Growing concern among educators about the negative effects of summer vacation on students’ educational achievement has lead to the development of out-of-school-time (OST) programs. Loss of academic skills and knowledge attributable to being away from a directed learning environment over the summer months is referred to as summer learning loss. All children are susceptible to summer learning loss however, research often show that low-income students tend to lose two to three months of reading ability during the summer while their middle-class peers either maintain or make slight gains in their reading abilities.
Research also suggests that this loss is greatest during elementary grades and on average, research findings show that children typically
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Thus, children reading below grade level in grade-3 often fall behind in their academic development, making it increasingly more difficult to keep up with coursework as they progress in their schooling. Furthermore, falling behind in school has been linked to higher rates of school dropout, which suppresses individual earning potential as well as the nation’s competitiveness and general productivity.
Several factors contribute to low reading proficiency. At a minimum, children must be ready to succeed when they get to school (cognitively, socially, emotionally, and physically) before they can learn there. And they need to have high-quality learning opportunities, beginning at birth and continuing in school and during out-of-school time, including summers, in order to sustain learning gains and not lose ground.
Roughly 19.1% of Saskatchewan’s population are aged 0 to 14 years and between 2006 and 2011 this population grew by 5.4%. Here in Regina, 1 in 3 children are not fully ready to learn on the first day of school and as a result these children are lagging behind in school and many are not finishing high
With such high numbers of adolescents falling below basic in reading, illiteracy is a battle that must be fought head on. The largest dilemma with the struggle is the number of variations that cause adolescents to become reluctant, unmotivated or struggling readers. Fortunately, a large number of strategies exist to encourage and strengthen readers of all ages, proving that adolescence is not a time to give up on faltering students. Rather, it is a time to evaluate and intervene in an effort to turn a reluctant reader into an avid one (or near enough). Ultimately, educators must learn to properly assess a student’s strengths and weaknesses (Curtis, 2009) and pair them with the proper intervention techniques. If one method does not work, countless others exist to take its place.
The summertime is when kids play outside and do whatever they want. Some kids even go to day care or their friends’ house to do something different, “Many children go to summer camps where they learn many of important skills not covered in school” (Cooper 3). Doing work in the summer that does not interest them will make kids despise summer. It also will not let the kids do want they want to do in peace, because they will worry about the huge assignment they still have to finish, “…the backbreaking obligation to read Charles Dickens blighted June, ravaged July obliterated August” (Queenan,1). Some might argue that the long summer will make the children forget what they learned, but if the students cannot relearn what they already knew in a month or less, that means that they are not being taught correctly. In general, summer reading makes a students' summer into more school time, which is not helpful to them.
Long-Term Trends in Student Reading Performance. Jan. 1, 1998. Web. The Web. The Web.
Aitken, N., Webber, C. F., Lupart, J., Scott, S., & Runté, R. (2011, July). Assessment in Alberta: six areas of concern. In The Educational Forum (Vol. 75, No. 3, pp. 192-209). Taylor & Francis Group.
Reading, writing, math, science, and other skills learned in school are instrumental for a child to have in order to be successful both in higher education and in life. Many factors contribute to a student’s acquisition of these skills such as their learning environment, preschool education, mental and emotional development, parental involvement, and dedication to learning. The issue that many young children are facing, however, is that all of these factors can be greatly influenced by the Socioeconomic Status (SES) of their family. Unfortunately, up until recently it was virtually unknown how teachers could help these “at risk” children, which caused an increase in the likelihood of children dropping out of school or repeating a grade. However, it is now becoming clear that there are ways that educators can help ensure children have successful academic careers and lead better lives.
Students who are enrolled in a year-round school attend school for 180 days, the same number of days as students on a traditional calendar schedule. A year-round school calendar is formulated into nine-week quarters. Each quarter is separated by a three-week break called an intersession. There is still a summer vacation , but at four or five weeks, it is less than half that of a traditional school summer break, and does not provide enough time for students to completely forget what they learned all year. This solution actually reduces the problem. This school system has been proven to have positive effects on student achievement, especially for students with learning disabilities. The goal of year-round schooling is to create continuous or extended learning by adding hours to the days and days to the year. According to the benefits of year round education article, “Fifty years ago, most American households were supported by a working father, while mothers were expected to stay at home. However, the women’s movement of the 1970’s combined with the rise in divorce rate and the high cost of living, lead to a decline of stay at home mothers.”First, The shorter vacations implemented by year-round education and intersession are helpful to today’s working parents because it is a less expensive alternative to daycare or summer camps. Also, parents and teachers can schedule vacations
Us kids go through a lot during summer we focus on many things like work, finding extra curricular activities to do during the summer and trying to help our parents around the house. In her essay “School’s Out for Summer”, she states how if some parents can’t schedule these activities they set their children in front of a T.V. which shows that us kids don’t like to go outside during the summer when school’s out. Her purpose for writing this was to show us how our parents have to deal with us the whole summer when school’s out and we don’t want to do anything because we want to sit in the house and do nothing all summer long which can lead us to forget everything we wanted to do over the summer when we go back to school. During her essay she gives some details on world hunger in many small cities that rarely don’t have a school kids go to learn.
