from Terry Haik
With so many things to do and subsequent loss of academic structure, most studies show that children read less in the summer. How less depends (you will read this word a lot in this publication) about age, income level, geographical region and other factors.
And how bad you think it is to fall assessments to the student’s achievements due to the summer vacation depends on your perspective. But let’s assume that you are in favor of pressing academic achievements and improved test results that seem to reflect it. What do you need to know?
Well, a first look at the study. As with many topics in education, you can find wild different results from research that support equally more interpretations and assumptions. Do you want to fund the 1: 1 program? There are research somewhere to support it. Against this idea? There are probable data somewhere that agree with you. But overall studies on a summer loss of reading say one of the two things:
Summer tends to reduce academic achievements
What it affects and how it depends on the area of content, income level, age and more.
The problem of non -transmissible knowledge: When students study non -ertow things
For example, in the “effects of the summer vacation on the results of the achievement tests: a story and a meta-analytical examination”, the studies concluded that “summer loss equals about one month on an equivalent scale at a class level or a tenth of a standard deviation and at all.
But the complication of general statements about seasonal changes in educational results and literacy are socio -economic problems. The authors in the study above found that “a significant difference was also found on the level of income on the effect of summer vacation on reading recognition assessments, low-income students show a significant loss in the recognition of reading in the summer, while medium-income students showed a month. About 1.5 months.
And level of class? Other studies have found that the younger students (eg in kindergarten) often have better results in the fall of the spring, while the older elementary students (eg 4 and 5th grade) turn this trend. The “summer failure” is not a simple problem then, complicating efforts to make simple recommendations.
Rethinking “Loss of Training”
In 2014 a post for EdutopiaI provided basic recommendations-from launching digital book clubs to sending texts at home with high interest or even simply maintaining a connection as often as possible with students via email or social media. How useful these ideas are depends on how old your students are, their relative access to technology, whether they are on vacation, your amount of free time and more.
One of the most universal training models in each context is to encounter a new idea and then apply this idea in some way, whether by close to transfer or far. The daily reading model, then to do something as a result of the read, can provide an easy frame for authentic training outside the classroom.
Reading Robert Frost? Extract the topic from “good fences make good neighbors” and Do something With him.
Greet a neighbor.
“Tear” a metaphorical wall between you and an old friend or family member.
Make a picture of a wall that transmits the Frost message.
Create a song that is the opposite of tone, but the same on the subject.
Put a “fence” to set a solid border in connection.
In other words, read something worth reading, think about what you read, then use this reading to inform your behavior in the real world in a way that is authentic and useful to you.
The problem of non -transmissible knowledge
If what a student learns has a very little “portability” to your life (and notice here, I do not mean transfer in the sense of applying something you have learned in A new and unfamiliar contextBut more recently take something you learned here and applied it there)There are significant costs and consequences. And pay attention, this type of transfer is not so simple. In fact, to use what has been learned is necessary for a student to think about what has been learned, to have an idea of the usefulness of this knowledge, and to demonstrate vision or imagination or creativity by using it.
This is a lot and this is in a pronounced contrast with “long queues”, an overview of traditional academics who take the standard creation and design of curricula, where the value of what is learned is low at the beginning and is perceived to increase over time as students prepare to enter the universities or “workforce”.
The roots of each student are hidden in his or her community – their families, digital networks and preferred communities. Summer is a time when students have More of the opportunity to be closer to these roots. Reducing the “summer loss” can begin by helping them see what they need to gain during this time away from the classroom by searching and using information to improve their extremely local circumstances. On -site education. Self -tuitionS Creator of education. Open projects. Personal challenges.
But why limit this thinking to summer? The certification of the work that students do in the classroom is critical – and not only so that students improve their academic results, but so we can know that academics are actually service them.
The school is successful only to the extent that it is able to change the arc of the life of students and the conditions of their communities.
– Terry Haik (@terryheick) July 5, 2016
A major assumption for a school
The point of the school is not to achieve good at school. If students do not consistently transfer the skills and understanding of the classroom in the real world, not only their academic presentation will suffer, but we may want to ask some serious questions about what students are teaching and why.
If teachers work alone to death to pull Students through a set of knowledge who is barely recognized for students in their daily lives, can the artificiality of this knowledge play a factor in the challenge of helping all students master it?
The main assumption of any team of the curriculum should be that it is worthy of studying and the true work of understanding. So what happens when knowledge is not particularly portable? When is it only narrowly useful and completely impersonal? When students are trained to transfer, but can it not, because the sweet place of this knowledge is the classroom itself? When what they learn does not make their lives more rich or easier or more congenital or more captivated?
That would be a big problem, right?
