Summer learning losses are a real threat to all students entering the summer months. Providing kids with educational games, activities, materials, and experiences during their summer vacation is crucial in retaining information learned during the school year and preparing them for the transition into next year.

For low-income kids, the oncoming summer vacation can bring forth different feelings than it does for privileged students. Due to a lack of accessibility, availability, and financial resources, low-income students often don’t have equal summer learning opportunities as privileged students, which contributes to increased summer learning losses and puts them at a disadvantage at the start of each new school year. Some of these students care for younger siblings all summer. Others play the role of parent to parents who may struggle with addiction or other issues. Others are in foster families or are raised by a grandparent because their parents are in prison or not fit to raise them.

This year, teen unemployment rates are soaring between 23.2 – 23.8 percent ¹, which may prove to be even more problematic for low-income teens looking to work more hours to contribute to the family, make money for the upcoming school year, or to simply keep busy and off the street.

Many communities offer a number of ways for students to learn and grow this summer.  In some cities, like Denver, La Casa/Quigg Newton Medical Facility is promoting reading by distributing LifeBound books to parents and students who are their patients.  Many of these Spanish speaking patients are encouraged to read with their kids, improving both their English language skills and their overall literacy. Public libraries are reinventing themselves as well. The Omaha Public Library is running a youth program for more than 1700 students including some programs for parents. Housing Projects, which have been hit hard by a dip in federal funds for GED, computer skills, and financial literacy classes, are discovering new ways to promote reading and learning.

Beyond these initiatives, parents, and students can use the following ideas to make a summer activity schedule. Educators who work in low-income area can use the following ideas to generate a specific list of things to do in their students’ area during the summer months that keep them active, learning, and growing in diverse and challenging ways:

The classroom bully is not a new character, but technology has given the bully new shape. The Internet and the accessibility of handheld devices for younger and younger kids has afforded the bully to be more elusive and far-reaching, both in audience and victims.

Findings of a new cyberbullying study illuminates the changes and challenges well. According to the study, physical bullying decreases as children get older, but cyberbullying increases. The study also found:

• Almost 90 percent of students are online by third grade.
• 83 percent of middle school students have a mobile device.
• 35-40 percent of elementary students report being targets of bullying, and 50-53 percent of middle and high school students say they have been victims.

 (“One-Fifth of Third-Graders Own Cell Phones” — CNET)

Abuse, harassment, and bullying are not only physical; verbal and written forms of hurtful behavior also make long-lasting and high impact imprints on the victim. Educators, parents, students, and policy makers understand that cyberbullying needs to be reigned in, but how it will be done is still unknown. One reason squashing cyberbullying is so hard is that it doesn’t have a clear-cut definition. Is gossip or rumor spread over social media cyberbullying? Whose jurisdiction does cyberbullying get tried in (law, parental, education)?

One eighth grader, Charlsea Brewer, was recently profiled for being the target of a fast moving rumor on Facebook, in the article “Rumors of Violence, Spread by Social Media, Weigh on Teens, Schools.” After having been picked on, Charlsea wrote a post that wished the popular kids at her school would get shot, which definitely wasn’t a well-thought out statement to share on Facebook, but held no real threat. Within hours, the rumor spread that Charlesea had a “hit list” from which she suffered lasting backlash from parents, peers, and school officials.

The article quotes a Pew Research study as finding that 95 percent of teens are online, and eight out of 10 of those teens have a social media account. “Social media are vital to teens’ lives,” said Amanda Lenhart, a researcher with Pew. “This is their space of social interaction.”

Clearly, social media is a preferred method of communication for most teens, but is part of the attraction due to them not having to be themselves? The anonymity users get from having an online identity can bring out the worst in people. Adults can be just as guilty of spreading inappropriate and scarring words on the Internet. Some teen cyberbullies have even turned to impersonating students and faculty through fake Facebook and Twitter accounts they set up to post offensive comments, according to the article “Students Create Fake Online Profiles to Bully Peers.”

It’s clear that we have a responsibility to teach kids how to be respectable members of society both on-and off-line. We are already seeing how social media can not only be used as a vehicle to hurt other people, but can drive people to self-destruction as well. Adult users of social media who post inappropriate pictures and comments can lose careers, career opportunities, college admission, college scholarships, and personal friends.

It could be possible that the solution to cyberbullying isn’t a completely new idea. Students don’t need new social skills to navigate an online environment; they need to take the same morals and ethics they should have in the physical world and apply them online. LifeBound’s book People Smarts for Teenagers gives students the skills to help them learn about themselves and how to socialize with their peers. A socially and emotionally intelligent person has empathy for people, understands social boundaries, and thinks before they act, no matter if they are in a digital or physical forum.

