Counteracting Summer Regression

aka, you're trying to avoid the "summer slide"

We are officially on Summer Vacation in New York City

and some semblance of worry about regression and/or loss of academic skills from the school year may be top of mind. It’s a very common concern, and one that can easily be counteracted by incorporating some functional learning into your day. In addition to any homework or summer reading your child’s teacher has sent home, here are some ways that you can attempt to stop the summer slide.

A quintessential summer evening in New York City, encapsulated by Faith Ringgold’s quilts and the illustrations in her award winning classic, Tar Beach.

Read anything and everything

Yes, it is possible that kids’ reading skills can regress throughout the summer¹, especially if they have a diagnosed language-based learning disability, which is why summer reading exists. If your child was not given summer reading, it doesn’t mean you should run out and grab an armful of books. Instead, I recommend squeezing in 20 minutes of reading during your child’s nightly routine, which can either mean you reading to them or them reading with you. If they like to read or are motivated to read more than that allotment, then that’s awesome and you should get them a library card.

Support your local library!

Epic! is a great resource for finding different books without leaving the house. I use it daily with my students, and they love it—when creating an account, you plug in your child’s grade level or reading level and it displays an entire online catalogue. There are even graphic novels and audio books for emerging readers! Throughout the day, you can also support your child to read single words and connected text in their environment² on street signs, storefronts, menus, and print advertisements. Then, you can talk about the meaning of words they don’t know yet. This way you’re not just working on their ability to break down words into individual sounds (decoding) or putting sounds together to make up a word (encoding), you’re also working on broadening their vocabulary and modeling the correct spelling of words in a natural, meaningful way.

Indulge that random interest

Is your child interested, née hyperfixated, on learning about something you find to be super random? Like constantly asking you about noodles or axolotls or your city’s transportation system? Follow their lead. Not sure how? Check out this post:

Keep a journal

Journaling helps practice different academic skill sets: writing, spelling, vocabulary comprehension and use, answering questions, understanding cause-effect relationships, making predictions, and general story telling (narrative) skills.

If your child is too young to be writing on their own, or if writing is hard for them, this is a fun activity for you to do together at the end of the day. It can be a paragraph or even a list! It doesn’t have to be long at all—you have enough to get done during the day! What I would focus on while writing my entry is: