According to the US Department of Education, 100% of children lose 25% of academic knowledge every summer! That means that over the summer our kiddos are slipping on average 2.5mo behind in math skills, and 2mo behind in reading skills. They call this the “Summer Slide”.
I am a second grade teacher, and every year we spend about 4-6 weeks of the beginning of the school year re-teaching what we taught the previous year, just to get our students caught up to a place where we can begin to teach them new material. Why does this happen? The biggest culprit is the fact that over the summer kids are not engaged in any academic practice. You see, just like anyone, if you don’t practice you will forget how to do things. Think about this… how many of you as adults have now found yourselves forgetting your multiplication. Before we would use it all the time so we would keep up the practice. Nowadays we get lazy and instead of practicing by doing math we simply find the calculator in our phone. Our children are the same way. They do not practice these skills so they lose them. The problem with this happening with our children is that they need to retain these skills so that they can scaffold their learning of new material by building on what they know. The other hard reality of education right now, is that our children are still trying to catch up from the education that they lost with our communities shutting down during the pandemic which left many children even further behind. According to the NAEP overall students are still performing 20%-40% below grade level.
Reading is an essential and fundamental part of how we communicate. In today's busy world it is really difficult to try to find the time to fit everything a family needs to raise a child into every day. However, there are many simple things that parents can do to help their child prevent some of this slide. If a parent was to read just one picture book, or short story (2-3min), a day that would expose them to 78,000 words a year.
Scholastic research found that;
1 min of reading per day = 8,000 words read in a year = 10th percentile on standardized tests
5 min of reading per day = 282,000 words read per yr = 50th percentile on standardized tests
20 min of reading per day = 1.8 mil words read per year = 90th percentile on standardized tests
When families read together you and your child benefit in so many ways. Studies have found that 80% of families love their time reading together. In fact my fondest memories as a child were when my mom would read to my brother and I. To this day I still love hearing her read to my grandchildren. Many times when my family would finish eating dinner we would start on some sort of discussion that lead us to want to know more information about what we were discussing. Straight to our home library we would go, yes we had World Book Encyclopedia’s on the shelf, that was the Google of our time. Many times we would spend significant amounts of time reading and learning before we even left the table. This also develop in me the love of knowledge and to always inquire and ask questions, and seek out answers. Whether it is Google, or a book from the shelf, families can still take those moments and read together.
When families read aloud together it will improve your child’s cognitive development which is the stimulation of the brain that improves the function that increases the abilities to problem solve and have understanding of the world around them.
Reading aloud models fluency in reading and increases vocabulary. Reading exposes children to new words that they would not otherwise be exposed to in casual conversations. In fact next time you read aloud a book together, test what your child knows about the words they read. Every year I am amused by simple words that you assume students have been exposed to but when you ask what they mean you will find they either don’t know, or you get some pretty entertaining answers. Being able to have discussions about words and using context clues to try to figure out meanings provides a vital tool for your child to better comprehend what they read. You will find your child’s vocabulary increase immensely by doing these simple exercises.
Research has shown that a parent that reads with their child builds a closer bond. Reading and sharing those experiences through books allows you to sit close to each other, usually even snuggling, talk about memories or feelings about characters and events in the story. It gives families of today an excuse to put aside their technology which is the outside world, and just be in the intimate moment together.
Families need to get back to shutting off the outside world for a bit and just reconnect with each other. Even if it is just for 5 to 20 minutes out of your day. In fact I challenge you and your family this summer to give it a try. See if you can take just 5-10 min at the beginning or end of the day to put away all outside noise (phones, tv, computer, tablets, video games, radio, etc) and just read a book, or a short article from a magazine, or something that you can access without a device on and talk, listen, share, explore, and laugh together. Try it for just a week and see what it does to your relationship with your child. What would happen if you did it for a month?? Talk about making an impact in our world. If we just got back to the basics and build the family unit to be close again, what an impact you can make not just academically, but emotionally on your little one.
Happy reading ya’ll!
