Preventing summer learning loss: Research-based tips

© 2011 Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., all rights reserved

It's called summer learning loss and it’s been measured in a variety of studies.

When Harris Cooper and his colleagues analyzed the published research, they found that the average student lost more than two months’ worth of knowledge of mathematics (Cooper et al 1996).

Reading skills suffered too, but only for kids of lower socioeconomic status. Kids from middle income families generally returned to school with slight improvements in reading achievement levels.

Results like that suggest it’s all about practice. During the summer, middle class kids continue to read. But they might not do much math. So they maintain their reading levels and fall behind in math.

What’s the best way to get kids to practice? Researchers like Harris Cooper suggest we make major changes to our schools—lengthening the school year or replacing the long summer hiatus with several shorter breaks distributed throughout the year.

But such proposals don’t appeal to everyone, and they don’t help families who are currently coping with an old-fashioned summer break.

So here are a few tips for fighting summer learning loss.

Make sure your child is reading books that challenge him

Introduce flexible, unstructured learning activities

The researchers believe the most effective programs had certain things in common. They set clear learning goals, but they avoided teaching kids in a traditional, institutionalized way. Instead, these programs maintained flexible schedules, featured lots of field trips, and taught kids interesting new skills. Academic lessons woven into these experiences.

If you are wondering what the implications are for the regular school year, I am too.

Set aside some time to review math concepts and practice computational skills

How many? I suppose that depends on your goal. If you’re just trying to keep certain math facts fresh over the summer break, daily review sessions are probably unnecessary.

In recent experiments on adults, people who were asked to recall a set of facts for 35 days benefited most when they held review sessions every 11 days (Cepeda et al 2008).

This doesn’t mean that kids shouldn’t practice their math skills more frequently! But it suggests that kids can retain specific math facts over the summer without daily drills.

To maintain and improve their problem-solving skills, kids will benefit from more frequent practice sessions. What activities make for good practice? Worksheets are useful, but I’m also favorably impressed by several computer-based tutorials and games.

Math missions is a relatively inexpensive math tutorial video game. It was introduced more than a decade ago, but it still stands out as a high-quality educational game, and kids seem to think it’s fun. It comes in two volumes— Math Missions: The Race to Spectacle City Arcade Grades K-2 and Math Missions: The Amazing Arcade Adventure Grades 3-5—and presents kids with real-world math problems to solve. You can buy the software from Amazon—but check to see that it’s compatible with your computer.

IXL is a math-practice website used by many schools, including my own local elementary school. It isn’t free, but currently individual students can use it for about 10 U.S. dollars a month. The website’s materials are keyed to school benchmarks and learning standards. It serves students in grades K-8.

Dreambox learning is another subscription math practice website, this one aimed at kids in grades K-2. Compared to IXL, it looks much more like a series of arcade games. It’s also being used in some schools.

Encourage math play

Start with the basics. Many kids never learn an intuitive sense of number, that feeling for “how many” or “how much” a particular number represents. As a result, these kids continue to make very basic errors as they struggle through school (Mazzocco et al 2011). So games and experiences that make kids count, measure, and compare quantities are very helpful. (For preschoolers, check out these number activities and mathematical board games ).

Introduce older kids—who can add, multiply, and divide—to playful, intellectual problems and puzzles. For inspiration, I highly recommend Johnny Ball’s Go Figure!: A Totally Cool Book About Numbers (Bccb Blue Ribbon Nonfiction Book Award (Awards)). This lively, colorful, oversized book is a collection of puzzles, questions, activities, and thought experiments. Ball talks about the cultural origins of counting systems and numbers, magic numbers (like pi, primes, and the golden ratio), geometry, logic, topology, and chaos theory.

Let kids direct their own inquiries…and explore interests that don’t fit into the standard school curriculum

How many students have been bored by school, and then--one lucky day--discovered an academic subject they were really passionate about? Such discoveries can change lives, but many people never make them. When I was a kid, the extended summer break was a chance to indulge my curiosity about all sorts of things that never made it into the standard school curriculum--paleontology, astronomy, rock collecting, the geology of Mars, the search for extraterrestrial life, ancient history.

How would I have turned out without these opportunities? I don’t know, but I’m sure I would have been worse off. And for some kids, these extracurricular investigations lead to big things. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson traces the beginnings of his career to childhood experiences with a telescope.

Looking for some interesting topics? Here are some suggestions:

Dinosaurs. Check out this guide to resources about paleontology and dinosaurs for kids.

Animal behavior. David Attenborough has produced many outstanding educational programs about animals. These, combined with reading and hands-on activities can help your child develop a lifelong interest in biology. Animal tracking activities can teach kids to pay close attention to clues. Digital photography gives kids a way to document their outdoor activities—and encourages them to learn stealth and patience.

Architecture and engineering. Bridges: Amazing Structures to Design, Build & Test (Kaleidoscope Kids)by Carol A. Johmann, an engaging, well-written “how-to” book that stimulates creative thinking and experimentation in older kids (ages 8 and up). As they build their own bridges, kids will learn about architecture and mechanics.

Space exploration. In additional to finding books on the subject, check out the local planetarium and Voyage to the Planets and Beyond (2004), a fun BBC production that presents realistic (but imaginary) imaginary missions to Mars and other destinations. If you’ve seen Walking with Dinosaurs, the approach is similar. In addition, don’t miss NASA’s interactive website for kids, including their pages about Mars.

More ideas. Check out my recommended children’s books about history history, zoology, and the physical sciences.

References: Summer learning loss

Cepeda NJ, Vul E, Rohrer D, Wixted JT, and Pashler H. 2008. Spacing effects in learning: a temporal ridgeline of optimal retention. Psychol Science 19(11):1095-102.

Cooper H, Nye B, Charlton K, Lindsay J, and Greathouse S. 1996. The effects of summer vacation on achievement test scores: A narrative and metaanalytic review. Review of Educational Research 66: 227–268.

Kim JS and Guryan J. 2010. The efficacy of a voluntary summer book reading intervention for low-income Latino children from language minority families. Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 102(1): 20-31.

Mazzocco MM, Feigenson L, Halberda J. 2011. Impaired Acuity of the Approximate Number System Underlies Mathematical Learning Disability (Dyscalculia). Child Dev. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01608.x. [Epub ahead of print]

Content last modified 6/11