Summer slide: What is it? How can parents help prevent it?

SHERIDAN – While summer provides students a well earned break after the school year, it also brings the chance of them experiencing the summer slide.

Summer slide is the name for children’s loss of the skills they learned during the school year. Those skills may lose their sharpness because kids don’t have the consistent exposure or access to rigorous educational opportunities, said Arvada-Clearmont 7-12 special education teacher Adam Georgeson.

“That makes it harder to get back into the routine of the next school year, because it just leads to, you know, the first week or two of school, knocking off the rust before real good instruction can occur,” Georgeson said.

According to a 2022 article from children’s book publisher Scholastic, younger children are more likely to experience the most learning loss because they are in a crucial stage in their development. Children in third to fifth grade lost, on average, about 20% of their school-year gains in reading and 27% of their school-year gains in math during summer break, according to the Scholastic article.

Sheridan County School District 1 Literacy Coordinator Susie Mohrmann believes there are various ways parents can provide meaningful learning opportunities for their children throughout the summer.

“I think that probably the easier thing that sometimes parents don’t think about, and I know I didn’t, is having experiences and using vocabulary with kids is almost as meaningful as reading a book with kids. That importance of building background knowledge at any time of year, experiencing new things and learning new vocabulary is super important,” said Mohrmann. “That’s an easy thing parents can do over the summer is just experience different things, new things and talk about things and listen to podcasts on different topics.”

Georgeson has partnered with parents in the past to help prevent the summer slide and has a few recommendations on how parents can help their children avoid it.

“I’ve worked with parents on what we can do if we don’t necessarily want the kids going to summer school and what can we do to ensure that they retain as much as possible before the next school year, so they can just start stronger. The thing that we talked about is just daily, intentional reading, whatever it is, (and) it doesn’t even have to be sitting down for an hour and really digging deep into a book. Even something as simple as 15 minutes a day, but just really (being) mindful of the reading and something that kids want to read, too,” Georgeson said.

Sheridan County School District 2 Superintendent Scott Stults, in an email to The Sheridan Press, shared the district’s recommendations to reduce the impact of the summer slide.

Those recommendations included reading, playing games, participating in learning opportunities and engaging with your children.

District 2 believes board and card games promote critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration and executive functioning skills, Stults said in the email.

“All of these opportunities stimulate quality intellectual, physical and social growth while reducing or eliminating screen time. Consistently engage children in more minds-on and hands-on activities,” Stults said.

Sheridan County Fulmer Public Library Youth Services Supervisor Zola Shockley leads the summer reading program at the library and believes camps and programs like the summer reading program can be beneficial for youth.

“I think that camps are really beneficial when it comes to continuing education and keeping that going throughout the summer because it’s a reminder that learning and curiosity are fun and that you can have specialized approaches to things,” Shockley said. “Just getting that curiosity peaked again and remembering that learning is fun and doesn’t have to be whatever the standards are at school every single time and being encouraged to follow your curiosity and ask questions.”

Mohrmann believes it ultimately comes down to parents communicating with their children and having a variety of summer learning experiences.

“Those that love actual physical books, maybe they’re going to find something at the library for them. Those that love sports and travel around because their kids play baseball or softball, you know, they’re going to have different experiences, but I think it just comes down to talking with kids about what they’ve learned and what’s new that they can add to their schema,” Mohrmann said. “Now I feel like you can take any topic that anyone is even marginally interested in and find a good podcast that will help expand that view. Listening to that podcast together, talking about it and asking those critical thinking questions… that would be a real easy win for parents to prevent the summer slide.”