what is the meaning of summer homework

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Why Summer Homework is Vital to Students’ Success?

In the US and Canada, one of the special programs in schools is referred to as Advanced Placement (AP). The program was created to develop modalities for college-level education curricula and high school testing. What does this mean? It is a great way for students to prepare for college. But many have been asking the questions: “Is summer homework really important?” and “Is summer homework legal?” The answer is, “yes.” In this post, we will take a deeper look at summer homework, demonstrate its importance, and tell you why training during the holiday is important.

During holidays, especially during the summer vacation, most students want to enjoy the lovely outdoor environment. Therefore, they consider any additional engagement, such as summer assignments for students, a serious distraction. But you can still complete the assignment by seeking writing help. Our writing company comprises of professionals with years of academic writing and can help you write any type of assignment, essay, lab report, coursework, or thesis on your request.

What is the importance of summer homework?

Today, the importance of summer vacation for students is very clear. After a lengthy learning session, the students can take a break from books and be with their families. Also, it is a great time to travel and explore nature. So why do teachers give summer homework? Here are some benefits that you should know:

Summer homework is a perfect opportunity for students to learn how to work independently.
The summer homework helps to prevent students from forgetting what they learned.
Students are able to develop time management and problem-solving skills.
A great opportunity to review and synthesize what was taught in class.
Students learn how to set priorities and stay organized.
Learners can easily identify their weak points and improve on them.
A great way to get the parents involved more in a student’s education.

Tips for completing summer homework

Now that you know why summer vacation is important, the next question is, “how do you go about it?” Here are some great summer homework ideas that you can use. The first step is creating a schedule. This will give you a clear view of the time to use for vacation and doing homework. For example, you can designate several hours (one or two) every day or a few days of each week during the holiday. When you do your summer homework well, it could help you to get extra course credits. Here are other tips you can use for doing summer homework.

Start your homework early. The worst thing that you can do with summer homework is procrastination. If you start late, the chances are that you could get stuck when trying to do the homework in a hurry and miss points. Therefore, try to start as early as possible.
Reward yourself for progress achieved with homework. By rewarding yourself, you will be motivated to complete the assignment and practice various skills. You can reward yourself for various milestones such as completing a chapter of the assignment, collecting the right materials, and formatting the assignment. Good rewards can include your favorite movie or treat in the favorite restaurant.
Literature.
Mathematics.
Use online libraries to access relevant materials.
If you are far from your school premises where you can physically access the library, consider using online libraries. This will make it easy to read the latest journals and books, among other resources.

Combine summer homework with leisure

You know what? Your summer homework should not be a downer. Think of a unique way of doing homework. What about making it part of the holiday? If you have biology or geography summer homework, why not consider working on it when on holiday in a Miami hotel? After enjoying some great time with friends and dining with family, take two hours to do the assignment. So what do you need to achieve this?

Use your tablet or laptop to access different materials that you need to do the homework online.
If you are in a holiday hotel, relax in your room as you do your homework.
If your summer holiday is outdoors, such as a campsite, look for a quiet point to do the homework.
If you have a friend nearby, consider inviting him/her and do the homework together on your holiday destination.
Ask one of the family members to join you when doing the homework. Because your dad did the same type of assignments, he could come in handy to help you solve some problems.

Summer homework made simpler

Should students have summer homework? Should schools give summer homework? The answer is, absolutely yes. The assignment experts may help students to start seeing their courses as part of career progression. This means that learning becomes part of you so that you will no longer have to worry about forgetting. For example, if you aspire becoming an engineer, calculus ceases being a tough subject but a crucial component that you strive to achieve to reach the ultimate goal. This implies that summer homework and other assignments can be simple and fun.

Should kids get summer homework?

by: Leslie Crawford | Updated: June 12, 2023

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Jill Notte’s daughter Sara is a straight-A student, and she’s taking five advanced-placement courses this fall. It’ll be her senior year.

This ambitious undertaking may prove Sara’s undoing — at least if the 17 year old wants to enjoy her summer vacation. Somewhere in between spending a week at a Girls State program, a month at the New Jersey Governor’s School of Engineering and Technology at Rutger’s University, and visiting a few potential colleges, Sara must complete the following workload before school starts:

• Read five novels for AP English • Read one book for AP History • Complete a packet of assignments and problems for AP Calculus • Complete a packet of assignments and problems for AP Chemistry • Write several summaries of scientific principles for Honors Physics

Oh, and her English teacher recommends that she attend Shakespeare performances at the local college to supplement the many plays she’s required to read as part of AP English. “I try to put a positive spin on it,” says Sara’s mother, Jill. “I told her, ‘Summertime’s a great time to read Shakespeare!'” But, admits Jill, it’s not so easy to put the same kind of “fun” spin on the stack of mind-numbing calculus and chemistry books hefty enough to take down a Yellowstone grizzly.

Forget languidly balmy weeks unwinding from the stress of an intensive school year. Goodbye, as well, to working her usual summer job as a lifeguard, which Sara unhappily has to forgo — along with the money she hoped to save for college. As her mother puts it, “Summer homework is a full-time job.”

A working vacation

Sara’s not alone. The oxymoronically named “vacation work” is on the rise. Sara’s older sister had only a few books to read over the summer when she was in high school — and that was just eight years ago. Jill, who like her daughters was a high achiever in the top five percent of her class, remembers completely homework-free summers.

Many parents remember their own childhood summers as true respites from school, devoid the rigor and rigidity of academic life. Summer was a sprawling mass of unstructured time that ranged from idyllic laziness to stupefying boredom to invigorating camps and family vacations, not scores of math worksheets, science packets, and lists of “good-for-you” classics that hardly qualify as light beach reads.

Harris Cooper, chairman of the department of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University and America’s leading homework scholar who co-authored the landmark meta-study on homework , says that while there exists no formal studies on the rise in summertime homework, he’s witnessed a particularly sharp increase over the past two years — probably a response “to high-stakes testing and accountability issues for schools.”

Just say no?

Some parents argue summer homework is nothing more than bland busywork that saps the joy and spontaneity from summer. So says Sara Bennett, founder of StopHomework.com . “Even if there is a summer slide, I don’t think homework is the solution,” Bennett says. “Kids don’t have enough downtime during the school year. I think they need that freshness during summer.”

Here’s a revolutionary approach for vacation purists who say kids deserve a good, old-fashioned summer free from intense brain-strain: Just say no. That’s what Bennett suggests a parent do in the fall if a child is averse to doing the packet. “I’d send it back and say, ‘I’m sorry, my child didn’t have a chance to do it.’ ” (A parental dispensation only possible for kids who haven’t entered the high-school pressure cooker where — as with Sara Notte — summer homework is graded and can directly affect a student’s chances to enter a top-tier university.)

Protecting young minds from melting

On the other side of the summer homework debate are the moms and dads who, when the school doors slam shut, ramp up the supplemental brain work, even if the teachers didn’t provide it themselves. Most parents, though, fall somewhere in the for-better-or-worse-summer-homework-is-here-to-stay camp.

So if the kids have to do it, can we at least be reassured that it’s a magic bullet to protect young minds from melting? “We can’t say that with any objective data,” Cooper says. “But we would make the assumption if students are continuing to flex their mental muscles over the summer, this would have a positive effect on how much material they retain when they return.”

No buy-in from the kids

“There definitely is a lag — I’m not denying that,” says Denise Pope, senior lecturer at the Stanford University School of Education and co-founder of Challenge Success , a research and student-intervention project. “I absolutely agree that three months is a long time to not do anything. That said, I’m not sure this idea of giving workbooks and pages and pages of handouts works.”

The reason it doesn’t work? “There’s not a buy-in from the [kids],” Pope argues. “In order for any learning to be retained, there has to be engagement on the part of the students.” Pope explains that students need the “ABCs of engagement,” which means they’re engaged affectively, behaviorally, and cognitively. “If they’re intrinsically motivated, then they’ll want to do it.”

“I know kids who get these huge 40-page math packets,” Pope says. “It’s because [teachers] want [kids], over time, to have systematic practice. The problem is that this requires an adult to monitor this kind of disciplined work. It’s not like a kid can do that on his own. So it puts a burden more on the parents.”

Year-round homework blues

So, alas, those nightly angst-ridden homework dramas that run from September through June now get year-round billing. The other problem, Pope says, is that summer homework packets (frequently put off until the last unhappy week before school begins), often seem to fall into an academic black hole once they’re turned in — with no feedback from teachers and no effect on kids’ grades.

As for the work that Pope’s three kids — ages 10, 12, and 15 — get handed at school’s end, she tells them, “‘I won’t bug you about this at all. I won’t be the police.’ We look at the assignments they get for the summer and I say, ‘How long do you think this will take? Do you want me to remind you to do it?’ ” But if they leave it until the tail end of the summer, Pope says, well, that’s their choice. It’s their vacation, after all.

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Summer Homework: A How-To Guide for Parents and Kids

It’s become a predictable yearly debate that rolls around every June:

Should my kids really be getting summer homework?

And if they do, how should we approach it so they actually learn something over the summer (rather than just doing busywork)?

Here’s the thing:

At some schools, kids are routinely overloaded with multiple books to read, and big math packets to complete.

At other schools? Nothing is assigned.

My personal opinion is that the right balance lies somewhere in the middle… Yes, we want kids to keep their minds sharp, but not at the expense of having fun over the summer.

So in this post I’ll cover:

My opinion on the age-old summer homework debate (in the video below)
How to handle the different types of work assigned to students over the summer
Some specific recommendations for what you can do as a parent to keep your kids engaged in the process, including a recent interview I did with WTOP’s Every Day is Kid’s Day podcast on the topic

And you’ll walk away with a better understanding of how to make the most out of homework (or lack thereof) this summer.

You can click one of the links below to jump to one of the sections of the guide:

How much is too much summer homework? How to tackle summer reading (The Amazon Method) How to handle math packets and workbooks Creative ways to make Summer Learning fun

Or jump right in with the video below.

How much is too much? What the research says…

When kids do nothing at all in math and reading, the research shows that they can lose two to three months of learning progress over the summer.

Just think: That’s almost as if they decided to end the school year in March!

And if left alone, those losses accumulate over time with respect to their peers.

A 2007 study out of John’s Hopkins University showed that while students (on average) make similar gains in reading comprehension throughout the year, students without access to learning opportunities make no progress over the summer, while students with access outpace them year after year.

Ultimately, by the time they reach 5th grade, disadvantaged students are the equivalent of 3 full grade levels behind their advantaged peers in reading ability!

But, this trend need not apply to your son or daughter…

Because studies also show that kids who read just four books over the summer are able to almost completely eliminate that summer learning slide.

So here’s my take:

If your son or daughter is being required to…

Read three books, probably classics that they really don’t want to read
Write multiple essays
And complete stacks of math assignments

… that’s probably a bit overboard.

Yes, we want kids to keep their minds sharp, but not at the expense of having fun over the summer.

So my recommendation is to create a balance. Get your summer assignments done, but try to structure it in a way that makes learning fun.

Here’s how to do it…

Required vs. Recommended Summer Homework

First off, we can break down summer homework assignments in terms of required vs. recommended .

Most schools send out a recommended reading list, and sometimes subject review packets to their students to complete over the summer.

And some actually require that their students complete a certain amount of those assignments over the summer, which are included in their grade for the upcoming school year.

Now, it does make sense to prioritize required assignments over recommended assignments… especially if your school went overboard with what they handed out.

But as long as it’s not too much material, regardless of whether reading is assigned or not, I recommend working with your child to map out a plan of attack for the summer to get it done (on their terms – see below).

How to tackle summer reading (The Amazon Method)

By far, the most popular category of summer homework assigned are reading lists.

And although most schools have a recommended reading list, they tend to be very broad ( umm, should my 8-year-old really be reading MacBeth right now? )…

Specific reading requirements

Sometimes though, there are specific books that your student needs to read over the summer (see the “required” section above), especially high school students, and you’ll need to work with them to figure out a plan of attack.

Block off some time at the beginning of summer (don’t let it wait until July!) to sit down and ask them:

“You have these 3 books you have to read this summer. How would you like to tackle these?”

And then let them answer. Help them formulate a (realistic) plan with their input, and they’ll but much more likely to follow it… and not end up in the last-minute reading rush on August 30th trying to get their summer reading done!

Flexible reading requirements

But on the other hand, if you do have some flexibility in terms of what your student is assigned to read over the summer, what I like to do is create a reading list tailored specifically towards the age or interests of your student.

And one of the best ways to do this is: Amazon!

Step 1: Go to Amazon.com and type in “Books for… [insert description of your child]”

For example, if I had a 7th grader at home I would search: “Books for middle school”

Or if I was looking for something more girl-oriented for my daughter I would search: “Books for middle school girls”

It’s amazing what books will pop up on the top of the list for kids…

Step 2: Review the list and make sure that the results are relevant (sometimes they require a little tweaking), and pay attention to the options on the sidebar where you can filter by subject, age rage, etc.

Then run them by your child and ask: “Which one of these do you want to read this summer?”

Look over the summaries and let them pick the books they want to read.

Word of caution: It’s not your responsibility as a parent to pass judgment and say:

“You know what honey, this year you’re not reading a graphic novel. You can only read books with words, no pictures.

We don’t want to do that as parents. We really want to let our kids decide, because when they’re invested, they’re much more likely to meet that four book goal over the summer.

Step 3: Either order online or head out to the library…

Make sure to do this before July 4th so the summer doesn’t get away from you, and use your list of books that you picked out.

Then, when you get your books back home…

Step 4: Sit down with them and make a plan.

Don’t assume your child will gleefully run up to his room and begin flipping the pages. They’re much more likely to read consistently if you have “READING TIME” marked off on the calendar at a consistent time each day.

You can even make it a family routine! Having everyone in the house reading at the same time will help encourage your child to get their reading done, especially if they’re reluctant or easily distracted.

Now, many kids are reluctant readers and may need a parent to help them get started… And you need to be willing to make the time to lend a hand.

This can be in the form of “you read a page, he reads a page” or for a really reluctant reader, “you read two pages and he reads one,” until he’s into the story.

Make this a habit, and before long you’ll have a bookworm on your hands!

How to handle math packets and workbooks

The same principles hold true for other assigned work as well.

Don’t assume your child will be chipping away at those math packets one day at a time (and the thicker they are, the more daunting they’ll seem).

Truth be told: we get lots of calls from parents mid-August, panicked that their kid hasn’t read and annotated a three-hundred-page book and completed a bunch of review worksheets – even though the parent has reminded him at least ten times!

This situation isn’t unique.

The value to any summer learning is doing a little bit at a time over a long stretch. The brain retains information best in bit sized chunks, not by cramming.

And this is even more important for math because it’s a subject that continually builds on itself. So if you miss something early on, you’re probably going to have to back-track when you run into that same concept again in the future.

So just like with reading assignments, if your son or daughter are assigned a math packet (or any other type of subject packet) over the summer, make sure to site down and set the plan early.

Aside from your typical reading lists and workbooks though, you can also encourage learning in other (more fun!) ways this summer…

Creative ways to make Summer Learning fun

Below is a recent interview I did with WTOP’s Every Day is Kid’s Day podcast (interview starts at 0:53) on how to bring a fresh perspective to summer learning, and make things more fun and interesting for your son or daughter this year.

Give it a listen for some more tips on:

Using the Amazon Method to make summer reading more fun
Alternatives to summer workbooks that are actually fun and effective
Whether you should spend the time to try and “preview” material they’re going to see in the coming year
And a whole bunch of other useful ideas for staying engaged over the summer

Here are some of those great ways to get your child into learning, outside of school recommended assignments:

For writing: use a dialogue journal.

One of the best ways to get your child comfortable with writing on a regular basis is to make a game out of it.

So try designating a “special” notebook or journal that lives in your kid’s room that you can use to communicate with them through writing.

Then, simply leave them a note each day, that they read and respond to.

Maybe you say something like, “I noticed how you helped your brother pick up those puzzle pieces. What a nice idea. How did you know he needed your help?”

Leave the journal on his bed and allow him to write back that evening. The next day, you respond.

And be sure not to fix grammar or spelling, just let these be a carefree way to practice writing and even illustrations.

At the end of the summer, not only will they have improved their writing skills, but you’ll also have an amazing keepsake to look back on for years to come.

For reading: listen to audiobooks!

Don’t forget that audio books can be very helpful for developing comprehension and fluency.

Studies show that when kids want to read a book just above their level and listen to the book while following along with the lines, they improve their skills more than if they read independently.

So using a site like Audible.com or going to your local library website to download audio versions of the books your son or daughter has picked out (or has assigned) for the summer isn’t cheating, it’s just another way to “open the door” to getting them involved in reading.

Plus, it’s great for long summer road trips!

For math: play (math) games on the iPad.

For most of us, it’s a constant battle to keep our kids AWAY from the devices over the summer… but it need not be either or.

One of the best ways to “bridge the gap” is to give your child the opportunity to use educational apps or websites on their phone or iPad that will keep them learning, without feeling like math always has to involve drudgery.

Multiplication.com is great site for staying sharp on math facts. And pretty much every elementary schooler needs to practice their addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division over the summer to stay sharp.

Funbrain.com is also perfect for allowing a little screen time in-between reading or homework sessions, while still learning at the same time.

For learning that’s fun: find local adventures!

Yes, you could have your kids spend their summer doing workbooks and refresher material, and that would probably help them stay sharp… but most kids find that to be a drag on their motivation to learn.

Instead, find a local museum or science center and take field trip!

Use the outing to ask your kids to guide the learning session and pick out what they want to explore… and then tell you about it.

And then watch in amazement at how excited they are, not even realizing that they’re “learning,” but just enjoying the moment and experiencing something new.

Summer camps are great for this too, so do some Googling and find out what’s going on in your area.

Now let’s hear from you..

How have you handled the balance between required summer schoolwork and fun?

