just athletes.  The times for SAC Camp are, Monday—Thursday 8a — 10a.

If your student is interested in playing a sport, they can get additional instruction from the coaches for that sport during Sport Specific Instruction from 10:30a—11:30a

We also have several students that said they are interested in playing football for LASA.  Beginning next Monday April 29th through May 3rd from 4:30p – 6:30p, we will have Spring Football Camp.  They will get a small taste of LASA Football.  This is a non-contact camp, we will go over skills & drills, and also start learning the new playbook. It will be a go way for you student to get started.

There are QR Codes on the Athletic flyer to sign-up for each of these programs.

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