Stopping the summer reading slide

A frustrating existence in education is the slide in achievement when children are not at school, in particular the period between the end of the year and the beginning of the year - December to February. Although we often think that the occasional day is OK, a week off or more has a detrimental effect on children's progress.  Classrooms do have learning rhythms. Often teachers cluster learning around a phase of time - such as a week, fortnight or a month, and if kids miss 3 days or so then they can struggle to catch up with the learning task and most definitely being part of the momentum of learning. The summer holiday break has a huge impact on progress.

Evidence of this can be found in this fascinating article on National Radio as Kathryn Ryan interviews Professor Tom Nicholson on a project that proved that daily reading over the summer break could progress children's reading scores, while the control group saw some children drop their reading ages by 6 months. Kids need to read daily, not just to maintain their progress, but to just be a part of the magical world of stories or knowledge.