What have you done that’s helpful in your family to keep summer learning alive without going overboard?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments below!

The New York Times

Room for debate | the crush of summer homework.

The Crush of Summer Homework

Updated, Aug. 31, 11:45 a.m. | Harris Cooper offers more details about research on the link between homework and student achievement. Scroll down to read his added explanation .

For many young Americans, going back to school might seem like rest and relaxation. In the last week before Labor Day, how many students across the country were racing to finish their summer homework, from “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” to math refresher exercises?

The pile of books and other vacation assignments appears to grow every year. Is all this homework beneficial or should children be given a break? An article in The Times on Sunday described a debate over assigned reading throughout the year. Some educators argue that students should be given wide latitude in deciding what they want to read, while others defended the “Moby-Dick” model. How should this issue be treated in summer, when some schools insist that everyone finish “The Old Man and the Sea,” while other schools say that “Gossip Girl” helps satisfy the requirement?

We asked some experts for their perspective, now that the summer homework is due.

Harris Cooper, psychologist, Duke University
Nancy Kalish, co-author, “The Case Against Homework”
Mark Bauerlein, author, “The Dumbest Generation”
Denise Pope, Stanford University School of Education
Richard Allington, education professor, University of Tennessee
Elizabeth Birr Moje, education professor, University of Michigan
Tyrone Howard, education professor, U.C.L.A.

Forgotten on Vacation

Harris Cooper is chairman of the department of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. There is growing concern about the summer vacation’s possible negative impact on learning. Many educators argue that children learn best when instruction is continuous. The long summer vacation disrupts the rhythm of instruction, leads to forgetting, and requires time be spent reviewing old material when students return to school in fall.

Research evidence bears out these concerns. A group of colleagues and I conducted a review of 39 studies, and it confirmed that, on average, achievement test scores declined between spring and fall, and the loss was more pronounced for math than reading. The reason for this subject matter difference is simple: kid’s out-of-school environments provide more opportunities to practice reading skills than math.

Students, regardless of economic status, lost roughly equal amounts of math skills over summer.

Also, the research indicated that the impact can differ based on a child’s economic background. All students, regardless of economic status, lost roughly equal amounts of math skills over summer. However, substantial differences were found for reading. On some measures, middle-class children showed gains in reading achievement, particular word recognition scores, over summer. Low-wealth children showed losses.

In addition, while research evidence is scarce, educators argue that the long summer break can have a greater negative effect on the learning of children with special educational needs. The long break also can add an extra burden for children who do not speak English at home. Not only might they have to relearn academic material, they also must reacquaint themselves with the language of instruction.

What Homework Can’t Do

Nancy Kalish is the co-author of “The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It.”

Summer homework sounds like a good idea…until you see how miserable a child looks as he slogs through that pile of book reports, math packets, journal entries, and other typical assignments. The summer load has grown significantly since we were kids. But a little hard work never hurt anyone, right?

Well in this case, it might. Schools should rethink summer homework, and not just because it stresses out kids (and parents). The truth is, homework doesn’t accomplish what we assume it does. According to a Duke University review of more than 175 studies , there is little or no correlation between homework and standardized test scores or long-term achievement in elementary school, and only a moderate correlation in middle school.

Do we want our children to start the year refreshed and ready to learn? Or burned out and resentful?

Some studies claim that students lose skills they don’t practice over the summer. However, if a child can’t regain his grasp of fractions with a brief review, maybe those skills weren’t taught well enough in the first place. Doing a mountain of math sheets without a teacher’s help — and perhaps incorrectly — is not the answer.

But there are a few things summer homework does accomplish effectively: It steals time away from other important aspects of learning such as play, which helps kids master social skills and teamwork. In addition, writing book reports means kids spend fewer hours being physically active, which is essential for good health and weight control, not to mention proper brain development.

Perhaps worst of all, summer homework affects how kids feel about learning and school. Do we want our children to start the year refreshed and ready to learn? Or burned out and resentful? It’s something every teacher should carefully consider.

Reversing the Summer Brain Drain

Mark Bauerlein is a professor of English at Emory University and the author of “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future.”

To the general question of whether or not schools should assign summer homework, the answer is, “Yes, most assuredly.” What the assignment consists of will vary with the student population, but some extension of learning into vacation time is sorely needed.

The reason stems not only from the brain drain of summer and the fog of texting that enwraps youths during leisure hours. It relates also to an attitude young people take toward education. In a word, they regard learning as a classroom thing, that’s all. They tie knowledge to the syllabus, not to themselves. They read and study to write the paper and ace the test, not to furnish their minds. Learning is to earn a high score and good grade, not to form responsible citizens and discerning consumers.

Students regard learning as a classroom thing, and spend their leisure hours text-messaging. Here’s how we can deal with that.

A good measure of the attitude is how often they talk to teachers outside of class. According to the 2008 National Survey of Student Engagement, the rate of college seniors who “Never” or “Sometimes” (two or three times a semester?) discuss readings and ideas with teachers reaches 72 percent.

At the secondary level, according to the 2007 American Freshman Survey, the rate of high school seniors who went on to college (the high performers) who talked to teachers less than one hour per week came in at 53.4 percent. That’s a 10 point rise over 1987’s tally.

The free-ranging, back-and-forth conversation with teachers that signifies a student’s interest in the subject didn’t strike the majority as important. And why should it, when the system encourages them to respect only how learning shows up on a transcript or a test result?

The outcome is unsurprising. Once the assignment is finished and class ends — poof! The knowledge goes away. It’s done its work. Why retain it? This explains why on assessments of general knowledge learned in high school, college freshman often score higher than seniors. Time hasn’t yet taken so high a toll on their learning.

To halt the decay, teachers need to change the attitude. This means inserting more out-of-class engagement with teachers and materials, including summer homework, but not linking them so closely to a grade. The goal is not to pile on more tasks and instill more “achievement-thinking.” It is, instead, to make knowledge firmer, and to attach a message which says:

“Life is short, and the years of school pass in a rush. This is your only chance to encounter deep ideas and complex histories with a mentor to help you through. The works of beauty and truth are not chores to slog through. They are the raw materials of mind and character, and they should shape not only your resume, but you, too.”

Procrastination and Busywork

Denise Pope is senior lecturer at the Stanford University School of Education and co-founder of Challenge Success , a research and student intervention project.

The problem with summer homework is a lack of buy-in from one of the main constituencies: the students. During the school year, the students don’t necessarily enjoy doing homework, but they understand it is part of their daily routine. In the summer, students expect, and often need, a break from this routine and the daily pressures that usually accompany it.

Why should we care if the students are bought in? We know from research that motivation plays a central role in engagement with learning and, subsequently, student achievement. If students are given choice and voice in the learning process, for example, they are more likely to want to learn the material and more likely to retain it.

Summer should be seen as a gift, an important time to explore new hobbies, work a summer job, gain independence.

When students are not motivated, the teacher –- or in the case of summer, the parent — often needs to become part of the homework equation, monitoring, reminding, cajoling to make sure the work gets done. In my community, many parents complain that they don’t want to serve as “homework police” in the summer, and many admit that they are as frustrated as their kids when it comes to summer assignments.

One parent complained that her third grade son had to read five books and write five book reports over the summer. The problem was that he hated the books and kept procrastinating, and the stress on the child and on the entire family over the nine weeks became “unbearable.” Other parents admit that their kids wait until the very last minute to sit down and do the work, usually a day or two before school starts up again, and then they are cramming to get it all done.

I have seen the research that shows that students lose valuable skills when they are not in school during the summer months. And I worry especially about the kids who will spend most of the summer inside, in front of TVs or video games, and will be wasting the value of this free time. However, summer homework fails to serve its purpose if it causes undue stress on kids and families, if it is done all at once in a last minute rush, or if it is viewed as meaningless busywork.

Summer rest and exploration is especially important these days, given the increased pressure on students from high-stakes testing, the increase in homework during the school year, and the busy-ness of the extracurricular lives of many of our kids. Ideally, summer should be seen as a gift, an important time to explore new hobbies, enjoy the outdoors, read for fun, work a summer job, take on an exciting challenge, gain independence, and foster deeper connections with family and friends. The learning that happens during these experiences is as important as the skills and content learned during the school year.

If we want students to use this time wisely and appropriately, we ought to educate them about the benefits of summer time and encourage them — perhaps even give an “assignment” — to use the break to pursue interests of their choosing. Then, when they get back to school in September, they can write about, discuss, or present their “summer learning” in a way that is meaningful to them.

The Risk of Falling Behind

Richard Allington is a professor of reading education at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

In some schools, it is common for students to be assigned teacher-selected books for the summer vacation months. I know of not a single study supporting this practice, but I do know of studies showing the various methods students use to convince teachers they did the reading even though they didn’t.

A basic problem with this old, and desperate, model of summer reading assignments is that only rarely do teachers (or schools) assign books that a typical kid would ever want to read.

Low-income kids lose about three months in reading proficiency every summer.

At the same time, research has also demonstrated, including with New York City school students, that students from low-income families rarely read during the summer while middle-class kids typically do. This difference accounts for roughly 80 percent of the gap in reading achievement that exists between rich and poor kids. By grade 9 that reading achievement gap is three to four years wide.

Middle-class ninth graders, on average, read at the ninth-grade level. Low-income ninth graders, regardless of ethnicity, read at the fifth- or sixth-grade level. On average, students from low-income families learn as much during the school year as kids from wealthier families — even in New York City. But every summer the lack of reading practice produces losses in reading proficiency, while doing some reading during the summer produces small gains.

The evidence is clear that how kids spend their matters. Low-income kids lose about three months in reading proficiency every summer. That means every three years they fall a year behind middle-class kids, even when their teachers are just as effective as the teachers middle-class kids have.

Several research studies have shown that simply giving low-income children books on the final day of school can stem summer reading loss. But these books must be books they can and want to read. Our studies allowed students to select the books from 500 or so titles we had picked to match student reading levels and interests. We spent about $40 per child per summer (about the same cost as a test preparation workbook). The kids each selected 12 books, which they got to keep.

I know there are readers thinking, “Why not just have these kids go to the public library to get their book?” While public libraries are essential, and good outreach programs from public libraries can increase summer reading for all children, those efforts may not get all kids to check out a dozen books every summer.

Parents (and teachers) are right to worry about whether students read during the summer. But assigning books is about the least effective strategy to achieve that goal. It is past time for schools to provide children with easy summer access to books they want to read.

Choosing Your Assignment

Elizabeth Birr Moje is a professor of education at the University of Michigan.

The question of how to prevent summer learning loss has plagued U.S. schools for years. There is no question that some level of skill is lost or diminished for a large number of children and youth over the summer months. In many cases, these skills are easily renewed as soon as students begin school again. But in some cases, the loss chips away at learning gains; this is particularly true for children and youth who find school learning difficult during the academic months as well.

Whether assigning vacation homework would help to diminish the effects of the summer learning loss is an open question, but an equally important set of questions revolves around what such “homework” would involve, how it would be “regulated” (i.e., would students choose or would they be forced to do homework?), and how it would be supported.

In general, we know that assignments that merely drill students on basic skills is less useful than homework that supports them in meaningful thinking and activity. Summer homework, in particular, needs to provide choice with guidance, be embedded in projects or activities that have a real purpose, connect students to networks that support making sense of the activities, and ensure that youth from all backgrounds and socioeconomic levels have equal opportunity to participate.

For example, if schools want to promote the maintenance of reading skills, then they should consider assigning reading lists that offer choices. Such lists should not only promote the reading of novels, but should include informational texts, short stories, poetry, newspaper and magazine articles and web blogs in both paper and digital forms.

Providing children and youth with guided choice reduces the likelihood that they will resent being forced to do the work over the summer months; encouraging wide reading prepares them for the reading demands of upper grades by building world and word knowledge.

Schools (or parents) should also build opportunities for students to discuss the readings, either through face-to-face or on-line discussions. Offering opportunities for discussion and even application of concepts can push students to read beyond their initial preferences as they offer texts to one another, thus diminishing the need to “force” students to read particular texts.

Without discussion, children and youth may complete assignments just to check them off the list, not really engaging with the ideas or learning new critical skills or knowledge.

Another possibility for summer homework is community service or work projects where students can learn new academic skills, and also practice those they have learned during the school year. Combining the use of these skills in meaningful social and workplace activity can be motivating for even young children. This kind of “homework” is more challenging to monitor, but the benefits to young people and communities are high.

Whatever the form of summer homework, it is only a good idea if efforts are made to make it meaningful, engaging, and accessible to all.

What Low Achievers Need

Tyrone Howard is an associate professor at the U.C.L.A. Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.

The utility of homework has been a sacred cow in many education circles for years. I think homework has become a practice that has continued on because it has been normalized in educational behavior. Homework should help to reinforce content or materials that teachers have taught or covered in class. But in many cases today, homework has been reduced to busy work that posseses minimal value in developing deeper understanding.

That said, assigning summer homework is a good idea in theory. Some researchers have documented that some students lose grasp of key reading and mathematical principles when they have not used them for a two to three month period.

A better approach than homework is to have more intensive, small learning community-type summer school programs that last four to six weeks.

But the issue becomes one of accountability and reinforcement of understanding. If teachers cannot get students to turn in homework during the school year, when they see them every day, what is the likelihood that they will get them to do it, and with accuracy, when they do not see them?

I do think that there is a need to reinforce key academic concepts and skills, especially for lower achievers, who tend to be students of color, and students from poor backgrounds. A better approach than homework over the summer is the more intensive, small learning community-type summer school programs that last four to six weeks. These programs allow students to have access to teachers in a smaller learning environment for three to four hours a day. The benefits, I believe, would be far greater than more mind-numbing homework.

Homework and Achievement

Harris Cooper offers more details about the link between homework and student achievement:

Homework’s effect on achievement is best gauged by experimental studies comparing students who are purposely assigned homework with students purposely assigned no homework but who are similar in other ways. The results of such studies suggest that homework can improve students’ scores on the class tests that come at the end of a topic. In five such studies, students assigned homework in 2nd grade did better on math, 3rd and 4th graders did better on English skills and vocabulary, 5th graders on social studies, 9th through 12th graders on American history, and 12th graders on Shakespeare.

Less authoritative are 12 studies that link naturally-occurring (not manipulated) amounts of homework to achievement. On the positive side, these studies used sophisticated statistical models to control for lots of other things that might influence the homework-achievement connection. The controlled factors have included the student’s ability level and family background and the teachers’ experience. These studies have the added advantage that they are often based on national samples and use measures of achievement such as grade point averages and standardized tests. They find a similar positive link between time on homework and achievement. But most of these studies were done with high school students.

Yet other studies simply correlated homework and achievement with no attempt to control for student differences. In 35 such studies, about 77 percent found the link between homework and achievement was positive. Most interesting though, these results suggested little or no relationship between time on homework and achievement for elementary school students. These inferior studies are at odds with the more trustworthy experimental studies mentioned above. But, if we assume that the experimental studies involved relatively short assignments, they do suggest too much homework for young kids might not be a good thing. (Too much homework might also not be good for adolescents but studies show assignments can be longer before reaching the point of diminishing returns.)

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When I was fourteen years old, I was working almost 60 hours a week. This is because, on top of the 40 hours of work we did at school, our teachers each assigned us one hour of homework per night. Four classes, times five days, equals another 20 hours of work.

I was conscientious enough to do this work; most of my fellow students blew it off, of necessity. If you were going to play a sport, or an instrument, or even have a social life, you had to. I barely had time after school to go for a quick run for fifteen minutes, and to wash the dishes after supper. That’s all I did, besides schoolwork.

This was not good for me or my fellow students. For the people who didn’t do the work, it taught that you could just blow off responsibilities. For me, it taught me that if I obeyed the teachers, I couldn’t play music, or a sport, or goof off at all after school.

I say: structure school so that the necessary work can go on during school hours. And for goodness sake, leave kids alone during the summer!!

In the summer children should be running and playing and swimming and camping and learning important interpersonal skills by creating activities of their own with their friends and sometimes peers who are not so friendly. They should go to the library and read as they please, IF they please. Travel to new places. Structured activities stifle creativity and stunt natural thought processes. Looking at the sky or a bug or a leaf or just day dreaming are not uselss activities. Time to wonder is VERY good for developing minds.

Think of all the inventors in our history who must have had time to wonder, “What if…?” Maybe Edison wanted to read into the night and the light of a candle wasn’t enough. Ben Franklin must have been curious about lightning. DaVinci must have been curious about everything. Children don’t have to have ALL their time regimented in order to become well educated. What is wrong with our society that we want to take the joy out of EVERYTHING?

No. Homework should NOT be assigned during the summer. But when it is assigned during the school year, I feel that discussions of homework should focus on the quality of the work instead of on the quantity or time limits set for it. For example, if homework was not graded and used only rarely and only when it really helped turn the kids onto learning, it could be a useful tool.

Too much homework that my own kids have done in the last ten years has been bland, non-creative, non-inspired, teacher-assigned busywork. Most of it seems to be about how well kids can follow the teacher’s directions, instead of how well kids can think for themselves. Is this really the best way to prepare our kids for the 21st century?

Check out my blog: East Bay Homework Blog – //eastbayhomework.blogspot.com/ and check out the film Race To Nowhere, //www.RacetoNowhere.com

The problem with summer homework is that there is little supervision or help. The children will do the works, but they’ll forget about them soon afterwards. If we really want to get serious about summer memory loss, we should send our kids to summer schools or tutoring.

