Abstract:

Summer slide and the achievement gap manifest themselves to different degrees in varying populations but are apparent in the majority of school settings. Although different students are more adept at taking on this challenge, our school system is trapped in a cycle of two-month review at the beginning of each school year that amounts to 20% of instructional time. This is lost growth for students that excel and creates an environment of failure for struggling students who recognize that some of their peers retain reviewed content and show proficiency at a quicker rate. A review is utilized by school districts in the form of packets and suggested readings for the summer to tackle this disparity. Websites are recommended to practice math facts, but the opportunity to continue growing and learning is not available to every student.

We maintained three types of feedback in our summer program; automated for quiz items and math practice, teacher-driven for open-ended or data reported work, and online discussion where students could ask questions and receive typed or video feedback form one of the two instructors. The use of feedback created an environment where students knew that if they grew confused or recognized they lacked a skill, they could have their questions addressed directly.

Lastly, we wanted the students to have the opportunity to explore their environment in real ways that would provide meaningful learning opportunities. In science, that meant using current events and their home space to introduce real-world events and to access a problem-solving methodology for applying science. In math, this meant taking the skills from previous years and applying them to their environment through data collection and manipulation.

The rising sixth-grade students completed an identical multiple choice pre-assessment and post-assessment to measure their level of retention over the summer. The assessment measured accuracy on essential math and science skills for students beginning sixth grade. There was a total of twenty lessons delivered to the students and parents over the summer weeks. Students could work at their own pace and on their own schedule. This allowed them to reconnect with the review work at any time since new content was released each week and previous content did not close.

Students that did not participate in the lessons performed worse overall on the post-assessment. Those that did more than two of the online lessons did statistically better than the control group. Predictably, the more lessons students completed, the higher they scored on the post-assessment (on average). Students that completed 17-19 of the 20 lessons scored 13% higher on the post-assessment starting their sixth-grade year, which is a full letter grade higher than they scored at the end of their fifth-grade year. This data suggests that not only did students not slide back, but improved over the summer with this relatively simple and very inexpensive program.

Keywords:

Summer learning loss, summer slide, summer set back, summer learning effect, summer intervention, online intervention.