Literacy, or the capability to comprehend, translate, utilize, make, process, assess, and speak information connected with fluctuating settings and displayed in differing organizations, assumes an essential part in molding a young's persons trajectory in life. The ability to read speaks to a key factor of scholarly, social, and financial success (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). These abilities likewise speak to a fundamental segment to having a satisfying life and turning into an effective worker and overall person (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1999). Interestingly, recent studies have demonstrated that low reading skills lead to critical hindrances in monetary and social achievement. As stated by the National Center for Education Statistics, adults with lower levels of reading skills and literacy have a lower average salary. Another study evaluated that 17 to 18 percent of adults with "below average" literacy aptitudes earned less than $300 a week, though just 3 to 6 percent of adults with "proficient" reading abilities earned less than $300 a week (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998).
The causes of reading difficulties often arise because of learning disabilities such as dyslexia, poor preparation before entering school, no value for literacy, low school attendance, insufficient reading instruction, and/or even the way students were taught to read in the early grades. The struggles that students “encounter in school can be seen as socially constructed-by the ways in which schools are organized and scheduled, by assumptions that are made about home life and school abilities, by a curriculum that is often devoid of connections to students’ lives, and by text that may be too difficult for students to read” (Hinchman, and Sheridan-Thomas166). Whatever the reason for the existence of the reading problem initially, by “the time a [student] is in the intermediate grades, there is good evidence that he will show continued reading g...
America’s children have found increasing difficulty with school. The curriculum in schools is claiming to be harder in higher levels, but the lack of focus and direction in the younger grades has made for decreased grade levels and lower mastery in several basic areas such as math, writing, and reading skills. Standardized test scores are at an all time low, as increasing amounts of children progress through the educational system having not at...
Low- income children 's school districts often lack the money to provide these children with resources, and therefore the children will not get these resources any other way. Devarics (2011) stated, "Only 22 percent of local districts reported offering pre-kindergarten or other early learning programs for low-income children" (para.8). Denying this resource affects the many children who reside where that 78 percent of local districts do not offer pre-kindergarten, because many go to kindergarten not knowing minimal skills required. As a consequence, this postpones their education even further. Moreover, Davarics (2011) also stated, "Many schools aren 't educationally where they need to be, which ultimately means many students won 't graduate ready to succeed in a career or in higher education," (para.11). Many low-income schools do not offer activities such as, art, music or sports, because of the lack of money, facilities, or staff. They are not supplied with the right tools and have poor access to computers and Internet. They also do not offer rigorous courses at many of these schools, and have less qualified, trained, and less experienced staff that cannot proficiently teach such courses. Going to school with these disadvantages, can make these children unmotivated to continue an education where there will be little educational progress.
The program works with more than 100 schools in seven states. The program is geared toward students from low-income families. The statistics for children’s literacy in the United States are astonishing. “In 2011, just thirty-four percent of the nation’s fourth graders in public school could read proficiently” (National Center for Education Statistics, 2011). The program itself has had exponential success.
One important lesson of the past decade, however, is just how difficult it is to close longstanding achievement gaps experienced by students from low-income families, students with disabilities, English Learners, and racial and ethnic minorities. We know from research that these gaps often start during the first years of life, even before children enter our education system, with children from low-income families starting kindergarten, on average, 12 to 14 months behind their peers in language development and pre-reading skills.
Scott, T. M., & Shearer-Lingo, A. (2002). The effects of reading fluency instruction on the academic and behavioral success of middle school students in a self-contained E/BD classroom. Preventing School Failure, 46, 167-173.
Lost knowledge can be a big deal. Astoundingly, over 50% of the achievement gap between high income and low-income students has to do with lost summer learning opportunities. Students living in poverty experience summer slide more than any other student group. Lost summer opportunities can make the difference of earnings thousands of dollars over a lifetime to