I think it is more pertinent to ask what the purpose of such assignments is. If you are trying to inculcate a reading habit amongst these youngsters, you are a far way off. Burdening them with reading assignments is never going to work. This is particularly true of specified readings. I think it would be a better approach to let them set their own targets, of course after stipulating a bare minimum. Homework help at aafter.com

My answer to this question in general is NO. I am a rising junior at Bronx Science and I am dreading it. I have homework for three different classes. About 28 essays for AP US History , English assignments plus Research assignments as well. By going to this tough school, the school year is a pain in the glutens! i was hoping i would be able to relax and unwind my mind this summer by focusing on what I plan to do in the future but doing all these things inhibits my brain functions of thinking like a normal teenager. It is so sad teens who go to this school miss out on all the joy of being a teenager. It just sucks big time, I would rather write articles for the NYT criticizing anything in the world, besides doing summer homework!

I remember my days of school in India where the students would go to 4-6 hours of private tuitions everyday to try to finish their whole syllabus for the entire year BEFORE school even started just to get an edge.

So, if the US wants their kids to compete, assignments are hardly even enough ( bare minimum if you ask me)

Or you could just go on as always and hope for the best. The immigration policies have already made it impossible for International students with advanced degrees ( like me) to get jobs. Maybe that will protect American kids in the future too.

Yes, mandate summer homework if you want to train children to be available to their “job” every day, all day, even when they’re not compensated. (The new global economy!)

If I take a vacation, I expect to be on vacation. Children should have the same expectation of their free time. If educational theorists wish to create interesting, multi-sensory experiences (i.e,. camp, travel, nature walks) into the summer for a certain group of children, go to it. But, lay off the required summer reading lists, book reports, etc. It’s absurd. Children need more play opportunities, which will help them grow and mature, and give them a necessary break.

Nancy Kalish makes it seems like if kids have hw, they can’t go outside and have fun. There are 24 hrs in a day. It’s not like you would be spending 8 hrs a day doing summer hw. There is plenty of time for both. If you set aside 2 hrs a day for summer hw, that leaves the child 22 hrs to sleep, play and eat. I don’t see how those 2 hrs of hw would hurt the child.

I have taken summer school since I was in second grade. Every summer from June till 1.5 weeks before the new school year, I was in city summer school. I took two classes, one fun and one academic from 8am – 3pm. I do not know whether I would lose my math or reading skills over the summer since I was utilizing them year around. I am not good at math. If I didn’t take summer school, I am pretty sure that I would forget math pretty quickly. The subjects you don’t enjoy, you forget the fastest and the easiest.

I do not think that a math homework packet and doing 2-3 book reports during the summer for a third grader is unreasonable. The teacher could have a list of 50 books that the child could select from.

Children in American have 2.5 months of free time. 2.5 months to do 2-3 book reports and a math packet isn’t very much. The child procrastinating is the parent’s fault. It is up to the parent to make sure that the child is on track with his or her learning and homework. If you let your child wait until the last minute to do the homework, you are causing your child undue stress.

It is not a strange a idea to have the child set 1/2 – 1 hr a day to read. Maybe instead of video games or playing with the computer, the child could read a book.

Summer hw is done in other countries as well. In Japan, every kid has summer homework.

One size doesn’t fit all. Some kids may well benefit from summer homework, but others won’t. I expect that this would work best when the student has a role to play in selecting the assignment, or at least a choice from several alternatives.

Children can run , play and swim on the weekends. School should be 12 months a year. I think how different my life would have been if it hadn’t been for that 3 months of mostly inactivity with nothing to challenge the mind but countless rounds of gin rummy, and getting into trouble with the neighbor children. There can be JOY in learning. Nowadays, there is too much JOY in drugs, alcohol and trouble from neglect . Save our children, keep them in school.

Commenters ## 1 and 2 get it.

But the dramatic idea of Richard Allington, to give students a few books of their choice — any choice — sounds just right to me. If they take the books, it’s their lookout to read them or not. And since they have them right there, and chose them for themselves, they’re likely to read at least some. Without pressure. That’s what reading should be.

In many countries with higher achievements for children in school. The summer breaks are even longer. The method to fix education in the US today is not to make kids study all the time but to fix the US education system. Children need room to grow, by doing other things. Do we want happy kids or workaholics?

Summer homework and assigning things over breaks in general is a bad idea. My senior high always gave summer assignments which I of course procastinated on, so all summer I was stuck with the guilty feeling that I should be working on school work and parents who were happy to remind me. All this did was make summer less fun and strengthen my ability to ignor the “I should be working” feeling.

Kalish is spouting complete nonsense. She is a direct threat to American competitiveness, a living example of technological regression.

My son completed first grade in both Japanese and American schools. At the end of the first grade, the two curricula were even in mathematics. Then the American first graders had 3 months of nothing. The Japanese first graders had 6 weeks with daily maintenance homework. The American kids will never catch up.

You don’t need a Duke study to identify the source of the lag between the U.S. and Japan.

My son is now finishing the summer break of 4th grade in Japan. Over the last six weeks, he has completed about one hour a day in maintenance homework for mathematics and language. He has also completed two small projects, a one-page ‘newspaper’ and an art project, just enough to keep his hand warm. The projects were selected from a list of 100+ provided by the prefecture. For this list, the prefecture gathered the cooperation of fire departments, police departments, water departments, parks and museums to provide a selection of subjects. Most of the cooperating organizations will exhibit childrens’ projects during September.

And my son still has had plenty of time for TV, Legos, games, play at the childrens’ hall and travel – and to sing the Star Wars theme song, the Indiana Jones theme song, or any other ditty that comes to mind.

The above conversation either assumes or fosters the notion that a summer vacation is a given; a necessary recharging of the batteries; a time for play and socialization. I suggest that we rethink this long-standing and almost uniquely American tradion in light of our demonstrable educational distance behind so many other countries.

Now, I am not arguing that play and socialization are unimportant, but that we consider other ways of structuring our educational system that would allow for both play and continuous learning. I am not a professional educator, although I did a great deal of techincal teaching throughout my career, but my experience tells me that segmenting learning into distinct modules of extended, intense learning followed by extended, intense periods of play is not efficient. Education, like the learning it is intended to impart, should be an integral part of life. It should, among other things, develop a strong sense of its own value because it is a part of life, not just something to be done during rigidly specified times to satisfy rigidly specified requirements. All of life is about learning, whether from books or on the playground, and is a continual process.

Our education system should be year-round, with more, shorter breaks. I would argue that the same should be true of our work environment, but let’s leave that for another time. What I think is important, even crucial, is that learning be a continuous, integrated process – as it is in real life.

If summer vacations were not so long, kids wouldn’t need the additional homework over their breaks. The number of in class days per year keeps shrinking and it’s little wonder why other countries with longer, more continuous school years outshine our educational system.

Rather than having a long, continuous stretch of summer holidays, why not have school all year round, with more smaller breaks?

Joy can still be in learning–but often isn’t, in typical school assignments. My 8th-grade grandson (in a different state) will start school today (8/31) with his summer homework done–but only because a diligent parent worked with him and made the learning sessions –well, not necessarily fun, but reasonably enjoyable.

That said, there are often summer school enrichment opportunities -or chances for fun and learning through park district, YMCA, day camp, library events and well-planned reading programs with corresponding activities (my public library invites kids in on certain days to read to therapy dogs…reluctant readers often enjoy snuggling with a friendly pooch and reading aloud to the dog…

Unfortunately, too many parents are time-stressed and work stressed – if they haven’t lost jobs because of the economy – too many grandparents (like me) are at least 1000 miles away from their grandkids, or I’d help with the summer homework to make it fun and interesting… and well-meaning, well-intentioned parents who’d like to get involved just may not have the money to do the extras like museums, vacations, music lessons or group playing-instruments, or even, if appropriate and desired, vacation Bible school.

These things come with fees–and often, lack of public transportation. If it’s a choice between food on the table, often because a parent has a part-time or second job, and registering a child for a learning activity, I do understand why the homework or enrichment doesn’t happen.

I haven’t any answers – even taking a child to a nearby public park often requires time a working parent doesn’t have. That said, sometimes agencies have programs that parents can seek out and get their kids into–reasonably. For instance, my Chicago suburb’s community college offers Kid Zone enrichment things that are learning, but fun, for what in the suburbs seems a reasonable, modest price. Art activities, field trips, science stuff, music (“bucket band”) etc. Trained college and high school students are the leaders, supervised by adults, of course – but these give kids something more constructive–and, what’s best of all – FUN – during summer vacation.

Jan Bone, Palatine IL

Sometimes I wonder if school is just a way of breaking a person’s spirit in order to prepare them for a lifetime of desk work. I was raised in the 1960s, when kids had actual lives and were not sent to Japanese style cram schools, Kaplan prep, or hothoused in any way. During my free time, I ran, learned to balance on a 1 inch wide fence, collected sea creatures and put them in a bucket, dissected plants, stared deeply at bugs, learned to share my toys, played “war” and cowboys (no Indians, we all had six guns, even the girls), made clothes for Barbie, and learned to knit from a 70+ year old woman who told me about what brooklyn was like at the turn of the 20th century. Try to get that with some professionally trained “child development” type who wants to make sure your flow of social studies, whatever passes for math, or texts with pictures of plants and bugs.

This is simply more proof that a school schedule designed around a farming culture ( that we no longer practice) is ill equipped to support us in our current culture. The amount of knowledge necessary to succeed has gotten multitudes larger while the amount of class time available has increased only marginally. Summer assignments need be an option for children who are doing academically well, but a requirement for those who are not.

Kids aren’t reading enough? I must have missed those 1 mile midnight lines for 800 page Harry Potter books. However in the Dumbest Generations Author’s defense I’m sure the older generations used their summer time much more wisely than these idiotic spoiled children by spending every summer vacation day reading Tolstoy, going to math camps and volunteering at the local hospital.

Speaking of which kids aren’t proficent in math? Well maybe that means that they aren’t smart enough to come up with “fullproof” math equations that explain how the value of worthless securites are actually AAA bonds.

The kids today are alright. They are definitely harder working and more service oriented than my generation. Went back to college recently and thought it would be a breeze but the caliber of students being produced is alot better than it was just 15 years ago.

I wonder if time spent staring at the ceiling, sorting interesting colored pebbles on the beach, reading a few low-brow books and building tree houses provides something fundamental and invaluable to a child’s development? There is no denying that skills developed during the school year become ‘rusty’ and it would seem that the brain (certainly in the case of my children) re-wires and relegates unused skills into a fog. However, the summer break is a time during which a child is truly free of the formalized process in school in order to drift freely in his or her imagination. This stated, the television (and computer) should be left off and the child sent outdoors (it is summer afterall!). Looking at the responses of the ‘professionals’ in this column, it is clear that there is no consensus.

I think homework is way overdone. I think a ton of homework is mindless busy work that de-motivates poor students and is an unnecessary drain on motivated students.

I don’t care about scientific studies. If you look carefully at how most social research is designed, it is virtually always designed to get the results the study designers are looking for. A friend of mine did his PhD dissertation at the U. of MI, back in the early seventies, a quantitative, scientifically rigorous study of research dissertations — and proved that study designs heavily influence, and usually determined, results.

People who want to prove that homework is beneficial design, unconsciously, studies that will prove what they want to prove.

I am increasingly discouraged by the steady decline in education in this country. The challenge of poor performing students cannot be met only in the classroom. The quality of children’s lives outside of school is in steady decline. Americans work many more hours than Western Europeans, meaning parents spend less and less time with kids. The economy continues to drain the middle class, requiring both parents to work longer and longer hours. Kids end up passing their one precious life, their one precious childhood in front of televisions, online, tweeting and texting.

Kids — and parents — need meaningful quality time, with themselves, with their parents.

I’d like to see a study that compared what great academic student stars do in the summer compared to the kids whose math and reading skills atrophy in the summertime. I bet that study would prove that kids with a rich quality personal/family life do lots of educational things in the summer only they think they are just having fun.

I grew up in Chicago. Every week of every summer vacation while I was growing up, my dad took his kids and some of their friends on an outing in the city. My dad was very proud of all the wonderful institutions in a great city like Chicago and he seriously considered it part of his job as a parent to expose his children to everything. The only thing my dad didn’t care to do with us was take us to art museums . . . but my mom is an artist and she covered art. We didn’t just go to the science museum once in our childhood: we went several times a year. Plus the dinosaur museum. We went to the zoos countless times each year. Parks, amusement parks, the beach, the forest preserves that ring the city.

Not that many of the other kids in my neighborhood did stuff like this with their folks but, fortunately, in our Catholic Irish ghetto, most kids joined the boy or girl scouts and went on good outings that way.

What do parents do with their kids these days? It seems to me that parents don’t often spend lots of time just hanging out with their kids.

My kid and I had fun when we weeded the garden together. My kid and I had fun driving to the lumber yard and planning her new shelves, discussing the design, the measurements, getting her to participate. When we first went camping together, just me and my young daughter, as soon as she learned to read, I would have her navigate our way from the entry to the state park to our camp site. . . that was her first lesson in map-reading. Gradually, I encouraged her to plot all our routes, when we took interstate trips in the car, let her navigate the whole thing. The first time I took her to NYC, we flew there but then rented a car and she was very proud to be able to navigate us around that city.

I began to teach her how to count in the grocery store. If she wanted to buy apples, I began by saying “we will buy as many as you can count’. The first time we had a math lesson in produce, we only bought one apple. . . but then she immediately made sure she learned how to count higher so she could buy more apples.

I began to teach her how to reach in the grocery store, too. She was always begging me to buy stuff I didn’t want to buy. but then I thought of this trick: I would show her what the letter ‘C’ looked like, point her towards the breakfast cereals and promise to buy Cheerios if she could find a box where the product began with a ‘C’. This worked well for a long time. I say it worked because I never wanted to buy commercial cereal. Cheerios, which many parents consider one of the better, more healthy ones, is still loaded with sugar and cheap unnutritious carbs. It took her a long time to distinguish all the symbols and images on cereal boxes. But she figured out strawberry jam fast. The s was easy, the red jam was easy, the jars were low and easier for her to read.

I didn’t turn every minute of time with my kid into a lesson but pretty much every minute I spent with my kid was educational. I was always trying to think of ways to get her to pay attention, to get her to think about what she saw.

Actually, I used to be an art docent and the main goal for the tour program at my old art museum was, simply, to get the children to look closely, to try to see what really was on the canvas, to get them to see and think.

I made it a point to take my kid to a museum at least once a month. I also committed to taking her to an arts performance once a month. Cities are chock-a-block full of free arts experiences. Public concerts, theater in the parks. I know the economy is tighter these days, there are less free things. . . but the world is still stuffed with free or almost free great things to do with kids. There are always parks, free to walk in. Hills to climb. Neighborhoods to walk and observe. Bird watching is free.

In the third grade, Charlotte, a little girl in my daughter’s class had a very small birthday party. She was allowed to invite two other girls. The party? The girls went butterfly hunting with Charlotte’s mother and at the end, the girls had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and apple slices. That was the whole party.

Our whole society keeps trying to turn everything into metrics, worshiping the god of data. It is almost meaningless to discuss the value of summer homework if you aren’t going to discuss how children and their parents spend their summers. Our economy, which worships corporations and not humans, does not need all its citizens to be multi-dimensional, well-developed human beings seriously pursuing happiness. Our economy wants mindless wage slaves that pretty much act like cogs in the corporate machinery. Wool-gathering does not benefit the bottom line plus it is time most parents could be putting pins in widgets at the plant. Mindless wage slaves don’t become parents who have fun hanging out with their kids and exploring the world together.

If most kids spent their summers having close, loving, fun interactions with their families, their math and reading skills would not atrophy over the summer.

Let the children have summers free. It is a time when they can learn a lot of things that are not taught in the classroom. Family and friends relationships, exploring the world a bit without having to worry about tomorrow’s book report (in other words, reading a book for its own value, not in order to get a good grade).

Walking in the woods, or in the streets. Playing with the cats and dogs. Helping the folks with household work.

The so-called experts who evaluate “success” based on test grades are out of touch with reality. In my pre-collegiate school days, 1955 to 1967, there were many fellow students who weren’t stellar in their academic achievement levels. Yet more than a few of them have gone on to have interesting, productive, and successful lives. In some cases, very successful lives. Predicting success cannot be based just on GPA and SAT scores. Success is based on much more than the numbers.

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Should students have summer work.

To make them work or not to make them work? That is the question.

The idea of assigning summer work has sparked a heated debate. While some argue that summer assignments help students retain knowledge and prepare for the upcoming academic year, others believe summer break should be free from academic responsibilities allowing students to explore their interests and reset while enjoying family time.

Let's explore the advantages and disadvantages of what we like to call the summer work beast.

Advantages of Summer Work

Advocates of summer work argue that it offers several advantages for students, they include:

Avoiding the "Summer Slide"

Engaging in academic activities during the summer break can prevent the summer slide, a phenomenon where students lose knowledge and skills over the extended vacation period. Summer assignments can help students retain what they learned during the school year, ensuring a smoother transition into the next grade. From simple worksheets to summer-long projects, all tasks are to keep the summer slide at bay.

Developing Personal Skills

Summer work allows students to develop discipline, time management skills, and a sense of responsibility. By setting goals, adhering to deadlines, and completing assignments, students cultivate essential qualities beneficial for future academic and professional endeavors.

One way to develop such skills is by creating a time management calendar to track summer work or projects. Students can learn valuable lessons by starting and completing a summer project through persistence, dedication, and goal setting on a more casual time frame than during the school year.

Filling in the Gaps

Summer work can bridge gaps in knowledge and allow students to catch up on areas where they may have struggled during the previous school year; this may go hand in hand with your district's summer school offerings. Personalized summer work may be ideal for students to fill any gaps in their learning to be on an even playing field with their peers come August.

Disadvantages of Summer Work

A much-needed mental health break.

Opponents of assigning summer work argue that summer break should be a time for students to relax, recharge, and engage in non-academic activities. They contend that summer assignments encroach upon this much-needed break, depriving students of the chance to decompress and pursue other interests.

Students need time to stretch their minds and bodies, and summer is the perfect opportunity for this without the piles of assignments and due dates. And what teacher or educator wants to take on the task of collecting and reviewing the completed assignments??

