The summer slide is the “regression in academic proficiency due to summer break,” as defined by Ashley Ashdrew in an article titled “How to Prevent Your Kids From Losing What They Learned in School During Summer Vacation.” In comparison, according to Rebecca Murphy in an article titled “What Is the Summer Slide?,” the summer slide is a “decline in academic skills during summer break, often resulting in the loss of a month's worth or more of learning.”

Here are three things you might want to know about the summer slide, all provided by an article titled “Summer Learning Loss: What is it, and What Can We Do About it?” which included the authors David Quinn and Morgan Polikoff: “(1) on average, students’ achievement scores declined over summer vacation by one month’s worth of school-year learning, (2) declines were sharper for math than for reading, and (3) the extent of loss was larger at higher grade levels.” “Younger children are prone to the most learning loss because they’re at a crucial stage in their development,” as pointed out in an Ashdrew’s editorial. “Kids who use their imagination are also expanding their vocabularies and experimenting with new concepts.”

Summer slide is usually preventable if you work throughout the summer with reading comprehension skills, mathematical practices, and any knowledge that was learned in the previous year. Murphy informed parents that “positive reinforcement[s] can encourage teenagers to practice academic skills during [the] summer.”

I will provide a list of ways to prevent the Summer slide (interested version) that I have gathered from each article listed throughout this piece.

Let students read what they are eager to begin with.

“Nearly 60 percent of children ages 6 to 17 say they love or like reading books for fun a lot, and 52 percent think it’s extremely or very important,” edifies Ashdrew.

Make time for students to play smartly (mind puzzles and work pages).

Allow students to study topics that interest them and visit places that are related to the knowledge they learned.