Is it mandatory that educators use technology to engage young minds in the digital age?

For many schools and individuals, the terms “student” and “education” have become redefined — and undefined — by digital tools. For example, “students” can still be teens who attend a brick and mortar high school, but they might also be a retired lawyer who takes advantage of Stanford’s free online classes. Some students attend a “flipped-classroom” where they take a lesson at home on YouTube and come to class to do their homework. Some students master activities through gaming, answer tests on their cellphones, and collaborate with peers by developing computer software.

In today’s classroom, it’s hip to throw out traditional classroom conventions for shiny technology in an attempt to relate to a new generation. However, as tech savvy as some of the new generation is, they are still a generation defined by a lack of critical thinking and STEM skills, and they suffer from high dropout and low-college completion rates, staggering unemployment rates, and a lack of real-world skills. Student engagement, not technology, is still key in getting students involved in school. Technology is one way to capture young minds, but it isn’t the only way to make a lesson fresh, engaging, and challenging.

Some recent articles show how educators are bringing life to their lessons, and they do so without a mention of technology.

ART

Eric Azcuy is a young art teacher at a 6-12 grade South Bronx school, where 91.2 percent of kids qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The art projects he assigns in his class aren’t only for aesthetics, they also help students make a connection between art and their other lessons, according to the article “The Art of Slipping in Some Learning.”

Azcuy gives the example of how he incorporated math skills in a sixth-grade drawing assignment. He asked students to draw a picture of an item that was 100% the object, then 75% the object and 25% imagination, and on and on until the object was 100% imagination. Students didn’t even know they were learning fractions. Educators don’t have to be artists to bring art into their lessons. The purpose of combining art with math, science, etc. is to make learning about an intimidating subject more accessible, hands-on, and creative. How can you bring sculpture into a math, science, or English class to enhance your lesson? How can you bring music into an art class?

POETRY

Engage students in a subject by using something — beside technology — that they can relate to. In 1975, Bob Lenz’s teacher played the Beatles’ song Fool on the Hill to introduce poetry. The class analyzed the pop song and used it as a jumping off point to study other genres of poetry and write their own, Lenz explains in the article “Poetry Can Change a Student’s Life.” In the end, students presented their collection of poems in a handmade, handwritten book of poetry, and read an excerpt to their parent-audience in the classroom that had been turned into a cafe, complete with refreshments.

Lenz says this project-based class he had over 30 years ago inspired his career in teaching and how he presented his lessons. What are the most vivid lessons you remember from your school years? Were they project-based?

KINESTHETIC

Do you know the difference between explicit learning and implicit learning? Explicit learning is defined as “labeled learning,” including what students read, write, and talk about. “Implicit learning includes, hands on learning, role-play, trial-and-error, life experiences, drama games, and active learning,” writes Karen Boyes. “Researchers believe that implicit learning is much more reliable than old-style classroom education, with an emphasis on reading textbooks and memorizing facts.”

In her article “The Value of Kinesthetic Arts Within the Classroom,” Boyes gives many suggestions for energizing your classroom routines with kinesthetic arts. One idea she gives is to use dramatic arts as a vehicle to teach math. For this project, students will use their math skills to measure, calculate budgets, and order supplies in order to make a set for a play.

Technology can be powerful, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that the mind and body are also powerful tools in the learning process. When you define relevance for a student, what is relevant to their lives beside technology? How can you help them develop practical and relevant skills while using the visual, oratory, or physical arts?

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Sources:

“The Art of Slipping in Some Learning,” by Eddie Small. 6 April 2012. SchoolBook (The New York Times). Accessed on 10 April 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/04/06/the-art-of-slipping-in-some-learning/

“Poetry Can Change a Student’s Life,” by Bob Lenz. 6 April 2012. Eduptopia. Accessed in 9 April 2012. http://www.edutopia.org/blog/using-lyrics-poetry-classroom-bob-lenz?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=post&utm_content=blog&utm_campaign=poetrychangelife

“The Value of Kinesthetic Arts within the Classroom,” by Karen Boyes. 9 April 2012. LifeBound. Accessed on 9 April 2012. http://www.lifebound.com/blog/educators/the-value-of-kinesthetic-arts-within-the-classroom/

Spring break is coming to an end and that’s a sure sign summer vacation will be here before we know it. When students go on summer vacation it is important for them to be mentally challenged. Why?  Students who aren’t engaged in learning activities don’t  retain information learned during the school year and often start the following year behind their counterparts who do grow their brains in the summer.

