Avoid the Summer Slide

Summer officially began just yesterday (June 21), but many kids have already been out of school for over a month. If you are a parent, you may be wondering if your children will forget what they learned during the last school year. If you are a teacher, you know from experience that you will be met with (adorable) blank stares who school starts and you ask your students what they remember from last year.

“What’s a sight word? Who cares, it’s summer! Wheee!!!”

This yearly recurrence of mass amnesia is commonly referred to as the summer slide.

For Parents:
Educational games can be an effective and fun way to help your kids retain what they’ve already learned. In between outings to the pool and the park, play a few rounds of Sight Words Fly Swat (sometimes called Splat), Sight Words Bingo, and Sight Words Memory.

Use the games to reinforce your child’s knowledge of the words he or she has already mastered. If you’re ambitious, you can even use our Sight Words Flash Cards to introduce a few new words. Teach your child some words from the next year’s word list, or create custom flash cards of words relevant to your child’s summer experiences (pool, camp, play, swim, mosquito, sunburn).

For Teachers:
You will inevitably need to spend some time this August or September reviewing last year’s material with your students. Our Sight Words Teaching Techniques, such as Arm Tapping and Air Writing are a quick and straightforward way to evaluate the kids and the extent of their “summer slide.” You can learn which sight words need to be re-taught and which students need extra help getting back up to speed.

After you’ve spent some time reviewing old material, start mixing new words in with the old ones. Soon your students will be ready to dive into the new school year!