Educational Inequalities Increase

Some students may not have access to necessary resources or guidance during the summer, rendering the assignments unfair and potentially exacerbating educational inequalities. Not all students have equal opportunities for support outside of the regular school year, leading to a potential disadvantage for those unable to complete the assigned work.

Summer Allows for Other Activities

Summer is a time for exploration and personal growth beyond the confines of formal education. Students may benefit from pursuing internships, volunteering, or engaging in hobbies and extracurricular activities that foster holistic development.

Restricting their time with summer assignments could limit these valuable experiences. Such summer experiences are needed to create well-rounded students ready to start again in the fall.

Finding a Middle Ground

Schools need to consider the varying needs and circumstances of their students. Providing optional assignments for those who wish to stay academically active during the summer while not penalizing those who choose not to participate can offer a fair compromise.

Instead of assigning lengthy and burdensome tasks, you can focus on promoting self-directed learning by encouraging your students to:

Read books of their choice
Engage in creative writing
Pursue individual research projects
Participate in outdoor activities or travel

Such self-directed learning allows flexibility and personalization while maintaining academic engagement even during the summer months.

The Final Answer...

The debate surrounding summer work remains contentious, with valid arguments on both sides. While summer assignments can help students retain knowledge and develop valuable skills, they must be implemented thoughtfully, considering students' well-being and providing equitable opportunities. And if summer work is adopted, educators need to support the plan.

Striking a balance between academic engagement and the freedom of a summer break is crucial to ensure students can recharge, pursue their passions, and embrace personal growth during this cherished vacation period.

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How To Finish Summer Homework Assignments: 14 Tips To Save Your Child’s Summer

July 19, 2018

Many schools assign homework for students to complete before they return to class in September. This results in both parents and students having to learn how to finish summer reading and homework while balancing fun summer activities.

This summer, school is out and homework is in.

If your child has been putting off a pile of summer homework and reading assignments—he or she is not alone.

Reading books and writing assignments during the summer may not sound appealing to many students—or parents. Students can also get UK homework help if they need the some help with completing their assignment! But summer assignments are a great way to combat the effects of Summer Learning Loss and keep your child’s brain active over the break.

The Facts On Summer Learning Loss

Six weeks in the fall are spent re-learning old material Two months of reading skills are lost over the summer One month of overall learning is lost after summer vacation

With the right mindset, goals, and structure, you’ll have no problem finishing summer reading and homework between BBQ’s, ball games, and beach trips.

Follow these 14 steps to learn how to complete summer homework—without sacrificing summer fun.

14 Tips For Finishing Your Summer Homework Assignments

Make a game plan, tip 1: take a (quick) break.

It’s hard to go from a full year of schoolwork to tackling summer homework right off the bat. Let your child take a week off of homework at the start of the summer. This will give his or her brain a chance to relax and reset, and enjoy taking part in fun summer activities like sports.

Tip 2: Review Project Requirements

Don’t have your child dive head-first into his or her homework assignments. Review the expectations of each project with your child and discuss how much time he or she will need to complete them.

It would be a shame to waste time redoing a project because your child didn’t understand it initially. Reviewing all requirements is an important first step to starting off on the right foot.

Tip 3: Break Down Each Project Into A Series of Goals

Think about which assignments will take the longest and what your child will need to complete them during the summer. Break these larger assignments into a series of goals that need to be met to complete the project.

Examples of goals include “read 2 chapters per week” or “write essay introduction by July 15th”.

Set Aside The Right Amount Of Time

Tip 4: plan a weekly summer homework schedule.

This should be similar to a school year homework schedule, but altered for the summer. T he ideal amount of time to spend doing summer homework per week is 2-3 hours , so figure out where that time fits into your child’s average summer week.

Tip 5: Make A List Of Supplies & Resources

Your summer adventures could take you and your child to a wide variety of places. Make sure you both know what to bring with you so your child can tackle homework when not at home.

Examples of supplies include:

Textbooks or Assigned Novels

Tip 6: Choose Assignment Topics Based On Interest, Not Length

Sometimes students are given options when it comes to topics to research or books to read over the summer. Encourage your child to make these decisions based on the topics that interests him or her most—not which is “easiest”. This will result in your child enjoying his or her work, and allow him to benefit more from it.

Help Your Child Do Work On-The-Go

Tip 7: adjust your homework schedule for trips & vacations.

Exploring new places is an amazing learning experience, so don’t feel like you should sacrifice them for more homework time. Instead, plan your child’s homework schedule around these day trips and vacations.

If you know your child won’t have time to complete work while you’re away on a longer trip, make up those hours in the weeks before and after your trip.

Tip 8: Tackle The Work Your Child Can Do On-The-Go

While writing an essay is a project to save for when you return home, there are assignments that your child can tackle from just about anywhere. Options for homework to do on vacation include projects that are doable in small chunks—like reading a book or completing a math worksheet.

Tip 9: Bring Your Child’s Supplies With You

Remember that supplies list you created? Make sure you pack that backpack and bring it with you on your trip! It’d be a waste to find a spare hour to finish that math assignment, only to realize your child left his or her calculator at home.

Tip 10: Capitalize On The Quiet Times

Even the busiest trips include some quiet time. If you’re early for a dinner reservation, have your child complete a chapter of reading while you wait. Or, encourage your child to wake up 20 minutes early to answer some math questions without disruption.

Build A Support Team For Your Child

Tip 11: schedule a weekly workdate for your child & a friend.

There’s no reason your child has to work through summer homework alone. Make a weekly work date with a friend where they can tackle summer assignments together. If that friend is in the same class as your child, they can even discuss questions and challenges together. Build A Support Team For Your Child

Tip 12: Review Your Child’s Progress Every Week

Each week, speak with your child about the work he or she accomplished, and what is planned for the week ahead. If you know your child will be busy soon, work together to reorganize his or her homework schedule.

Tip 13: Touch Base With a Tutor (Or Enrol In Summer Learning Program)

A new set of eyes can make all the difference in making sure your child gets his or her summer assignments done efficiently and effectively. Your child’s tutor will be able to give constructive feedback and turn this feedback into goals for the upcoming school year.

If you want an extra head start for your child this school year, enroll him or her in a Summer Learning tutoring program to get started on the right track.

And Most Importantly…

Tip 14: reward your child with summer fun.

While schoolwork is important during the summer, it doesn’t have to come at the sacrifice of having fun. Whenever your child completes a new project or achieves a goal, reward him or her with a treat or fun summer activity.

Work Hard—And Play Hard—This Summer

Summer might seem like it will last forever, but the school year will be here before you know it. Don’t let your child fall into the habit of procrastination—instead, make a plan together and stick to it.

If you follow these tips, your child will finish summer homework and summer reading in no time…and develop great learning and study habits that will already be in place for next year!

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Should Schools Assign Summer Homework? Educators Weigh In

School’s almost out for summer. Should students clear out their lockers and leave empty-handed—or laden down with stacks of math problems and required reading lists? Will teachers warn of repercussions for failing to turn in summer work assignments upon returning to school in the fall, or simply advise students to have fun and stay safe?

It depends on whom you ask.

It turns out that not all educators share the same perspective on whether to assign summer homework, who needs it most, what it should consist of, and how to make sure it gets done. Education Week put the question to state teachers of the year and representatives of statewide principals associations. Here’s what they had to say.

Play and pleasure reading prioritized by many educators

Play and pleasure reading topped the list of responses to the question: What summer homework should students be assigned? Teachers (of both young and older students) were more likely than the principals who responded to suggest that kids need a break in the summer.

“For young children, specifically pre-K to grade 3, I feel that over the summer children need to have their summer break and be provided with the opportunity to explore, get plenty of physical activity, and play. Children learn from play. Play teaches children about problem-solving and social interactions,” said Tara Hughes, a pre-K inclusion teacher at the Nye Early Childhood Center in Santa Fe who was voted 2023 New Mexico State Teacher of the Year.

“Students should have no formal ‘homework'—worksheets or practice books,” said Lori Danz, who is Wisconsin’s 2023 State Teacher of the Year. She teaches high school biology and serves as a school forest coordinator, overseeing outdoor learning. in the Superior school district in the northern part of the state. “I think it’s good for students and families to get away from that, and learn in authentic ways: hiking, cooking, fixing things. So much learning happens that way. We forget that it’s learning.”

Danz acknowledged that not every family has the same amount of free time or resources available to them during the summer. But she added that many districts, including her own, offer free enrichment activities at local schools during the summer that provide activities such as sports, crafts, and physical fitness.

While “play” was a popular response to the question of what type of work kids should be assigned in the summer, some educators suggested that students of all ages read during break to stay sharp.

“Reading for pleasure authentically enhances many academic skills such as cultivating a love for reading, improves reading and writing skills, develops concentration, encourages creativity and imagination, and allows children to be more open to differences and perspectives,” said Krystal Colbert, a 2nd grade teacher at Mitchellville Elementary in Iowa’s Southeast Polk school district, and another Teacher of the Year.

One teacher took the reading directive a step further. Brian Skinner, a high school special education teacher with the Newton Unified school district 373 in Kansas and the state’s 2023 Teacher of the Year, said he thinks students should spend time regularly writing and reading for pleasure. “Not only that, but I believe it is important to read from actual books versus phones or other technology,” Skinner said. It’s a belief shared by some literacy experts , too.

Which students most need summer work?

Educators offered a range of opinions when asked which students most need summer work. Principals interviewed for this article were more likely than teachers to feel students should be doing summer work.

“How good is a golfer that takes a three-month break with no practice? Even if you do not play nine or 18 holes regularly, you can go the range, you can chip, you can practice putting,” said Jerald A. Barris, a high school principal at the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School in Midland, Pa., and a regional representative for the Pennsylvania Principals Association.

Ed Roth, the principal of Penncrest High School in Media, Pa., believes in math homework over the summer for high school students. “In mathematics, it is important for students to have some review and skills practice so that they do not need to spend the first marking period reviewing prior learning, therefore taking away their ability to cover all necessary content for their current course,” he said. Roth’s perspective, which suggests the loss of skills during summer break, has been well-documented in recent research .

But other educators favor a more tailored approach to summer work.

Danz, the Wisconsin high school biology teacher, said that she believes all students need a break from homework but added this caveat: “You can always find exceptions…students who may need remedial practice.”

Fabiana Parker, the 2023 Virginia Teacher of the Year, agreed. A teacher of English learners at Thornburg Middle School in Spotsylvania County, Va., Parker said “it is essential to take into account the unique needs of each student” when it comes to summer work. She elaborated with an account of her own children, recalling how she established a routine of daily math practice during the summer but only for her daughter who struggled with math and, in Parker’s assessment, needed the additional support.

Other educators said they are more likely to assign summer work to students on an accelerated track. Such is the case for Michael Ida, Hawaii’s 2023 Teacher of the Year. He teaches at Kalani High School in Honolulu. Ida said that, for most high school students, he recommends no summer work other than reading for pleasure. But he makes an exception for students who choose to enroll in more rigorous courses.

“I teach AP Calculus, and those students do have some required review work to complete over the summer,” Ida said. He gives them math problems that he has created—both routine review problems and more substantial problem solving exercises that emphasize logical thinking and communication.

A creative approach to summer work

Summer should be synonymous with creative learning, some educators emphasized. “Summer is a time to continue learning in the way that every child in every classroom should be taught, with a focus on each child’s passions and strengths and in the way that is most effective for them,” said Catherine Matthews, a pre-K special education teacher at Hyalite Elementary School in Bozeman, Mont., and the state’s 2023 Teacher of the Year.

“If a child is struggling with fractions but loves to cook, allow them to practice their math skills while doing something that they love. If they need to practice their reading fluency, allow them to choose books of personal interest,” Matthews added.

Second grade teacher Colbert expressed a desire for kids to experience the type of old-fashioned summer that, for countless students, no longer exists. “My wish is that all kids are outside exploring the beautiful world around them, interacting with their friends and family, growing their inquisitive minds, fostering their creativity, and limiting the use of technology,” she said.

Who’s responsible for making sure summer work gets done?

Assigning summer work is one thing; monitoring its completion is another.

Pennsylvania high school principal Barris said parents are ultimately responsible for making sure their kids do the work. “I believe it should fall on the parents for the most part with opportunities, suggestions, and strategies provided by the school in concert with the community where the child resides,” he said, while acknowledging this challenge. “That said,” he added, “getting my 11-year-old to read and practice his skills in the summer is easier said than done.”

A version of this article appeared in the June 14, 2023 edition of Education Week as Should Schools Assign Summer Homework? Educators Weigh In

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How to Squeeze the Most Out of Summer Homework

We know it takes the adolescent brain a few weeks or more to get back up to speed after the long summer break. Many teachers, particularly in the high school grades, try to reduce their students’ brain power regression by trying to keep them busy over the vacation. How can summer homework, particularly reading, benefit students without seeming like a chore? The answer is complex, and it partly depends on how helpful you feel about homework in the first place.

Tips to Make Summer Homework Worthwhile

Just like classroom and home learning during the school year, if summer homework tasks are inauthentic (e.g., busy work), they will serve little to no purpose. But, the brain drain of the summer months is real. So, how do we ensure that our students are firing on all cylinders when they walk through our doors in the fall? Here are some things to keep in mind when assigning summer homework.

1. Make Sure the Tasks Count for Something

Nothing will generate ill will amongst students faster than telling them their summer work was all for naught, but you wouldn’t believe how many teachers forget their students even had anything assigned over the summer break.

Students have read your books or have done your homework in good faith. The summer homework needs to be included or even dominate your first unit of the new school year. Otherwise, you might have some trust issues to address.

2. Make Summer Work Tasks Authentic

Students, especially older ones, can quickly sniff out busy work; they are less likely to give their best effort when they sense it.

If it’s something you wouldn’t assign during class—but might give to a substitute if you’re out—don’t assign it over the summer break. The goal is to prepare students for their upcoming studies just as much as it is to keep them from forgetting what they learned in the previous school year. Find a mix of the new with the old, and make it as engaging as possible.

3. Allow Some Summer Homework to Be Self-Guided

It’s no secret that the more input the student has in the task, the more engaging the lesson becomes. Because you’re not necessarily worried about mastery of new material and aren’t focusing on academic standards, there’s no harm in letting the students choose from a list of possible projects or books to read. Try assigning a “ Passion Project ”, where students choose a topic of personal interest and create a project or presentation around it.

4. Utilize the Ultimate Flipped Learning Opportunity

Perhaps you’re a flipped learning veteran or may still be just dabbling. Either way, summer break is the perfect opportunity to assign some lesson videos from your own library or an online resource.

Have students watch some TED Talks or lectures from Coursera or instructional videos from Khan Academy . They might not come in with complete mastery of the assigned topics, but they will be much better prepared to begin learning the material than if they were just doing worksheets from last school year’s work.

5. Celebrate Achievements and Milestones

If you have the resources, include a voluntary option for students to track their achievements and milestones online. Doing so can help students stay accountable in completing assignments while giving teachers the opportunity to motivate their students to continue their learning journey. You can experiment with virtual awards ceremonies, certificates of achievement, or personalized feedback messages. Consider acknowledging everyone again in person at the beginning of the school year to include those who were unable to participate online.

6. Encourage Peer Collaboration and Support

Another option to consider is incorporating group projects, peer review activities, and collaborative discussions into summer homework assignments to encourage students to actively engage with course content and develop essential teamwork and communication skills. Peer collaboration also fosters a sense of camaraderie and accountability among students, as they work together to achieve common goals and support each other's learning journey. For example, try facilitating peer review sessions where students provide feedback and support to their peers on their homework assignments. Students can exchange drafts of their essays or presentations and provide constructive feedback on areas for improvement. Suggest using free online platforms like Google Docs or Padlet for peer collaboration.

Looking for other fun ideas to encourage learning over summer break? Check out Edmentum’s free 30-Day Summer Challenge . Our flyer includes creative ideas designed to keep students engaged in their learning. With 30 days’ worth of fun activities, facts, and resources, learners are bound to learn something new each day and make the most out of summer break.

This post was originally published in June 2013 and has been updated.

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Is Summer Slide Real? (Plus Free Toolkit To Fight Summer Learning Loss)

Is it really as bad as they say?

A photograph of a playground slide with the text "In the summer between fifth and sixth grade, 84% of students experience summer slide in math."

Are you ready to support summer learners? Summer Scholars minimizes teacher planning while using proven strategies to inspire students’ curiosity and prepare them for ELA and math in the next grade.

Kids and teachers both breathe a sigh of relief when summer break finally arrives. After months of hard work, everyone deserves some time to relax. But are there any downsides to taking two or three months completely off from learning? Some researchers say this schedule leads to significant learning loss, known as summer slide. How worried should parents and teachers be about the negative effects of a long school vacation?

What is summer slide?

Is summer slide real, what research supports the concept, what are the opposing opinions, how should parents view summer slide, who is most affected by summer learning loss.

Free Toolkit With 30+ Tips, Printables, and More To Stop Summer Slide

Only 48% of parents (with children aged 6-17) have heard of summer slide.

Source: ID Tech

Ask any elementary school teacher, and they’ll tell you that the first few weeks of school are more about reteaching than covering new material. After several months away from the classroom, kids have to relearn how to sit still and focus on schoolwork. But more than that, it often seems students have forgotten a big chunk of what they learned the previous year, and teachers spend the opening weeks of the year catching kids up on what they should already know.

This concept of summer learning loss has been a known phenomenon for many years, and it’s not surprising. After all, even adults can’t recall everything they’ve learned several months later unless they’ve been using the knowledge every day. But in the 1980s and 1990s, researchers began looking into the notion more thoroughly. They developed the term “summer slide” and urged families and educators to take it seriously.