“All young people experience learning losses when they do not engage in educational activities during the summer,” according to the National Summer Learning Association. Low-income students who aren’t engaged in summer activities typically lose more than two months in reading achievement over the summer.

This summer, as an educator or parent, how can you influence students to adopt a reading culture at home? If you teach, consider sending home a reading list to all your students or lend books from your personal classroom library. As a parent, what can you do to ensure your child has access to books over the summer, or reading groups around popular topics, or writing workshops where they can reflect on what they’ve read? You can take weekly trips to the library where they can check out a bag of books, even those they aren’t sure about. You can also start a book exchange in your neighborhood.

Recently, the Common Core Standards for English/language arts has been adopted by all but four states and requires educators to teach how to read non-fiction literature, as well as fiction. Students might not consider picking up a book about castles, how to bake a pie, or build a watch, but reading informational texts can give them a more fully developed repertoire of reading. Learning how to read informational texts is important for students because it exercises different reading skills. Fiction usually has a beginning, middle, and end, a plot, characters, dialogue, and themes. Nonfiction doesn’t provide the same structure for readers as fiction does, and requires practice — just as everything else does — in order to master it. This summer, you can help younger kids hone these non-fiction reading skills by finding a science blog for kids online or subscribe older kids to magazines like Smithsonian or National Geographic.

How can you personally help promote literacy this summer and fight summer learning losses? At LifeBound, we believe summer reading can change lives. If you work with disadvantaged or impoverished students, ask us about our book donation program for summer reading in the comments or email us at contact@lifebound.com.

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Sources:

“Districts Gear Up for Shift to Informational Texts,” by Catherine Gewertz. 14 March 2012. Education Week. Accessed on 30 March 2012. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/03/14/24informational_ep.h31.html?tkn=VUCFGGxCVWko01hd60UOyi5jZLLaUFRJvVt6&cmp=clp-sb-ascd

The National Summer Learning Association - http://www.summerlearning.org/?page=know_the_facts

The phrase “education reform” doesn’t usually conjure positive feelings, however, emerging research can make thinking about the new possibilities exciting. We live in a time of fundamental change with research that should influence the decisions we make on how to move away from the past and move forward into the future. Neurological research is one area that is taking us beyond simply teaching and learning and showing us the how behind teaching and learning to develop the most effective practices.

Last week, a study found children who get anxiety from doing a math problem have brain functions that differ from those who don’t have anxiety, according to the article “Study: MRI Reveals Brain Function Differs in Math-Phobic Children.” Using functional MRI (fMRI) scans, researchers performed scans on 46 second-and third-grade students while they carried out addition and subtraction problems, finding children with high math anxiety are neurobiologically similar to those who suffer from other phobias. The lead researcher commented that it is possible for someone with a math phobia to be good at math, but unless the student is helped through their phobia, they most likely won’t challenge themselves in math classes and become deficient.

Neurologist and teacher, Judy Willis, recently wrote the Edutopia article “Neuroscience and the Bilingual Brain,” where she explains bilingual children, compared to monolingual children, “develop greater attention focus, distraction resistance, decision-making judgment and responsiveness to feedback.” Research from fMRI scans shows bilinguals have stronger executive functions  most commonly thought to be formed by the need to “select” which language to use in a situation. This study could be used to influence both monolingual and bilingual homes to teach young children a second language, as well as influence elementary schools to include foreign language studies.

It doesn’t take an MRI to notice today’s kids can pick up on technology faster than the generation before them. However, scientists are using cognomics, a digital analysis of the brain, to take a look inside and see that technology is changing the neural pathways to process information, according to Karen Boyes in the article “The 21st Century Brain.” Changing neural pathways didn’t begin in the 21st century brain. Today’s students’ parents learned differently than their parents, and their parents differently from theirs, and on, and on. How can teachers use this information to their benefit? They must update their teaching style to reflect their pupils. “It is your responsibility to give them the skills for the future and equip them for the 21st century by teaching, alongside the regular curriculum, thinking skills, habits of mind, team skills and communication skills,” says Boyes.

We know technology has changed how we receive and process information, but technology has also afforded us to take a look inside and learn how to learn. How do you use new research on brain functioning to influence your lessons?

Summer vacation will be here before we know it, and while it is an exciting time for students to take a break from academia, it is also where students experience the largest learning losses. No student is safe from summer learning losses if their brains aren’t kept active throughout the summer months. However, students in lower-income families are generally at a much higher risk to suffer from learning losses which continues to increase the achievement gap between lower and higher income youth.

