Plenty research has shown that the "summer slump" or decline in skills and knowledge happens during the 2 months of summer. As a parent of 2 elementary school children I have seen this academic dip and believe it's real. Teachers, I find, want children to, at minimum, remain academically active over the summer and at most want them to maintain skills and knowledge learned before the summer. In my experience, writing and math skills dip the most. Perhaps this is because both have a big skills component that require consistent practice. In my children's case, reading takes a lesser dip because, school or no school, we try to read to/with kids every day and we have a million books at home (this makes a difference). Point being summer hw is important. The challenge teachera tell me is that after putting in so much time, effort, and thought into preparing summer hw assignments, the rate of return is super low. I have experienced this first hand and haven't yet figured out a solution to this problem. The highest summer hw completion rate for me was 45% of students completed and returned it. I stayed in touch with the kids over the summer and that may have helped. This year, I gave students this assignment: 25 minutes of reading skills on @ixl each day +10 minutes of writing short responses to prompts (total of 30 prompts). Students have the option to handwrite or do the prompts on a Google Doc. I plan to be in touch with students and families to reinforce 🤞. I'll let you know how it goes 😊. WHAT DO THINK ABOUT SUMMER HW? WHAT WORKS? Comment below👇 #teachers #speducators #iteachtoo #teachersfollowteachers #reflectiveteacher #teachingwithlove #teachersofinstagram #teachingwithhumility #homework #summerhomework #students #iteachmiddleschool #teachersofig #teacherlife #teaching (at New Jersey) https://www.instagram.com/p/BzNtzUTlGXR/?igshid=aobmc5379294