Here are some statistics about summer slide:

Kids in grades 3 to 5 lose about 20% of their school year gains in reading and 27% of their gains in math. ( Source: Scholastic )
Students lose about a month’s worth of learning on average over the summer. ( Source: Sage Journals )
In the summer between 5th and 6th grades, 84% of students experience summer slide in math. ( Source: Kappan )
The more kids learn during the school year, the more they’re likely to lose over the summer. ( Source: Kappan )

$A bar graph showing summer slide statistics for grades kindergarten to seven$

Source: Kappan

Like many educational subjects, there’s debate about summer slide. While anecdotal evidence certainly seems to back up the idea, scientific studies (especially in recent years) have called some long-held beliefs into question. Here’s what some of the research says.

A major 1996 study looked at achievement test scores after summer break. They amalgamated the results of 39 different studies and found that “summer loss equaled about one month on a grade-level equivalent scale, or one-tenth of a standard deviation relative to spring test scores.” This same study indicated the loss was worst when it came to math and spelling. Researchers also found that the loss increased exponentially at higher grade levels.

A more recent study found that students in grades 1 through 8 lose 17% to 34% of the prior year’s learning over summer break. It also indicates that kids who fall behind one summer are likely to widen that gap even more as time goes on.

Researchers have also explored the differences in summer slide between various races, ethnicities, and income groups. Interestingly, a 2019 study found that achievement gaps between white and Black students actually shrink during the summer months. In other words, Black students in this study lost fewer academic skills over the summer than their white peers.

Learn much more about summer learning loss research here.

Given the decades of research supporting the idea of summer slide, it’s no wonder that Paul T. von Hippel made huge waves with his 2019 article “Is Summer Learning Loss Real?” A policy professor at the University of Texas at Austin, Von Hippel said he’d “lost faith” in this idea.

When Von Hippel reviewed some of the most seminal research on summer learning loss, done in the 1980s, he found some serious issues related to how achievement tests were written at the time. What’s more, he was unable to replicate the results of that older study using today’s modern exams.

His research also showed that most achievement gaps are in place before the age of 5. This means that by the time kids enter kindergarten, they’ve already fallen into achievement groups that they’re likely to remain in throughout their school years. As Von Hippel points out, that means that studies indicating learning loss gaps widened over the years were unlikely to be true.

An infographic detailing some statistics on summer learning loss

Source: teacherevolution

So, where does all this leave parents and families? The answer is we’re not completely sure . What we do know is that when kids return to school in the fall, at least some of them have suffered pretty significant learning loss (see below). And while the term “summer slide” is generally used to apply only to academics, teachers can tell you that kids lose a lot of other skills over the summer too.

As adults, think about what it’s like when you take a week or two off from work. That first day back is usually pretty brutal, right? Not only do you have a ton of work to catch up on, but your body isn’t used to the schedule. Your mind isn’t used to focusing on one task when you’d really rather be doing something else.

Students have the same issues, multiplied by months away from school rather than just a week or so. Potential summer learning loss is compounded by the loss of study skills and other key behaviors. Kids often spend the first few weeks back at school relearning how to learn in the first place.

So whether you view summer slide as an accepted fact or with some healthy skepticism, there’s still value in working some structure and educational activities into every kid’s summer break. (Find top ideas below.)

The bulk of research currently supports the idea of at least some summer learning loss in most students. Perhaps more importantly, it highlights some groups that suffer from summer slide at much higher rates.

Early learners: The early elementary years are especially key for potential summer learning loss. Because students are learning such vital skills in reading and math, any backward slide can cause problems when kids return to school.
Low-income families: According to The New York Times , “While the achievement gap between White and Black students has narrowed significantly over the past few decades, the gap between rich and poor students has grown substantially during the same period.” These families often don’t have the same time and resources to devote to kids outside of school, especially in the summer.

30+ Free Tips and Tools To Fight Summer Slide

Whether you’re an educator teaching summer school or a parent convinced it’s worth helping your kids fight potential learning loss over the summer, try these free tips and tools.

Read, read, read—ANYTHING

Chart showing that kids who read beat summer slide

Source: LINC

You’ve heard it before, and we’ll say it again: All reading is good reading. Summer is the perfect time to let kids read whatever they like (yes, even comic books and those ubiquitous Captain Underpants books). Summer reading should have two goals: to sharpen kids’ literacy skills and to develop a love of reading to last a lifetime.

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Get creative

Paper airplane STEAM challenge printable.

Even when they’re not focusing directly on math or reading skills, kids benefit from hands-on creative activities. Do some crafts, learn to draw, write a story, build something new—any and all of these activities can keep kids in learning mode throughout the summer months.

Free Printable: Paper Airplane STEAM Challenge from the Summer Scholars, a language arts and math program for rising grades 1-8
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Spend 20 to 30 minutes 3 to 5 times a week on structured educational activities

Summertime really should be mostly about relaxation , but a little structured learning every day or two won’t take away from the fun. Make the investment in some age-appropriate reading and math workbooks, or sign up your kids for an online learning program that allows them to work at their own pace. Write these activities into your schedule alongside the Little League games and family picnics, and hold kids accountable for completing them.

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Learn as a family

Many families treasure summer as a chance to spend more time together after the busy days of the academic year. As you’re planning your summer fun, work in some educational ideas. Buy and play games with an educational aspect, start a family book club, or challenge kids to a weekly trivia night.

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Let travel be enlightening

Planning a family vacation? Try to work in a few learning opportunities, like museum visits or historical sites. These don’t necessarily need to be the focus of your trip, but emphasizing learning when school’s out keeps kids’ brains active and reminds them that not all education is dull.

25 Travel Games That Make Time Fly for Kids and Families

Take the learning outside

Structured learning is good, but so is educational play! Kids often want to be outdoors in summertime, so take your learning activities out there too. Check out these roundups for ideas.

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Make screen time valuable

Rather than fighting screen time, try working with it. Show kids the benefits of reading e-books (especially the ability to easily look up words or ideas they don’t understand). Direct them to educational but truly entertaining games. Even encouraging them to learn to use new features on their devices (camera settings, for instance) can trigger their brains to remain active.

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Sneak in some educational toys

We don’t just mean the stuff that’s marketed as educational (though we’ve shared our favorites below). Instead, look for ways to encourage learning through the kind of play your kids enjoy anyway. For instance, building LEGO sets helps with counting, fine motor skills, following directions, and many other concepts. Plus, many of today’s sets offer learning opportunities through themes such as space travel or dinosaurs. You might be surprised what your kids’ favorite toys can teach them!

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Participate in summer camps

Your local libraries, museums, children’s centers, theaters, and more may all offer summer camps for kids. Many of these offer scholarship opportunities too, so don’t assume you can’t afford these activities.

Use kids’ interests

Think about what your child likes to do, and find ways to expand on it. Are they sports fans? Dive deep into the various statistics of a particular sport, and they won’t even realize they’re practicing math skills. Do they love to dress up and play pretend? Ask them to write a script and then perform a play. Video game fanatic? Maybe they’d like to learn how to code their own. When you tie learning to something that interests kids, you take important steps toward fighting summer slide.

Teachers, how do you help families fight summer learning loss? Come share your ideas in the We Are Teachers HELPLINE group on Facebook .

Plus, creative ways schools are supporting families over summer break ..

What does the research say about summer slide? Get a free toolkit with tips, printables, and more to address potential summer learning loss.

Summer Reading List printable and books for 2024, including Get a Grip Vivy Cohen and Boxitcts.

2024 Summer Reading List for Kids and Teens (Free Printables)

More than 150 books for grades preK to 12. Continue Reading

Summer homework may start as early as elementary school, but you don’t have to do it the way it’s always been done! Veteran educators like third-grade teacher Alycia Zimmerman have spent time thinking about how to make summer homework meaningful and interesting enough that students buy in—and even want to do it.

Read on for Zimmerman’s summer homework game plan and ideas for how to make summer assignments more fun for everyone.

1. Try a New Student Meet and Greet

If possible, meet your incoming students before summer break (even if it’s virtual!) to instill the importance of summer learning.

At the end of the school year, coordinate with the teachers of your incoming students to swap classes for a period. Introduce yourselves to your future students and build excitement for the fun and challenging learning ahead and the very “grown-up” summer homework you will assign.

“We’ve been far more successful in instilling the importance of our summer assignments when presenting about it face-to-face rather than just sending a packet of directions home cold,” says Zimmernan. “The students sit on the edges of their seats as we talk about the importance of summer reading and our certainty that they will do everything they can to 'keep their brains healthy, pink, and strong’ over the summer.”

2. Emphasize the Importance of Summer Reading

Talk about the best summer assignment of all: diving into books!

Reading should be a treat, not a menial assignment, so Zimmerman doesn’t feel guilty about making reading the bulk of her summer homework. Here are some of her most effective strategies for promoting summer reading:

Have students fill out a log to keep track of the books and other texts they read over the summer. It isn’t necessary to require a certain number of books or specific titles. Simply ask that they find books they love and spend lots of time reading them.

Have your current students write book reviews of their favorite titles to send home with your rising students. Invite your current students to serve as reading ambassadors and speak to the younger students about the importance and joys of reading. When coming from slightly older peers, the message is very well received.

And of course: Sign your students up for the Scholastic Summer Reading Program ! From May 9 to August 19, your students can visit Scholastic Home Base to participate in the free, fun, and safe summer reading program . As part of the program, kids can read e-books, attend author events, and keep Reading Streaks™ to help unlock a donation of 100K books from Scholastic – distributed to kids with limited or no access to books by Save the Children.

3. Share Fun and Educational Activities

Direct your students to fun (and educational) activities.

When considering other homework, the best options are activities that students will be motivated to do because they’re entertaining.

Give your incoming students the “everything is better in moderation” speech so they understand that they shouldn’t play hours of computer games every day this summer. If possible, send them home with printable and book-based packs to polish their skills for the year ahead (you can even pair these with your own assignments):

4. Connect Through the Mail

Stay connected with your students over the summer through cards.

Giving incoming students the opportunity to connect with you and with each other can motivate them to complete summer assignments. Here’s one plan for connecting via letters:

Have your incoming students mail you a letter of introduction. Explain that you want to hear about their summer activities, their hobbies, their families, and anything special they want you to know before the school year begins.

When you receive letters from your students, send a postcard back with a brief response. Tell them a bit about your summer plan, and let them know you can’t wait to see them in the fall.

Encourage them to write again!

You can also pair up students and have them write to each other over the summer. In September, they can bring their pen pal letters to class to display on the bulletin board.

Take advantage of everyone’s increasing familiarity with virtual resources by connecting online, too! Post a short video, article, or question once a week on your classroom's online platform, and invite both incoming students and rising former students to write their thoughts in the comments section. Be sure to moderate their comments and enjoy their back-and-forth dialogues as they engage with each other.

Get started by shopping the best books for summer reading below! You can find all books and activities at The Teacher Store .

Summer learning loss: What is it, and what can we do about it?

Subscribe to the center for economic security and opportunity newsletter, david m. quinn and david m. quinn assistant professor of education - university of southern california morgan polikoff morgan polikoff associate professor of education - usc rossier school of education @mpolikoff.

September 14, 2017

14 min read

As students return to school this fall, many of them – perhaps especially those from historically disadvantaged student groups – will be starting the academic year with achievement levels lower than where they were at the beginning of summer break. This phenomenon – sometimes referred to as summer learning loss, summer setback, or summer slide – has been of interest to education researchers going back as far as 1906. 1 We review what is known about summer loss and offer suggestions for districts and states looking to combat the problem.

An early comprehensive review of the literature summarized several findings regarding summer loss. 2 The authors concluded that: (1) on average, students’ achievement scores declined over summer vacation by one month’s worth of school-year learning, (2) declines were sharper for math than for reading, and (3) the extent of loss was larger at higher grade levels. Importantly, they also concluded that income-based reading gaps grew over the summer, given that middle class students tended to show improvement in reading skills while lower-income students tended to experience loss. However, they did not find differential summer learning in math, or by gender or race in either subject.

The recent literature on summer loss has been mixed. One study using data from over half a million students in grades 2-9 from a southern state (from 2008-2012) found that students, on average, lost between 25 – 30 percent of their school-year learning over the summer; additionally, black and Latino students tended to gain less over the school year and lose more over the summer compared to white students. 3 However, an analysis of the nationally-representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010 – 11 (ECLS-K:2011) found little evidence of overall loss over the summers after grades K and 1, and the summer socioeconomic status gaps widened in some subjects and grades but not others. 4 Von Hippel and Hamrock re-analyzed two earlier data sets and concluded that gaps “do not necessarily…grow fastest over the summer” (p.41). 5 Thus, it seems summer loss and summer gap-growth occur, though not universally across geography, grade level, or subject.

Entwisle, Alexander, and Olson’s “faucet theory” offers an explanation as to why lower-income students might learn less over the summer compared to higher-income students. 6 According to the theory, the “resource faucet” is on for all students during the school year, enabling all students to make learning gains. Over the summer, however, the flow of resources slows for students from disadvantaged backgrounds but not for students from advantaged backgrounds. Higher-income students tend to continue to have access to financial and human capital resources (such as parental education) over the summer, thereby facilitating learning. 7

Students’ achievement scores declined over summer vacation by one month’s worth of school-year learning.

Traditionally, educators and policymakers have relied on conventional summer school programs to combat summer loss and summer gap-growth. In 2000, Cooper and colleagues published a comprehensive meta-analysis of classroom-based summer programs finding positive effects on average. 8 However, they also concluded that middle-income students benefited more from summer programming than did lower-income students. They speculated that this could be because programs serving more advantaged students were of higher quality, or because of an interactive effect between programming and the home resources available to students. The result raised the concern that attempts to stem summer learning loss may actually exacerbate summer gap-growth if they are not well targeted.

Kim and Quinn conducted a meta-analysis of 41 summer reading programs from 35 studies published after the Cooper et al. review. 9 Like Cooper and colleagues, Kim and Quinn found summer reading programs to be effective at raising test scores, on average. Unlike Cooper, however, Kim and Quinn found that it was low-income students who benefited most from summer reading programs (even when restricting the comparison to higher- and lower-income students attending the same program). Furthermore, they concluded that the reason lower-income students benefited more was that lower-income students in these studies were more likely than higher-income students to experience summer loss when not participating in the summer programs. The authors noted several differences between their review and Cooper et al.’s that could explain the contrasting results: 1) Kim and Quinn analyzed only reading programs, while Cooper and colleagues combined math and reading programs, 2) Kim and Quinn included only two-group experimental and quasi-experimental studies, while Cooper and colleagues included single-group pre/post-test designs, and 3) Kim and Quinn included home-based programs in their review.

Naturally, school-based summer school programs vary in their effectiveness. Many of the recommendations for creating high-quality programs come in the form of expert opinion. Common suggestions include blending academic learning with hands-on or recreational activities, professionalizing summer school staff, and forming partnerships with community organizations to leverage resources. 10 We can also draw some lessons from research. For instance, the recent meta-analysis found that programs were more effective when they used research-based literacy instruction; specifically, programs using instructional strategies identified by the National Reading Panel as best practices had the largest impact on students’ reading comprehension scores (equivalent to moving from the 50 th to the 65 th percentile of a normal distribution). Program effectiveness also differed by literacy domain—programs were effective at raising students’ reading comprehension and fluency/decoding scores but not their vocabulary scores. Not surprisingly, research also suggests that programs are more effective when students attend consistently and spend more time on task academically. 11

While school-based summer learning programs hold promise when they fit the above criteria, they often fail to live up to these expectations. Two important reasons why school-based summer programs can be ineffective are that organizers often struggle to attract high quality teachers and struggle to appeal to students and families for whom the opportunity costs of attending summer school can be high. 12 13 School-based programs can also be quite costly. Researchers have therefore experimented, with some success, with lower-cost home-based summer programming.

One example of a home-based summer reading program that has been shown to be effective for low-income upper elementary school students is READS for Summer Learning. 14 In READS, which has been iteratively modified over several randomized trials, students receive eight books in the mail over the summer that are matched to their reading level and interests. Along with each book, students receive a tri-fold paper that leads them through a pre-reading activity and a post-reading comprehension check. Students are asked to mail the postage-prepaid tri-fold back; families receive reminders when tri-folds are not returned. Additionally, teachers deliver scripted lessons at the end of the school year to prepare students to productively read independently over the summer with the trifold scaffold. A recent study found that READS had an effect on low-income students’ reading comprehension the spring following their participation in the intervention (ES=.05 SD on the state reading test), 15 and other work suggests that the tri-fold acts as a mediator of the program effect. 16

Another recent randomized trial showed that something as simple as sending text messages over the summer to families of elementary school students at risk of summer loss was effective at improving the reading scores of third- and fourth-graders (but not first or second graders), with effect sizes of .21 to .29. 17 The text messages included tips on resources available to students over the summer, ideas for activities to do with children, and information about the value of particular summer learning activities.

Home-based programs such as these can be more cost-effective than school-based interventions. For example, the cost of READS per student is estimated to be between $250-$480, compared to other programs providing supplementary education services that can cost as much as $1,700 per student and have similar or less favorable cost effectiveness ratios.

Kim and Quinn included home-based programs in their meta-analysis, and encouragingly, they found that the effects of home-based programs were not significantly different from their more expensive classroom-based alternatives. At the same time, the effects from these programs might not be as large as the effects of the highest-quality school-based programs that use research-based instructional strategies.

Schools and districts should want to address the issue of summer learning loss not only because it may exacerbate achievement gaps, but also because it “wastes” so much of the knowledge students have gained during the school year. Summer loss also undoubtedly increases the amount of time teachers have to spend “re-teaching” last year’s content, likely contributing to the repetitiveness of the typical U.S. curriculum. 18 While investing in extensive school-based summer options may be infeasible, it may be cost-effective and strategic for districts to begin to offer targeted out-of-school interventions to the students most at risk of backsliding. In designing such programs, policymakers should keep in mind the recommendations from the research described above:

Center the program around evidence-based curriculum.
In addition to academic content, include hands-on or recreational activities to attract students.
Ensure that program structure enables sufficient time on task, and have policies or incentives that encourage consistent attendance.
Invest in hiring the most effective teachers.