According to the National Summer Learning Association:

• More than half of the achievement gap between lower- and higher-income youth can be explained by unequal access to summer learning opportunities. As a result, low-income youth are less likely to graduate from high school or enter college (Alexander et al, 2007).
• Parents consistently cite summer as the most difficult time to ensure that their children have productive things to do (Duffett et al, 2004).

This week, the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading announced more than 100 communities across the country pledged to improve literacy among early learners. This national campaign hopes to close the reading achievement gap by addressing the top issues that keep underserved students from reaching their full potential. The four topics the campaign will focus on are:

• Chronic Absence
• School Readiness
• Summer Learning Loss
• Parent Engagement

In 2011, an unprecedented study found forty-five percent of students made no significant improvement in their critical thinking, reasoning or writing skills during the first two years of college. Many were stunned by the number of college students entering and graduating from college without critical thinking skills, a core 21st century skill necessary for making smart personal and professional decisions.

Even though the subjects of the study were second-year college students, this study also showed us that critical thinking doesn’t get enough emphasis in the K-12 classroom leading up to higher education. Learning to think critically is not something that can wait until students are in their young adult years when they are starting to make some of the most important decisions of their lives.

In the article “Critical Thinking: A Necessary Skill in the Age of Spin,” former teacher Randy Kasten illustrates why maturing kids are especially in need of critical thinking skills to navigate their changing world.

“….Young people — without significant life experience and anxious to fit in — are especially vulnerable to surface appeal,” says Kasten.

Critical thinking is one skill that can keep kids’ social and emotional pulls to surface appeal in check and help them make well-informed decisions.

Consider the decisions students make from an early age that have the power to impact future outcomes. Kasten lists targeted advertising that creates their buying and eating habits, friends that help them make good or bad decisions, and romantic relationships that do or don’t end well. Strong critical thinking skills help students make healthy choices for their academic, personal, and professional lives.  It also gives them the courage to say “no”, manage impulsivity,  resist peer pressure and manage conflict diplomatically.

Developing critical thinking skills must be a priority for educators, students, and parents before students leave their K-12 education.  LifeBound’s book CRITICAL AND CREATIVE THINKING FOR TEENAGERS asks students to solve today’s biggest problems, by  developing an inquisitive mind, strong investigation skills, the ability to ask powerful questions, and the skills to imagine, dream and create.

When and where do  you see students exercise their critical and creative thinking skills? What is the cost when students  aren’t exercising their critical and creative thinking skills? Do you think critical and creative thinking skills could solve our nation’s “innovation crisis”? What could strong critical thinking skills do for us in terms of solving problems around the world like poverty, AIDS, the aging population, the  sex slave trade and the exploitation of workers on foreign shores?

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Source:

“Critical Thinking: A Necessary Skill in the Age of Spin,” by G. Randy Kasten. 2 March 2012. Edutopia. Accessed on 5 March 2012. http://www.edutopia.org/blog/critical-thinking-necessary-skill-g-randy-kasten

Student achievement is high on the priority list, but as more educators focus on helping underachieving students progress, overachieving students are being forgotten.

In Friday’s blog, I discussed how teaching girls to pursue STEM careers, where they make up a small fraction of STEM employees, will help address our country’s innovation crisis. Raising student achievement levels also shares this long-term goal. Student achievement isn’t just a short-term concern, like preparing students to pass tests, stay in school, and get to graduation day. Improving student achievement levels is a long-term goal, like advancing more students who are prepared to succeed in college, work, and life.

According to the article Don’t Leave Gifted Students Behind, “ The most-talented students are most likely to bring this nation out of the economic basement, create new inventions, cure deadly diseases, and, yes, restore the United States to its former place as the international leader in innovation and scholarship.”

U.S. students, in general, are behind their international peers. Our top students are also behind those from other parts of the world. Only 1.9 percent of U.S. students scored in the 95th percentile on the PISA assessment’s highest proficiency level, which fell below the 3 percent of the total sample of students from other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development-member nations, and significantly below South Korea (7.8 percent) and Shanghai (26.6 percent), according to the article.

Identifying that there is a problem in the innovation pipeline isn’t enough. What can educators do in the classroom to support over achieving kids? What can parents do at home to challenge gifted and talented students? What activities can students get involved in to spark a desire to innovate?

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Source:

“Don’t Leave Gifted Students Behind: High achievers are essential to global competition,”  Frances R. Spielhagen. 21 February 2012. Education Week. Accessed on 27 February 2012. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/02/22/21spielhagen.h31.html?tkn=MZPFCnMBaTPo7CJEIQZgbi2q1xCvnVyluA4H&cmp=clp-edweek