3 tips to keep your student's brain fresh this summer

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Director of Tutoring Club 

Summertime is a fun time, a time to relax, a time to take a break from school. Even though your student is taking a break from school, they shouldn’t take a break from learning. 

The 2015 NWEA RIT Scale Norms Study shows most students lose nearly 20% of their school-year gains in reading and 27% of their school-year gains in math. Yikes. All their hard work to lose it over the summer. Yikes!

So, to help you keep your student from experiencing the learning backslide and keep their brains fresh, here are three tips to prepare them for the next school year. 

Use “summer bridge activities” booklets. These are booklets that have reading, writing and math in them that prepare the student to bridge from one grade to another. The student does a few pages each day to keep their minds fresh and remember what they learned the previous year and prepare them for the next year. Amazon and Walmart both have booklets for various grades. 

Attend learning summer camps. Choose summer camps where they learn something, it could be crafts, STEM, computer programs, something! Keeping the brain active will help them continue to be in the learning mode and they will be having fun as well. Check out Aquatics Camp, Club Scientific and Code Ninja’s to mention a few. 

Use summer tutoring. For 2-4 hours per week, have your student prepare for the next school year, but catching up on skill gaps or getting ahead so that next year is not as difficult for them. They can work on getting better in multiplications, improve their reading comprehension or work on how to write drafts and proper grammar. There are several centers that offer these services, including the Tutoring Club of St. Johns, which offers both online and incenter options.