Regardless of the design, these policies should offer engaging options for students over the summer so that summer learning programs do not feel like punishment for students who would rather be enjoying summer vacation. Doing so would set more students up for success as the school year gets underway.

The authors did not receive any financial support from any firm or person for this article or from any firm or person with a financial or political interest in this article. They are currently not an officer, director, or board member of any organization with an interest in this article.

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Cooper H., Nye B., Charlton K., Lindsay J., Greathouse S. (1996). The effects of summer vacation on achievement test scores: A narrative and meta-analytic review. Review of Educational Research, 66(3), 227–268. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/00346543066003227
Atteberry, A., & McEachin, A. (2016). School’s out: Summer learning loss across grade levels and school contexts in the United States today. In Alexander, K., Pitcock, S., & Boulay, M. (Eds). Summer learning and summer learning loss, pp35-54 . New York: Teachers College Press.
Quinn, D.M., Cooc, N., McIntyre, J., & Gomez, C.J. (2016). Seasonal dynamics of academic achievement inequality by socioeconomic status and race/ethnicity: Updating and extending past research with new national data. Educational Researcher, 45 (8), 443-453. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0013189X16677965?journalCode=edra
Von Hippel, P.T., & Hamrock, C. (2016). Do test score gaps grow before, during, or between the school years? Measurement artifacts and what we can know in spite of them. (Social Science Research Network working paper). Retrieved from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2745527
Entwisle D. R., Alexander K. L., Olson L. S. (2000). Summer learning and home environment. In Kahlenberg R. D. (Ed.), A notion at risk: Preserving public education as an engine for social mobility (pp. 9–30). New York, NY: Century Foundation Press
Borman G. D., Benson J., Overman L. T. (2005). Families, schools, and summer learning. The Elementary School Journal, 106 (2), 131–150. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/499195
Cooper, H., Charlton, K., Valentine, J. C., & Muhlenbruck, L. (2000). Making the most of summer school: A meta-analytic and narrative review. Monographs of the society for research in child development , 65, i-127. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3181549
Kim J. S., Quinn D. M. (2013). The effects of summer reading on low-income children’s literacy achievement from kindergarten to grade 8 a meta-analysis of classroom and home interventions. Review of Educational Research, 83 (3), 386–431. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/0034654313483906
McLaughlin B., Pitcock S. (2009). Building quality in summer learning programs: Approaches and recommendations (White Paper Commissioned by the Wallace Foundation). Retrieved from: http://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/documents/building-quality-in-summer-learning-programs.pdf
Augustine, CH, Sloan McCombs, J., Pane, JF, Schwartz, HL, Schweig, J., McEachin, A. and Siler-Evans, K. (2016). Learning from Summer: Effects of Voluntary Summer Learning Programs on Low-Income Urban Youth. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. Retrieved from: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1557.html
Denton D. R. (2002). Summer school: Unfulfilled promise. Atlanta, GA: Summer Regional Education Board. Retrieved from: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED467662.pdf
McLaughlin & Pitcock (2009)
e.g., Kim, J.S., Guryan, J., White, T.G., Quinn, D.M., Capotosto, L., & Kingston, H.C. (2016). Delayed effects of a low-cost and large-scale summer reading intervention on elementary school children’s reading comprehension. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 9 sup1, 1-22. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19345747.2016.1164780?journalCode=uree20
Guryan, J., Kim, J.S., & Quinn, D.M. (2014). Does reading during the summer build reading skills? Evidence from a randomized experiment in 463 classrooms. NBER Working Paper No. 20689. http://www.nber.org/papers/w20689
Kraft, M.A., & Monti-Nussbaum, M. (in press). Can schools empower parents to prevent summer learning loss? A text messaging field experiment to promote literacy skills. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science . https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mkraft/files/kraft_monti-nussbaum_2017_can_schools_empower_parents_to_prevent_summer_learning_loss_annals.pdf
Polikoff, M.S. (2012). The redundancy of mathematics instruction in US elementary and middle schools. The Elementary School Journal , 113 (2), 230-251. http://web-app.usc.edu/web/rossier/publications/66/The%20Redundancy%20of%20Math%20Instruction.pdf

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, what is summer school guide for high school students.

Coursework/GPA

When you think of how you want to spend your summer vacation, sitting in a classroom is probably not the first thing that comes to mind. However, summer school can be a great way for you to get ahead in high school and give yourself an advantage in college admissions.

These days students with all kinds of grades take summer classes. You might take summer school to understand a particular subject better, to free up more time in your schedule during the school year, or to take an advanced class at your high school, nearby college, or online.

Read this complete guide on summer school for high school students to learn everything you need to know about what summer school is, why people take it, and how you can use it to get ahead.

What Is Summer School?

You probably know that summer school refers to classes that students take during the summer, outside of the regular academic school year. However, more specifically, summer school for high school students can be a lot of different things: It can be a way for you to retake a class you found difficult, take specialized courses in areas that interest you, get a head-start on prerequisites and college classes, and more.

Summer school can be classes done through your high school, at a community college or local university, or through a program that includes classes, such as a summer camp.

Online summer school, where students take classes primarily on a computer at home, is becoming more popular. Many of these classes require students to visit the school once or twice to take exams or turn in final projects, but some classes are also offered completely online. Online classes may be offered through your high school, a college or university, or through a specialized online high school program.

Why Do Students Take Summer School?

Reason 1: to improve their grades.

Historically, the most common reason that people took summer school was that they needed to improve their grades in one or more classes.

There are still many students who take summer school for this reason, and many of them find it easier to earn better grades during the summer because summer school often has smaller classes, more one-on-one interaction with the teacher, and fewer distractions, such as other classes, school sports, or clubs to worry about.

Reason 2: To Take Specialized Classes

Sometimes, students will also take summer school classes in order to take a certain class they wouldn't be able to enroll in during the school year. This could be a class they don't have room in their schedule for or a specialized class, such as a course on a specific subject or an intensive foreign language course. Some schools also offer short certificate programs over the summer. These can cover a variety of topics, such as entrepreneurship, computer science, and more.

Sometimes schools offer classes during the summer that they don't normally offer during the school year. You will likely have an even wider variety of summer school class options if you look at classes at community colleges or online . Taking a specialized class can allow you to learn more about a topic you're interested in and help you gain new skills and knowledge.

Reason 3: To Prepare For College

Summer school can also help you get a head start on the rest of your education, including college.

Some students take summer school as a way to get prerequisites out of the way so that they can take more advanced classes during the school year. At my high school, every student was required to take a basic typing class before they graduated, and many students took this class over the summer because it wasn't very challenging and could be taken online. This gave us an extra space in our schedule to fill with an elective we wanted to take.

You can also take community college classes over the summer, which you may be able to get high school or college credit for. These classes can help you get more used to what college classes will be like so that you feel more prepared and confident once you start college. Having college classes, even introductory classes from a community college, will also strengthen your college applications because it will show schools that you can handle the rigor of a college course.

How Can You Do Well in Summer School?

Whatever the reason you're taking summer school classes, it's important that you do well in them. They're using up some of your important summer time, and you want to make sure you don't waste that time by doing poorly in the classes. Summer school classes are a bit different from classes taken during the school year, and there are a few strategies you can use to maximize your chances of success.

Tip 1: Take Fewer Classes at a Time

Unless you absolutely need to take multiple classes in order to graduate, it's a good idea to only take 1-2 classes at a time during summer school. Summer school classes are often shorter than regular classes (often 6-8 weeks long, compared to a whole semester), so they are usually more intensive and require a greater time commitment.

Taken fewer classes is especially important if you are retaking a particular class because you'll be able to be able to focus more of your time and energy on getting a higher grade this time around if you don't have other classes to worry about.

Tip 2: Create a Study Schedule

Taking summer classes can be hard. There are probably a lot of things you'd rather be doing like seeing your friends, being outside, playing sports, etc., and it can be easy to get distracted.

Either before or right after you start summer school, create a study schedule that lets you plan when you will put aside time to study and do homework. If you can set aside the same time every day, like 4:00-5:30pm every afternoon, that can make it easier to stick to your study schedule and plan other activities. Set goals for what you want to accomplish each day or week, whether it's a project you need to complete, papers to read, or just general studying and homework.

On the other hand, make sure you are giving yourself enough time to take a break and relax. Summer school can be demanding, and if you overtax yourself, you may end up burned out by the time the school year starts, which you don't want to do because it could cause your other grades to suffer. If you need help creating your study schedule, ask a parent or teacher for some guidance.

Tip 3: Ask For Help Early

Summer school classes are often smaller than regular classes, and this means you'll have more interaction with the teacher.

Use this to your advantage by asking for help early if something confuses you or doesn't make sense. Particularly if you are retaking a class you struggled in before, you want to make sure you don't repeat the same mistakes you did the first time. Teachers are happy to help students who ask, and they won't think any questions you ask are dumb, so don't be afraid to let them know you need something explained more or in a different way.

If you've already taken the class before and know which areas you struggled in, you may want to tell this to your teacher early on so they can prepare you for the topic better and possibly give you some additional material to look over to make sure you understand the subject.

Asking a teacher for extra help as soon as you don't understand the material can help you keep your grades up in summer school.

Should You Take Summer School?

If you're wondering whether or not to take summer school, ask yourself the following three questions. If any of the scenarios apply to you, then you may want to consider summer classes. For each scenario, the best way to take these summer classes is also mentioned so you can be sure you get the benefits you want out of summer school.

Question 1: Do You Want, or Need, to Improve Your Grades?

Is there an especially low grade on your transcript that you wish you could erase? If you did poorly in a certain class, summer school is a great way to redeem yourself and retake the class for (hopefully!) a better grade.

Even just one especially low grade, such as a D or F, can really bring down your GPA and hurt your chances of getting into competitive colleges. Even if the class shows up as a retake on your transcript, if you got a good grade in it the second time around, that will look much better than having a very low grade.

Best option: If this is the case for you, you will probably take your summer school classes through your high school in order to improve your grade in a particular class.

Question 2: Are There Specific Classes You're Interested in Taking?

Is there a class you'd like to take that is only offered in the summer or you don't have time to take during the school year? Summer school could be a way to fit it into your schedule. You could get creative here and take a class in photography, wilderness skills, a foreign language, or a different interest you have. Summer school doesn't have to be boring!

Best option: Depending on which classes you're interested in, you can take them through your high school, at a community college, at a summer program, or online. Talk to your academic adviser if you're not sure which classes to take and want to know what your options are. If you take classes at a place other than your high school, make sure you understand exactly if and how you will receive credit for them.

Question 3: Do You Want to Get Ahead on Classes?

Are you trying to get prerequisites out of the way or want to take advanced classes to improve your chances of getting into a competitive college? If so, taking summer classes can be a way for you to have more space in your schedule for other classes, strengthen your transcript, and be more prepared for college.

Best option: If you're trying to take some prerequisites over the summer, you'll probably take them through your high school because courses through other schools may not meet the prereq requirements. If you want to take classes to prepare you for college, you will likely take these at a community college or nearby university. You may also be able to take advanced summer classes through your high school.

Should You Do Online Summer School?

Online summer school for high school students is becoming more and more popular, and it's easy to see why. Online classes often allow you to do schoolwork on your own schedule and reduce the time and hassle of traveling to class. However, is online summer school a good idea for everyone?

Online classes can have several drawbacks including the following:

Less direct interaction with the instructor
Requires more self-motivation
Can be more challenging to understand

If you're trying to decide whether or not to take summer school online, you should talk to people who know your study habits, such as teachers and parents, to help make the best decision. However, in general, you shouldn't take online summer school classes if you struggle to motivate yourself to study and complete work on time, or if you struggled with the class before and want more guidance from and interaction with the instructor. Both of these issues can be exacerbated with online classes.

You should also base your decision on how difficult you expect the class to be. For a relatively easy class, you need to take as a basic graduation requirement, such as typing or health, online classes will likely cause you fewer problems than if you were taking a more challenging course. Because the class you're taking isn't that difficult, you'll be able to handle the issues that online classes can sometimes create, and you'll be able to easily get the class out of the way and focus on tougher classes during the school year.

There are many reasons for students take summer school, whether it's to improve their grades, take a certain class they couldn't take during the school year, or become more prepared for college.
Summer school can be taken through your high school, at a community or local college, or through a company or organization that offers summer classes. Most summer classes are in-person, but online classes are becoming more popular.
You don't want to waste your summer taking a class you end up not doing well in. In order to make sure you get good grades in summer school you should limit the number of classes you take, create a study schedule, and ask for help early on if you don't understand the material.
If you're not sure whether you should take summer school or you don't know what classes to take, talk to a teacher, parent, or academic adviser to figure out what the best option for you is.

What's Next?

Want to learn more about online high school? Check out our guide to online high school and learn if it's the right choice for you.

Is there a certain class you want to take, but it isn't offered by your school or doesn't fit into your schedule? You may be able to take an independent study! Read this guide for everything you need to know about independent study classes and how to take one yourself.

Trying to decide whether to take an AP class or a class at a community college? We go over the pros and cons of each to help you make the best decision.

Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points? We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download them for free now:

Christine graduated from Michigan State University with degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography and received her Master's from Duke University. In high school she scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and was named a National Merit Finalist. She has taught English and biology in several countries.

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Summer Reading Programs: Benefits

Bibliography
Reading Lists

Summer Reading Benefits

The benefits to readers in a summer reading program include:

encouragement that reading become a lifelong habit
reluctant readers can be drawn in by the activities
reading over the summer helps children keep their skills up
the program can generate interest in the library and books

And it being summer, the program can just be good fun and provide an opportunity for family time.

Citing numerous benefits of summer reading programs, the ALA Council adopted the Resolution on Ensuring Summer Reading Programs for all Children and Teens (PDF) at the 2010 Annual Conference urging "Library Directors, Trustees, School Board members and supervising government bodies to insure that their libraries are provided adequate funding to ensure that their summer reading programs for all children and teens are maintained."

Talking points for the benefits of summer reading, Why Public Library Summer Reading Programs Are Important (PDF), have been made available by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. A more comprehensive look on the topic, along with a bibliography, can be found on their web site at Literacy Research.

There are also public relations benefits of attracting new readers, maintaining or building a library presence in the community, and keeping or building traffic for the library. Over the years, many libraries have entered their summer reading program into the John Cotton Dana Library Public Relations Award, provided in conjunction with the H.W. Wilson Foundation, EBSCO, and the Library Leadership and Management Association (LLAMA, a division of the American Library Association).

Summer Reading Benefits Resources

Adopting a Summer Learning Approach for Increased Impact: a YALSA Position Paper This position paper is meant to help guide libraries as they re-envision the services and programs they provide youth during the summer months.
Resolution on ensuring summer reading programs for all children and teens 2010 ALA resolution stating the high importance of summer reading programs.
Why public library summer reading programs are important Written by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
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What We Know About Summer Learning Loss: An Update

Educators are discovering how summer vacation affects learning..

Posted July 6, 2020 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma

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Kids in the U.S. are well into the lazy days of summer.

Summer vacation – and in some cases, distance learning that felt like summer vacation! – started early this year for many youths when schools closed to slow the spread of the corona virus . For most kids, summer vacation marks a time when they are less engaged in educational pursuits like reading, math and problem solving. And with camps and day cares closed in many parts of the country, more kids than ever are spending extra time at home, and likely in front of screens.

For decades, the general research consensus has been that summer vacations lead to a “summer slide,” where students forget some of what they learned over the previous school year. A systematic review of 39 studies published in 1996 found summer learning loss equaled about one month of classroom learning, and students tended to regress more in math skills compared to reading skills. It also found that students from middle- and upper-class families improved in reading over the summer, while students from lower-income families regressed.

But emerging research on the “summer slide” calls into question these findings. A more recent study finds that the years before kindergarten lead to the greatest inequality in children’s school performance, and this gap shrinks in the early years of elementary school, even with summer vacations. This study also points out flaws in the original research that established this “summer slide.”

A study published last year in the journal Phi Delta Kappan take a more careful look at this issue by analyzing data from more than 3.4 million students in all 50 states who took the same reading and mathematics assessments between the 2016-17 and 2017-18 school years.

The analysis still found that students lost some of what they learned the previous school year. The typical student loss one to two months of learning in reading and one to three months of learning in math. But the analysis demonstrated that the strongest predictor of whether a student would experience summer gains or losses was how much progress the student had made in the previous academic year. Students who learned more during the school year were more likely to lose ground during summer break.

In addition, in the new study, race and ethnicity only accounted for one percent of summer learning loss. Students in higher-poverty schools did show significantly more loss during the summer in later elementary and middle school, but only by about one week of school learning.

The good news is, there is evidence that parents and school can take steps to reduce and even eliminate the “summer slide.”

According to a paper published in 2015 in the Journal of Organizational and Educational Leadership , there are three keys to reducing summer losses in reading: Targeting the students who are most likely to regress, creating a routine that requires students to practice every day and building strong relationships between kids and their parents or teachers.

In another study published in 2017, 6- and 7-year-olds who participated in a structured reading program at their local YMCA over the summer showed no signs for summer reading loss.

The evidence is clear: Children do forget skills and knowledge learned in the previous school year, and research is telling us more about the factors that contribute to those losses. But if families and educators encourage kids to stay engaged in learning throughout the summer, students may not only maintain, but improve their knowledge.

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Why Summers Matter

When the school year ends, children in high-poverty environments struggle not only with basic needs like healthy food and safe places to spend their days, but with losing precious time during the summer months to continue their learning. The cumulative effect is a crisis in the making: by the fifth grade, summer learning loss can leave low-income students two-and-a-half to three years behind their peers.

