Summer learning strategies

There are lots of ways to help your child keep making progress over the long summer holiday and prevent what’s known as ‘summer slide’ (where children fall back a little between the end of one academic year and the start of the next due to lack of practice). Here are some suggestions:

Reading
First and foremost is to keep your child reading. One study showed that an hour of reading actually taught children more than an hour’s English lesson! Probably not true in isolation but it does highlight the significant academic benefits of reading (reading is also proven to improve maths and science scores – not just the obvious text-heavy subjects). But reading also helps children to regulate their emotions, have empathy for others, learn about the world around them, give them a place to escape to, spark their imagination and creativity…the list of benefits is endless.

Join the Summer Reading Challenge at your local library. It is an easy way to keep their engagement through the summer. They earn prizes along the way and finish up with a certificate that they can show their new teacher. I believe in the scheme so strongly I have signed up as a volunteer in Buckhurst Hill library this year so that I can meet children and hope to encourage their reading. 

Spellings and vocabulary
Use wordsearches to improve spellings and crosswords to develop vocabulary knowledge. You can pick up cheap books of these in places like The Works. A little and often makes the biggest difference. Children are more likely to want to do crosswords and wordsearches if you have fun taking part too.

Maths
The best way to inspire your child’s interest in maths is by including them in your everyday maths (measuring cake ingredients, working out the cheapest bottle of ketchup in the supermarket, counting objects like pasta shapes, telling the time, counting money, noticing 2D and 3D objects and describing them etc). If it’s fun and with you, they won’t even realise they are learning.

However, the summer holiday also offers the chance for some intense practice of specific mental maths skills that just make all of maths easier, such as knowledge of number bonds to 10/20/100 and recall of times tables. It is worth investing time in these over the summer as it will free up your child’s brain space in their future maths lessons to learn new concepts if they are not so busy struggling with the basics of mental arithmetic. 5-10 minutes a day is perfect.

For those looking for more of a challenge try the daily maths brain teasers from NRICH at https://nrich.maths.org/primary-summer2023

Creative writing
Most children I see find creative writing their most challenging area of learning. It is a craft honed over many years of daily practice and heavily underpinned by what we read. So, outside of reading what can you do to support their development in writing?

The most important aspect is to fire their imagination and freedom to be creative. Discuss ‘what if?’ scenarios as you go through your day – make them wild and silly! Children who can talk eloquently can write, so keep challenging and developing their ideas verbally. Feel free to pick them up on their spoken grammar and vocabulary choices. They need practice in developing their voices in order to write. Use art and craft projects to stimulate their creativity and then ask them to talk about what they are making in an open-question manner. (I.e. Avoid “Is that a dog?” in favour of “Can you tell me about your picture?”).

One tip to avoid: forcing your child to ‘sit down and write’. It can backfire. Buy them a cute notebook and say you would love to see anything they write then leave them to it. If they do show you – just say supportive things and avoid too much ‘that spelling is wrong; where are the capital letters’ etc. Leave that part to me and their school teachers (we can be the bad cops!).

I hope this has helped offer some ideas for helping your child over the summer. Please do let me know what was useful and if there are things you would like suggestions for or more information about. I look forward to seeing many of you through the summer anyway: a reminder of what is on offer is here: https://www.mrsoshtutors.co.uk/school-holidays.html