Bridging the Summer Learning Gap

taken from http://alavoices.org/summer-learning-loss.aspx

Once again, my challenge this summer is to help my students maintain the learning gains they have made this school year.  Since I am looping with my first graders to second grade I have even more time and energy invested in the lives of these kiddos.

In the past, I have tried to use Moodle as a platform for communicating through the summer.  Then I tried Weebly.  This is another website tool to help keep our classroom community connected through the summer.  I hope to keep my kids excited about reading books, writing about their experiences, and engaging in learning activities to help them maintain their love of learning during June, July, and August.

Since some of my first graders are beginning the Magic Treehouse series by Mary Pope Osborne, I hope to engage them more deeply through interaction with her website.

The xtra math website could be another way for the kids to maintain basic fact practice.  While quick recall programs are not the ideal way to use computers, the need to master addition and subtraction facts would eliminate about 40% of the errors students are currently making in multiple step problems.

The students who need the most growth in writing should really be the students I target with summer letters.  It would be so delightful if I were able to correspond even just a few times with them.  I think I am going to try and send a self addressed stamped envelope to each student and see what happens.

Since most of my parents have email and smart phones, this could be the summer I have the highest amount of students communicating with me.

I'll cross my fingers!