Students who fall behind over the summer are less likely to graduate from high school or go on to college. NSLA believes that diversity of every kind is critical to our nation’s success. Creating opportunities for summer learning sets the stage for innovation, creativity, and leadership in every community: the young people we nurture today are the foundation of our society tomorrow.

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Summer learning loss: What we know and what we’re learning

Concerns about students losing ground academically during summer break go back at least a century, with early evidence suggesting that summer contributed to large disparities in students’ outcomes. This narrative spurred expansion of a variety of summer programs and interventions aimed at stemming summer learning loss.

However, in the last five years, there has been a spirited debate about two long-standing questions about students’ summers: 1) the degree to which test scores actually drop during the summer and 2) the degree to which summer break contributes to educational inequities. A new layer to this conversation is the response to the learning disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. School leaders and policymakers have used the summer break as a potential time for academic recovery. Summer programs have emerged as one of the most popular recovery strategies offered by school districts, with an estimated $5.8 billion of ESSER funds expected to be spent on summer programs by September 2024.

With more focus on the impact of summer on students’ learning and the potential to extend the school year, it is essential for educators, policymakers, and families to have an up-to-date understanding of the impact of summer breaks on students’ learning patterns. In this post, we aim to highlight what is known about summer learning loss by quickly summarizing recent research and posing some questions that remain unanswered about the role of summers on students’ learning.

Students’ test scores flatten or drop during the summer

While our initial understanding of summer learning loss dates back to studies conducted in the 70s and 80s , a recent collection of studies in the last six years provides a fresh look at students’ learning across summers using four modern assessments ( ECLS-K direct cognitive tests , MAP® Growth™, Star, and i-Ready) with large national (though not typically nationally representative) samples. See “School’s out: The role of summers in understanding achievement disparities,” “When does inequality grow? School, summer, and achievement gaps,” “Evidence of ‘summer learning loss’ on the i-Ready diagnostic assessment,” “Findings on summer learning loss often fail to replicate, even in recent data,” and “Inequality in reading and math skills forms mainly before kindergarten: A replication, and partial correction, of ‘Are schools the great equalizer?’”

Figure 1 compares the test score patterns across four different studies. Three important patterns stand out:

On average, test scores flatten or drop during the summer , with larger drops typically in math than reading.
Studies using test scores from ECLS-K:2011 show that student learning slows down but does not drop over the summers after kindergarten and first grade. However, research using interim and diagnostic assessments ( MAP Growth , Star, and i-Ready ) has found far larger summer drops across a range of grade levels.
Given the sizable differences in the magnitude of test score drops across tests, it remains uncertain whether summer slide should be considered a trivial issue or a serious educational challenge.

Figure 1. Comparison of summer slide estimates across datasets

Two bar graphs compare summer slide estimates for math and reading in grades K–2, 3–5, and 6–8 using data from ECLS-K: 2010–2011, i-Ready, MAP Growth, and Star.

Note: All estimates are reported as the total average summer test score change in standard deviation (SD) units relative to the prior spring test score. Whenever possible, we report the estimate that adjusted scores for time in school prior/after testing in the fall and spring. Sources: Author calculations based on data reported in ECLS-K:20210-11 , MAP Growth , i-Ready , and Star .

Who is most likely to show summer learning loss.

While all three diagnostic assessments show some degree of summer slide in grades 3–8 on average, the research community lacks consensus about whether summers disproportionately impact certain students. Paul von Hippel and colleagues have pointed out that whether and how much summers contribute to educational inequalities (across students of different income levels, races, ethnicities, and genders) depends on the test used to study students’ learning patterns. Nonetheless, we can present a few key patterns from this line of research:

Learning rates are more variable during the summer than during the school year. See “School’s out: The role of summers in understanding achievement disparities,” “When does inequality grow? School, summer, and achievement gaps,” and “Inequality in reading and math skills forms mainly before kindergarten: A replication, and partial correction, of ‘Are schools the great equalizer?’”
Gaps between students attending low- and high-poverty schools do not consistently widen during the summer. See “Is summer learning loss real, and does it widen test score gaps by family income?” and “Is summer learning loss real?”
Test score differences between Black and white students hold steady or narrow during the summer. See “Do test score gaps grow before, during, or between the school years? Measurement artifacts and what we know in spite of them” and “When does inequality grow? School, summer, and achievement gaps,” though results can be sensitive to the metric and test used. See also “Black-white summer learning gaps: Interpreting the variability of estimates across representations” and “Findings on summer learning loss often fail to replicate, even in recent data.”
The field cannot really explain why differences in students’ summer learning occur. See “Rethinking summer slide: The more you gain, the more you lose” and “Inequality in reading and math skills forms mainly before kindergarten: A replication, and partial correction, of ‘Are schools the great equalizer?’”

Planning effective summer programming

It is clear across recent studies that summer is a particularly variable time for students. Summer break is also increasingly a time in which districts are offering a range of academic offerings.

During summer 2022, an estimated 90% of school districts offered summer programs with an academic focus. However, evidence on the effectiveness of academic summer programs during and after the COVID-19 pandemic is limited. One study of eight summer programs in summer 2022 found a small positive impact on math test scores (0.03 SD), but not on reading. The improvements in math were largely driven by elementary students compared to middle schoolers. However, the effectiveness of these programs remained consistent across student groups, including race/ethnicity, poverty, and English learner status.

It is crucial to recognize the challenges associated with scaling up summer programs. In the districts studied, only 13% of students participated in the summer programs , which only lasted for an average of three to four weeks. Prior research indicates that for summer programs to yield measurable academic benefits, they should run at least five weeks with at least three hours of instruction a day. Additionally, getting students to regularly attend summer programs remains a significant hurdle. To address this issue, districts should actively recruit families to participate and offer a mix of academic instruction and engaging extracurricular activities. By adopting these strategies, districts can maximize the effectiveness of their summer programs and better support student learning during the break.

If you’re interested in learning more about effective summer programs, we encourage you to read the following:

“Effective summer programming: What educators and policymakers should know”
“Investing in successful summer programs: A review of evidence under the Every Student Succeeds Act”
“Analysis: Summer learning is more popular than ever. How to make sure your district’s program is effective”
“The impact of summer learning programs on low-income children’s mathematics achievement: A meta-analysis”
“The effects of summer reading on low-income children’s literacy achievement from kindergarten to grade 8: A meta-analysis of classroom and home interventions”

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Why Summer Homework Isn't Necessary for Student Success

July 26, 2023

By Williana Serve

Now that we're halfway through summer, it feels like the feeling of anxiety (or, in some cases, excitement) increases as the school year approaches. Our FYPs are filled with back-to-school hauls, stores like Target and Walmart are stocking their stores with back-to-school sales, and the time is passing by faster than ever. That being said, one thing that I feel we don't always account for because our brain is on vacation mode is the one thing most students dread: Summer Homework.

Personally, I (and a lot of students) agree that the idea of summer homework sounds dreadful and shouldn't be a thing. There are a few people who may disagree, but here's why I think that summer homework is not the be-all, end-all for whether you'll succeed as a student or not.

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Encourages a Healthy Work-Life Balance

Everyone talks about the importance of having a "work-life balance," but it feels like school, especially society in general, makes it hard to do so sometimes through a universal workaholic mentality. This is precisely why it's up to us to prioritize that balance for ourselves and avoid imposing work into our free time too much. Not having summer homework encourages a healthy work-life balance by allowing students to truly disconnect from academic pressures and focus on other aspects of their lives.

Summer break provides a valuable opportunity for students to unwind, relax, and engage in activities that bring them joy and fulfillment. By removing the burden of homework during this time, students can dedicate themselves to hobbies, sports, family time, and social interactions, fostering emotional well-being and overall happiness. This break from academic responsibilities enables them to develop essential life skills, such as time management, self-care, and stress management, which are equally crucial for their personal growth and future success.

Teacher and Student Burnout

We've all experienced burnout at some point in our lives. So I'm sure you'll understand when I say this from first-hand experience that it's not fun! We're already spending 8-10 months consistently worrying about our grades, attendance, and the social exhaustion that comes with attending school every day, and sometimes, we just need to recharge.

Eliminating summer homework can significantly alleviate both teacher and student burnout. For teachers, the absence of summer assignments means they can truly unwind and recharge during their well-deserved break. Without the added responsibility of creating, reviewing, and grading assignments, educators can fully detach from their professional duties, allowing them to return to the classroom in the fall with renewed energy and enthusiasm. This respite from constant work pressure fosters a healthier work-life balance, reducing the risk of burnout and benefiting both teachers' well-being and the overall quality of their teaching.

Similarly, students can experience relief from the constant academic pressure that often accompanies summer homework. The summer break is an essential period for students to decompress, engage in activities they enjoy, and pursue personal interests. By eliminating summer assignments, students can focus on self-discovery, exploration, and relaxation, which are crucial for their mental and emotional well-being.

This break from structured academic tasks allows them to recharge their motivation and passion for learning, leading to greater engagement and attentiveness when they return to school. As a result, students are more likely to approach their studies enthusiastically, leading to improved academic performance and reduced burnout throughout the academic year.

Balancing Extracurriculars and Other Responsibilities

Once the clock hits and school is out, we have a "break" from school, but that doesn't always mean we have nothing to do. Many of us could have things to do, such as babysitting, internships, moving, (ironically) summer classes/programs, or even vacations. The last thing we need is the added stress of summer homework piled on top of that.

Engaging in extracurricular activities is crucial for a well-rounded education, as they provide avenues for personal growth, social development, and exploring diverse interests. However, when students are burdened with summer assignments, they may feel compelled to sacrifice their extracurricular participation to meet academic obligations. By removing summer homework, students can fully immerse themselves in sports, arts, community service, and clubs, fostering teamwork, leadership skills, and a sense of fulfillment outside the traditional classroom setting.

A balanced extracurricular engagement can significantly benefit a student's well-being and academic performance. Students participating in extracurricular activities demonstrate improved time management skills, higher self-esteem, and reduced stress levels. These benefits can directly translate to greater focus and productivity during the regular school year.

Furthermore, extracurricular involvement often encourages interdisciplinary learning, allowing students to apply the knowledge acquired in their academic studies to real-world situations, thereby reinforcing their understanding of core subjects. Ultimately, by eliminating summer homework and promoting extracurricular pursuits, educational institutions can create an environment that nurtures the holistic development of students, preparing them for success not only in academics but also in various facets of life.

Inequality and Equity

Now, I think this is an underrated aspect that many people don't consider when considering why students shouldn't need summer homework. Summer homework assignments can exacerbate existing educational inequalities and widen the achievement gap, particularly for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. These students may lack access to essential resources like books, the internet, or private tutors during the summer break.

As a result, they face significant challenges in completing assignments and keeping up with their peers, who may have more access to such resources. This discrepancy in available support can lead to feelings of frustration and inadequacy, negatively impacting the self-esteem and motivation of these students. Consequently, they may be less likely to engage with academic materials during the summer, further perpetuating the cycle of underachievement.

Overall, I think the idea of summer homework is overrated. We should be spending our free time enjoying it the way we want, not devoting it to extra work for the teacher to grade during the school year. Emphasizing rest and personal growth during this time can lead to a more balanced and enriched educational journey, ultimately contributing to long-term success and well-being.

At the end of the day, we only get limited summer breaks and many opportunities to complete our work, so why not save for the school year rather than impose it during our summer holidays? Please don't be afraid to share your thoughts in the comments! Have a great summer!

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Williana is currently a sophomore in college. She likes to learn new things especially involving Law & Advocacy. When she’s not doing schoolwork, she can be found watching TikTok, YouTube, or reading.

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What We Know About Summer Learning Loss: An Update

Summer vacation – and in some cases, distance learning that felt like summer vacation! – started early this year for many youths when schools closed to slow the spread of the corona virus. For most kids, summer vacation marks a time when they are less engaged in educational pursuits like reading, math and problem solving. And with camps and day cares closed in many parts of the country, more kids than ever are spending extra time at home, and likely in front of screens.

The good news is, there is evidence that parents and school can take steps to reduce and even eliminate the “summer slide.”

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In another study published in 2017, 6- and 7-year-olds who participated in a structured reading program at their local YMCA over the summer showed no signs for summer reading loss.

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10 Fascinating Facts About the Summer Solstice

I n 2024, June 20 marks the summer solstice, the first official day of astronomical summer.

“Solstice” means the sun has gotten as high in the sky as it’s going to get for the year; on Thursday, that will happen at 4:51 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

For those looking to pass the time during those extra hours of natural sunlight for reading, below TIME rounds up some surprising facts about the summer solstice and its history.

The summer solstice is the longest day of the year

In New York City, for example, the sun will rise on Thursday at 5:24 a.m. and set at 8:30 p.m., meaning that there will be 15 hours and 5 minutes of daylight. After that, the days will begin getting shorter as we make our way toward winter.

...but only in the northern hemisphere

In the southern hemisphere, June 20 is the shortest day of the year. Earth has seasons because it’s tilted, so light from the sun changes throughout the year differently for different parts of the world.

The 2024 summer solstice is the earliest since 1796

Usually it's a decent rule of thumb that seasons start on the 21st of the appropriate month, but that's not always the case—and this year's precise moment of solstice is particularly early. The simplest reason why is that 2024 is a leap year. As the Washington Post explains , “During leap years such as 2024, the solstices and equinoxes occur about 18 hours and 11 minutes earlier than the previous year.” During non-leap years, the timing of the solstice moves later, so things generally balance out over time.

No one knows who discovered the solstice

The question of who first figured out that the longest day of the year corresponds to the sun's highest point in the sky is “spectacularly unanswerable,” Owen Gingerich, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and History of Science at Harvard University, told TIME in 2016. “No writing to record this great discovery. Lost in the mists of time!"

Read more: Photographing The Longest Day Of The Year Inside Rome's Pantheon

But ' Egyptian Stonehenge' is the earliest indication people knew about summer solstice

About 6,000-6,500 years ago, nomadic cattle-herders in southern Egypt are thought to have arranged stones that line up with the path of the solstice sun in the Nabta Playa basin under the Tropic of Cancer. “[The solstice] was an important touchstone that said, ‘Well, the Nile is about to go into its flooding cycle’ and that would basically start their calendar,” as Sten Odenwald, a NASA astronomer, told TIME in 2016.

The summer solstice is a boon for solar energy

More sunlight in a day means more juice for solar panels , boosting electrical supplies in homes with the setup. On social media, lots of solar power companies will likely be taking advantage of the summer solstice to talk up the benefits of this clean energy solution.

The summer solstice is not the hottest day of the year

This year, the summer solstice corresponds with a record heat wave in many parts of the U.S., so check out TIME's guide to staying safe. Still, as the New York Times reports , it takes a while for the Earth to heat up each summer, so the hottest temperatures of the year usually take place in July or August.

Read more: See Summer Solstice Celebrations Around the World

People will be playing a lot of golf…

Golf clubs across the country are hosting sunrise to sunset golf tournaments this week. For example, at Bandon Dunes in southern Oregon, golfers usually fit in 72 holes of golf from sunrise to sunset.

…feasting on herring and vodka…

In Sweden, there are all kinds of parties celebrating the summer solstice, in which people dance around a maypole with flowers in their hair, eat a lot of smoked fish, and take shots. “A lot of children are born nine months after Midsummer in Sweden,” Jan-Öjvind Swahn, a Swedish ethnologist, once told CNN.

…And doing yoga

In India, mass yoga sessions take place, drawing hundreds of thousands of participants. As TIME previously reported , it is said that the summer solstice was when Adiyogi, the first yogi, met his disciples. Historically, the United Nations has timed International Yoga Day to the summer solstice.

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Write to Olivia B. Waxman at [email protected]

June 20, 2024

What Are Astronomical Summer and Meteorological Summer, and How Do They Differ?

How does astronomical summer differ from meteorological summer? And how is climate change affecting how long summer lasts?

By Andrea Thompson

For some, summer starts with the first trip to the beach. For others it’s defined by Earth’s orbit or the weather. However you define it, it’s clear that it’s getting hotter and lasting longer with climate change.

Aliraza Khatri's Photography/Getty Images

For many in the U.S., “summer” begins when the three-day Memorial Day weekend ushers in a season of grilling, swimming in pools and drinking lemonade. For others, summer starts whenever school ends or when we reach a specific date on the calendar. For others it might be when the first really hot day happens.

But is there any one solidly official day when we can conclusively say the season has arrived? That depends on who you ask.

An astronomer would likely say it starts on the summer solstice, which happens in the Northern Hemisphere on or around June 21. Its date is based on the Earth’s annual trip around the sun and the angle of our planet’s axis ; it occurs when the North Pole is tilted directly toward the sun, giving the hemisphere its longest day of the year . Astronomical summer ends at the fall equinox, when the sun is directly over the equator, and night and day are of roughly equal length . (The exact dates of the solstices and equinoxes vary because the planet takes just slightly longer than 365 days to make its orbital journey—a variation we account for every four years with a leap day. For the Southern Hemisphere, summer begins on or around December 21 .)

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But if you ask a meteorologist, they will say the Northern Hemisphere’s summer begins on June 1. This is partly because meteorologists and climatologists need consistent dates in order to look for trends in weather and climate data. For ease, they group the seasons into four three-calendar month periods—for summer, this is June, July and August.

But neither those dates nor the solstice-equinox period necessarily cover the full time span of weather conditions most people associate with the season. “It’s really hard to say what is the start of summer,” says Jared Rennie, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research meteorologist. “We just like things in three-month increments.”

Time line shows start and end dates of astronomical and meteorological summer, along with average U.S. heat wave season length, during the 1960s and the 2020s.

