Summer Slide

“Here, why don’t we find you something fun?” Jessica passed the iPad to her child. Walk into any home, you’ll find children hovering over their gadgets, trying to keep busy. Abandoned by the school system for a short period of time, they wander online. They hope to find something, anything of interest. While it’s doubtful you’ll be able to steer your kids only towards academic pursuits, try. In this blog entry, we’ll explore two fun websites you can get started your child started on.

summer slide math

Website #1 – Toy Theater

Looking for a collection of content area games? Look no further than Toy Theater, whose motto is “Learn * Create * Play.” Toy Theater describes itself in this way:

Toy Theater is an online game website for kids. It is chock full of interactive art games, fun reading games, and cool math games. Designed for kids in grades K-3 classrooms, it offers free online educational games. Teachers from around the world trust them to provide real classroom value.

Some quick points about the site:

Math games focus on counting, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and more. Toy Theater also offers graphing games that include line plots, pictographs, and pie charts.
Reading games include hidden picture, spelling, and word search using original art. Free online books, including the Beatrix Potter stories, are available.
Art games support art, design, and math. Students learn about symmetry, balance, painting, coloring, and scribbling. Activities include holiday celebrations, animal explorations, and learning about famous artists.
Brain teasers and online puzzles are also available. Intended to build memory, engage problem solving skills, and develop spatial rotation, they are all fun and free.

Want to introduce your children to classic games you played as a child? Then you’ll be happy to know they include Tic Tac Toe, chess, checkers, Balloon Pop, and others. Most of what Toy Theater offers works on mobile devices. Adobe Flash-friendly activities will work, if you have a desktop computer browser.

Research Alert – Worksheets Are Insufficient to Prevent Summer Slide in Math

A summer math intervention study drew some interesting conclusions. Students used online math programs and worksheets. The researchers saw no improvement as a result. Assigning worksheets without mentoring or guidance won’t correct summer math loss (Harvard Graduate School of Education).

Worksheets not your thing? Maybe some interactive geometry fun (e.g. tangrams and more) will get your children thinking.

Website #2 – Symmetry Artist

Wish you could introduce your children to symmetry before they get into a tough math class? Then the Math Is Fun website is for you as it has a whole page dedicated to geometry and symmetry. Your child will tons of fun drawing in the online tool. I don’t know about you, but this tool alone would provide hours of fun no matter what the age. Your child(ren) can save or print their designs. To increase the learning, why not save those designs and then have them make a narrated slideshow explaining them?

summer slide math

If you explore the Math Is Fun website , you’ll find many other exciting activities and games.

As summer begins, keep those brains active and thinking. Remember, you won’t want to give kids a device and turn them loose. Instead, sit with them and spend time working through concepts and problem solving. Your relationship will be the better for it. And, as the Harvard-based research above shows, your child(ren) will retain more.

“We need ways to stop summer slide in its tracks,” Jon said. The conversation would start the same way, “If only we had…[this or that].” Unfortunately, Jon would raise the topic in April, much too late for curriculum specialists to do anything with current projects. “Why don’t you bring this up in September?” I asked one day in mid-April. The next year, he did and added a new request. The request asked the technology department to research solutions to summer slide. Let’s take a look at some possible new solutions.

What Is Summer Slide?

Summer slide may be defined as “the tendency for students to lose some of the achievement gains they made during the previous school year.” Often, summer break serves as a prolonged break in classroom learning. This interruption has a negative impact on children’s retention and development of skills (source). Their test math scores can be one month lower when they return to school in August than in the previous May. While all children lose skills in math, summer setbacks in reading depend on the student’s socioeconomic level. Summer vacation has an even worse effect on low to middle income students. For those students, a three-month vacation results in an equivalent gap in reading scores (source). Summer gaps accumulate over the years.

How Do You Stop Summer Slide?

Mitigating summer slide remains a high priority for growth-focused schools. One of the best ways to accomplish this is keeping all students engaged in math and, for low to middle income students, in reading. While there are various traditional approaches available (e.g. summer library reading programs, school-based interventions, home school approaches, etc.), technology can offer another alternative.

Here are several technology-based tips for mitigating the effects of summer slide:

Tip #1 – Teach measurement with Minecraft

Young learners are already engaged with Minecraft. But did you know that you can teach measurement with it? A Minecraft block has set dimensions. With that in mind, you can have students build a real structure inside its virtual world, figuring out how a real life measurement adapts to virtual block measurement in Minecraft. For more ideas, you may want to read this introductory activity. Then move up to teaching perimeter and area. If you are in a school-based program designed to halt summer slide, then consider getting Minecraft: Education Edition. Otherwise, the Windows 10 version or Pocket Edition of Minecraft will suffice.

Tip #2 – Cooking with Video

Cooking can be an excellent way to introduce students to math concepts at home (or school). Dina O’Brien, math specialist and instructional coach, suggests several approaches, one of which is shown below:

Imagine cooking dinner and having to redo the menu for five more guests and then discussing the recipe and how to double it. You can have your child sketch out the seating arrangement for dinner as well.

One approach you can take involves having your child make their thinking visible as they prepare a meal. Then publish the video online via YouTube. Use an app like Toontastic, Shadow Puppet Edu, or YouTube Capture to create the video, whether as a story or a straight recording. Another possibility involves having students refresh and “upgrade” recipe cards using the Canva app.

Tip #3 – Finding Shapes in the World

While you can find shapes in the world around us, it might also be fun to take a look at images of objects and wide open spaces. For example, NASA recently made its entire media library available to the public. Students can also measure objects using a regular ruler or iOS app like i-Ruler (free).

summer slide

Tip #4 – Stalling the Summer Slide for Reading

Stalling summer slide can involve any variety of techniques. While the tips above involved math applications, you can access a variety of reading apps featuring free content (e.g. OpeneBooks), whether audio books (e.g. Tales2Go) or text. And, eReaders are inexpensive and available (e.g. BiblioTech), depending on your locale. Check out these blog entries focused on reading and ebooks:

Tip #5 – Listening Yields Same Results as Reading

“Listeners and readers retain about equal understanding of the passages they’ve consumed,” says Melissa Dahl, citing research in this New York Magazine article, which is another key point for listening to audio books as well as reading them. Listening to audio books has benefits for students that go beyond simply reading text on the printed page. Combining the two experiences yields dividends, but don’t sell audio books short. Here are some research-based benefits of audio over text reading:

Fiction (which is great for second language learners) read aloud encourages your brain to picture the scenes.
Listening to audio books enhances listening skills as ears strain for the next word.
Audio book “reading” can be done on the go, which may match the needs of certain busy people in our lives.

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Not convinced about the impact of listening to audio books over reading print? You may want to check out this 2016 research study as well as a newer 2019 study:

Two notable findings are that students using Tales2go attained 58% of the annual expected gain in reading achievement in just 10 weeks, putting them three months ahead of control students. Plus, the study group outperformed the control group across all measures, by three times in reading comprehension, nearly seven times in second-grade vocabulary, and nearly four times in reading motivation. These increases came after students listened for twenty minutes three times per week in the afternoon program at school, and an additional two twenty-minute sessions at home.

Don’t let summer slide hamper your children’s growth and forward movement. Take advantage of technology to close the summer achievement gap.

This blog entry has been updated with new information as of 8/29/2019 supporting the benefits of audiobooks as equivalent to those of reading.

Summer Learning with Games and Math