Amanda Montañez; Source: Climate Change Indicators: Heat Waves, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ( heat wave season data )

The time range for what we think of as “summer weather” is changing as the world heats up from the continued burning of fossil fuels. A 2021 study in Geophysical Research Letters found that summers had grown from 78 to 95 days as the other three seasons shrank, based on when the highest 25 percent of temperatures occurred in a given location. In the future, summer could grow longer still unless immediate, aggressive action is taken to curtail greenhouse gas emissions.

Summer also looks like it’s expanding if one considers heat wave data. What constitutes a heat wave of course differs from place to place, with comparatively lower temperatures qualifying in somewhere like Portland, Ore., than in a place like New Orleans. Research shows heat waves are happening more often, lasting longer and becoming more intense all over the country, based on the local criteria. They are also occurring earlier and later in the year than they did in decades past, effectively meaning that the kind of weather associated with summer lasts longer than it used to.

When averaged across 50 large U.S. cities, the heat wave season has grown from about 24 days in the 1960s to 73 days today. This means it is 49 days longer than it used to be.

Longer summers aren’t just a matter of needing to turn on the air conditioning sooner; they pose a major public health concern . Heat is the deadliest extreme weather event in the U.S. When summer temperatures arrive earlier in the season and persist for days as a heat wave, people have less time to become acclimated. And they may be unprepared to take precautions to keep cool —especially if they are thinking in terms of the summers of the past.

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06-21-2024 NEWS

The full ‘strawberry moon’ will arrive with summer solstice this year: Here’s when to see it and what it means

It won’t be red or pink, but Friday’s moon will have a colorful name nonetheless. We’ll fill you in on what’s happening with the first full moon of the summer.

[Photos: anlie /Pixabay, Jack Taylor /Unsplash]

BY Shannon Cudd 1 minute read

It’s been a busy week for the night sky, and it all culminates on Friday with a full moon known as the “strawberry moon.” In addition to reaching its peak, the moon also ushers in the summer solstice. Here’s what you need to know:

Thursday: The Summer Solstice

This day marks the longest day and shortest night of the year. The Earth’s north axis reaches its maximum tilt toward the sun. Summer is officially here . . . if the heat didn’t already give it away.

Friday: The full moon

The June 2024 full moon will arrive on Friday, 9:08 p.m. ET. The website TimeandDate.com has a tool that lets you look up moonrise times in your area.

Why do full moons appear? The moon has eight different phrases . These occur because, as the moon orbits the sun, the amount of its surface that is lit up and visible from Earth changes.

Halfway through the orbit, the moon looks full. This is when the Earth is in between the moon and sun, and the moon is directly opposite of the light source. The moon takes 29.5 days to complete the cycle, which is about a month.

When we experience two full moons in the same calendar month, it is called a blue moon. This happens about every 33 months—or, um, once in a blue moon.

Why is it called a strawberry moon?

As NASA pointed out in a blog post last week, June’s full moon is also known as the strawberry moon. This is the first time in 40 years that it falls on the first day of summer. The moon gets its name because it’s peak season for harvesting strawberries in the Northeast.

The Maine Farmers’ Almanac began publishing Native American names for the monthly full moons in the 1930s, according to NASA’s post. Many of these revolve around nature. Other monikers for this month’s moon include the flower moon, hot moon, and planting moon.

Recognize your technological breakthrough by applying to this year’s Next Big Things in Tech Awards before the final deadline, July 12. Sign up for Next Big Things in Tech Awards notifications here .

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shannon Cudd is a writer, actor, and cat mom located in sunny Southern California. More

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Close, closed, close[d] Communion: Three words, one meaning

By Matthew C. Harrison

There are three simple but main points to closed Communion:

Concern that the recipients know “what they seek” and “why they come” (Luther’s Large Catechism, “Of the Sacrament of the Altar”), and therefore receive Christ’s body and blood for their benefit (forgiveness), not harm (1 Cor. 11).
The New Testament requires unity in doctrine and doctrinal practice (1 Cor. 1:10, etc.).
There are exceptional cases that require pastoral discretion.

Not too long ago, a pastor told me a humorous story about his “theological interview” as he was about to finish seminary training in the mid-1980s. This was done before the faculty certified a student for a call to a parish. One professor asked him, “What is closed Communion?” The pastor told me that, after that, “the three profs argued among themselves for the rest of the time.”

The Rev. Dr. F.A.O. Pieper (professor at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis [CSL], 1878–1931; CSL president, 1887–1931; president of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, 1899–1911) wrote the main theological, doctrinal textbook used since the 1920s and even today in our seminaries. He wrote in German about closed Communion but added English to be very clear in the American context.

“Die apostolische Kirche praktiziert nicht ‘open’ sondern ‘closed’ communion,” Pieper wrote, which means, “The apostolic church practiced not ‘open’ but ‘closed’ Communion.” By the time the text was published in English in the mid-1950s, the editor had changed the word “closed” to “close,” evidently thinking that the word “close” was a gentler way to express the practice.

The term “closed” had come from the ancient church practice of the deacon crying out, “The doors, the doors,” which were closed to the unbaptized and those undergoing instruction before being admitted to Communion. “Close” came particularly from Baptist sources, albeit depicting another truth: that there is a closeness in belief among those who commune.

The New Testament and Lutheran view is derived from the word koinonia , or “communion,” which means having something in common. In this case, we Christians share Christ and His gifts — gifts that make us one in Him. Where Christ and His teaching are rejected, there is no communion. We Lutherans firmly believe, though, that there are millions upon millions of Christians who believe — sometimes against the public teaching of their own church bodies — that Jesus died for their sins, and that they trust in Him by faith alone for eternal life.

As the Synod faced challenges that grew out of the American context, the move to English, and the rise of historical criticism, our theological terminology underwent various influences, nuances and changes. A certain mythology of meaning was ascribed to terms like “closed Communion” and “close Communion,” and a term was invented to try to speak into the confusion: “close(d) Communion.” In some minds “closed” meant communing only members of one’s own congregation, while “close” meant communing only the baptized (including other denominations), or perhaps those who agree on the “real presence.” Neither the Bible, the Lutheran Confessions or any resolutions of the LCMS support these ideas.

In fact, the Synod in convention has spoken very clearly to this issue on many occasions, including in 2023, when it adopted Res. 5-09 (“To Review Guidance on Admission to the Lord’s Supper”) by 88.9% . Included in the resolution is a resolved stating that the words “close,” “closed” and “close(d)” all mean the same thing, despite the accretions of attributed meaning. The Synod’s public confession on this matter has remained the same from its first president, the Rev. Dr. C.F.W. Walther, to Dr. Pieper, to today.

For the forgiveness of sins

Allow me to elaborate three brief points upon which our public doctrine and practice are based.

First, I think we all agree with Paul’s clear words:

“Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself” (1 Cor. 11:27–29).

None of us wants a person to take the Sacrament to his detriment. That’s why so many Communion statements make as clear as possible that we believe that the very body and blood of Christ — the same body and blood that hung on the cross — is actually present in the Sacrament. “It is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under the bread and wine, instituted by Christ Himself for us Christians to eat and to drink” (Luther’s Small Catechism, “The Sacrament of the Altar”). We believe and teach exactly what Jesus says: “This is my body. … This is my blood.” All this “for the forgiveness of sins.”

May Christians who belong to another denomination (which may even publicly reject these very cardinal truths about the Sacrament), but who recognize their need for forgiveness, believe that Christ died for their sins and believe His words “Take, eat, this is my body” receive the Sacrament at our altars to their benefit? Yes.

Second, there is more behind the practice. The New Testament rejects participation in false teaching over and over again. It also demands unity of believers in the truth and separation from false teaching and erring fellowships. This is hard for us. We are American individualists. No church or pastor is going to tell me what’s what in my personal relationship with Jesus!

While each communicant has the personal accountability of repenting and believing what the Lord gives (His body and blood) for forgiveness, pastors have a responsibility too. St. Paul calls pastors “stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor. 4:1). Luther put Hebrews 13:17 in the catechism: “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.” And the Preface to our Book of Concord very clearly states that we believe there are Christians outside the Lutheran church who may not have come to agreement with us on all doctrinal points. The Augsburg Confession states that sacraments are “marks of profession among men.”

Third, there are cases of pastoral discretion. All of our Synod resolutions on the subject grant this. Life throws all kinds of strange, unique and interesting situations at us. Pastors make judgment calls for the spiritual benefit of persons involved.

A few years back a friend of my wife shared that her lapsed Roman Catholic husband was given only weeks to live. I visited him. He was in bad shape. I spoke very pointedly to him about his spiritual condition. He received and believed the Gospel when I told him what Luther told his friend, “Christ dwells only in sinners.” I added, “You’d better be one.”

He confessed his sins, and I absolved him. I asked him if he believed what he had been taught as a Catholic, that the bread and wine are the body and blood. He said yes. I asked if he believed Jesus when He said, “Take, eat. … Take, drink. … Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” He said yes. I communed him. Guess what? He then proceeded to get better! I began taking him through the catechism, the senior pastor finished up, and he was confirmed before dying a year or so later. Thanks be to God.

The Apology of the Augsburg Confession (XI 66) says that our pastors are “good men” who will know what to do in such situations. Our pastors are good men. Bulletin statements that teach the truth about what the Sacrament is and why we take it are very good.

But inviting all who believe such statements, without regard to their church membership or lack thereof, is not pastoral discretion. At a minimum, such statements should add, “Please speak to the pastor” (or perhaps a trained elder) before communing, or maybe, “If you would like to speak with the pastor, please call the church office during the week.” Inviting people to come to the rail, cross arms and receive a blessing is a fine, welcoming alternative. It’s what we do at my parish. Ironically, not communing everyone is a great way to initiate spiritual conversations with individuals, conversations that often lead to a catechism class. In this day and age, many are looking for churches that stand for something. That includes at the Communion rail.

Matthew Harrison

The Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison is president of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.

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‘Costco, Don’t Give Up on America As a Nation of Readers’: The Week 1 Winner of Our Summer Reading Contest

Read the work of the winning writer, Daphne Nguyen, 16 — and take a look at three favorite video responses, too.

A shopper in Costco looks over stacks of books.

By The Learning Network

For 15 years, our Summer Reading Contest has been inviting teenagers around the world to tell us what New York Times pieces get their attention and why. Up until now, students could only enter by posting short written comments, but this year we’re also allowing 90-second video responses.

That’s why this week , the first of our 10-week challenge, we’re featuring both the winning essay by Daphne Nguyen as well as our three favorite videos. Though the vast majority of the 509 submissions this time around were written, we hope to encourage more students to experiment with video.

Scroll down to see this work, along with a list of runners-up and honorable mentions. As you go, note the variety of topics that caught the eyes of these teens, including pieces about A.I., Alzheimer’s, Asian grocery chains, gardening, cockroaches, rom-coms and the saga of J. Lo and Ben Affleck.

You can read the work of all of our winners since 2017 in this column . And remember that you can participate any or every week this summer until Aug. 16. Just check the top of our contest announcement to find the right place to submit your response.

Daphne Nguyen, 16, from San Jose, Calif., responded to a June news item, “ Costco Plans to Stop Selling Books Year-Round ,” by writing:

I like books, and I also like Costco. Like many of us, I spend time with both of them regularly. I carry a paperback so I can stop looking at my phone, even during our weekly Costco run. So I was genuinely disconcerted to read that “Costco Plans to Stop Selling Books Year-Round” and offer them only during the holiday season. I guess books are a nice gift for someone else, but not something you’d want for yourself? Or for your children? In fact, the Costco book section is thoughtfully curated for the entire shopping family. There are “My Busy Book” play sets, special C.S. Lewis box sets, and best sellers like “Fourth Wing” by Rebecca Yaros. The aisle feels fun and inviting, not dated or out of place. Costco says that books are inconvenient to sell because they have to be specially unpacked off the pallet and changed out weekly for new releases. That seems like the “it’s not you, it’s me” break-up routine. And it seems like a cop-out. They’ve got plenty of people buzzing around doing all kinds of things — what about the staffers constantly refolding clothes? Costco’s ingenuity shines with the $6 rotisserie chicken. Why not get creative with books? Put Oprah’s top picks at the check-out lines! Surprise us with cookbooks around the food aisles! What Costco stocks is what America buys. So Costco, don’t give up on America as a nation of readers, educated citizens of a democracy. And please don’t give up on books.

Three Favorite Video Responses

Andrew Han on “ Don’t Call It an ‘Ethnic’ Grocery Store ”

Chrisel Roche on “ How 3 Texas Teenagers Grew Up to Be Broadway Stars (and Stayed Friends) ”

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The 2024 summer solstice is the earliest since George Washington was president

It's the earliest solstice since june 20, 1796, when george washington was president and there were only 16 states in the union..

Folks hankering for the warmth of summer will get a special treat this week, with the earliest summer solstice in more than two centuries slated for Thursday afternoon.

Specifically, it's the earliest solstice since June 20, 1796, when George Washington was president and there were only 16 states in the Union.

The early solstice is due to the complex dance between Earth's yearly orbit around the sun and its daily rotation, along with how we mark the solstice on our calendars. Quirks in the Gregorian calendar mean the solstice will make another jump earlier every leap year until the year 2100.

When is the summer solstice?

The summer solstice – the precise moment when the sun is at its highest point in the sky each year – is Thursday at 4:50 p.m. EDT. It marks the beginning of astronomical summer in the Northern Hemisphere.

At that moment, the sun will be directly above the Tropic of Cancer. That's the farthest north the sun moves in the sky, which is why the days close to the solstice have the most daylight of the year.

Some people call it "the longest day," but to be precise, it's the day with the most daylight, because every "day" has 24 hours. The amount of daylight will be consistent for a few more days before shrinking each day until the winter solstice in late December.

The reason we have solstices, equinoxes and seasons is because the Earth is tilted on its axis, thanks to a random collision with another object untold billions of years ago.

Is summer already here?

In many parts of the country, it's felt like summer for several weeks now, which is why meteorologists call summer the hottest three months of the year (June, July and August).

But the real heat is likely still to come: On average, there is a one-month lag between the solstice and peak summer temperatures, according to climatologist Brian Brettschneider . That's why July is often the hottest month of the year in many locations.

The solstice comes nearly three weeks after the beginning of meteorological summer , which started on June 1.

Who celebrates the solstice?

Many people around the world celebrate the summer solstice with music and festivities. In England, hundreds of people travel to the ancient site Stonehenge for the first day of summer. Solstice observations there have been going on annually for thousands of years.

The Stonehenge rock formation perfectly aligns with the sun's movement on both the summer and winter solstices. Although its origins and reasons for its creation are not understood, Stonehenge has become one of the most popular places to observe the solstice.

The Mayans and Aztecs also used the summer and winter solstices as markers to build structures that precisely line up with shadows created by the sun, according to Scientific American.

Keep in mind that Thursday is also the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, meaning winter is coming for the roughly 12% of the world's population who live there.

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Letter to the Editor: The media industrial-complex

Published 3:45 pm Thursday, June 27, 2024

By Special to The Advocate-Messenger

The media industrial-complex, the fuel of Richard Nixon’s hate, bane of American politicians, and the definition of opinionated news. But to know what the media industrial-complex is, we must first understand what the media is. Oxford Languages describes the media as “The main means of mass communication.”

The media industrial-complex is known by many names. For some it’s fake news, for others it’s just another aspect of free speech. However, one thing is certain, it is the unholy alliance between opinion and facts. It is when the news reports feelings over the truth.

This is most prevalent in the divisive issue of our time, politics. Politics are already very divisive, but news channels profit from it. They make money off of fueling hatred between fellow Americans. Today, it is the single biggest threat to our nation.

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It is vital that Americans know where to get their information. They must not listen to what the left or right says about news as they can be very opinionated.

For the left, reliable news is CNN or MSNBC. They find people such as Rachel Maddow and Bill Maher trustworthy. Whereas the right finds Fox News trustworthy. They trust people like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. It seems that local news is consistently the most reliable when it comes to reporting the facts.

Local news usually tells the facts without falsely elaborating. I believe all reporters should strive to be like Walter Cronkite. Throughout his career as a journalist he was known as “The most honest man in America.”

In conclusion, the media industrial-complex is the most powerful institution of man in history. For example, any government has its limits, fake news does not. It will most likely fuel another American Civil War.

We must choose not to surrender to it, but to actively fight against it and its effects. The complex supplements the infinite struggle between Left vs. Right and Neighbor on Neighbor. It makes us forget we are not just Democrats or Republicans. We must realize we are all Americans.

— Easton Witte, 11 years old

Hustonville, Kentucky

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Some parents argue summer homework is nothing more than bland busywork that saps the joy and spontaneity from summer. So says Sara Bennett, founder of StopHomework.com. "Even if there is a summer slide, I don't think homework is the solution," Bennett says. "Kids don't have enough downtime during the school year.
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Make sure to do this before July 4th so the summer doesn't get away from you, and use your list of books that you picked out. Then, when you get your books back home…. Step 4: Sit down with them and make a plan. Don't assume your child will gleefully run up to his room and begin flipping the pages.
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Kids in grades 3 to 5 lose about 20% of their school year gains in reading and 27% of their gains in math. ( Source: Scholastic) Students lose about a month's worth of learning on average over the summer. ( Source: Sage Journals) In the summer between 5th and 6th grades, 84% of students experience summer slide in math. ( Source: Kappan)
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Summer school can be classes done through your high school, at a community college or local university, or through a program that includes classes, such as a summer camp. Online summer school, where students take classes primarily on a computer at home, is becoming more popular. Many of these classes require students to visit the school once or ...
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The media industrial-complex, the fuel of Richard Nixon's hate, bane of
The media industrial-complex, the fuel of Richard Nixon's hate, bane of American politicians, and the definition of opinionated news. But to know what the media industrial-complex is we must first understand what the media is. Oxford Languages describes the media as "The main means of mass communication." The media industrial-complex is known by Email newsletter […]