Educators are all too familiar with the summer slide. It’s the phenomenon that happens when students’ test scores and reading levels drop over the summer months. English Language Learners (ELLs) are at an increased risk of falling behind when the regular school year is not in session. Luckily, there are some preemptive ways teachers can help students and families stay engaged in learning over the summer.
Background
Since the creation of standardized curriculum at the turn of the century, educators have seen a decline in student learning over the two to three-month long summer vacation (Cooper, Nye, Charlton, Lindsay, & Greathouse, 1996). In their quantitative, meta-analytic review of 39 studies to investigate students’ decline in learning over the summer months, Cooper et al. (1996) found on average students lose one month of instructional knowledge over the summer. The biggest losses for all students appear in math and spelling skills, and reading skills make a steep decline among students from low socio-economic families.
Borman, Benson, and Overman (2005) suggested the reason for this situation is high income and middle-class families can afford learning resources over the summer months to allow their children to continue learning over the summer while less affluent families might not be able to make up for the resources provided by schools during the regular school year. With this data in mind, the need for students to attend summer school and other summer learning events is crucial to combating math and reading loses over the summer.
Like all students, ELLs are at risk of losing academic content, but they are also at risk of sliding in language skills as well. As DelliCarpini (2009) explained, ELLs frequently speak a first or home language at home with parents and siblings, and for many ELLs three months away from school means three months without English. She concluded the first few months of school in the autumn will likely focus on reacquiring previously learned English skills from the previous years. The following suggestions are ways teachers can help ELLs, and all students, avoid the summer slide.
Summer School Programs
ELLs will greatly benefit from attending summer school and other summer learning opportunities. Students and families should be encouraged to attend summer school, and summer school information and enrollment instructions must be communicated in a language parents and families can understand. It is also worth noting it should be stressed to parents and students that daily attendance in summer school programs makes a difference. In their study on the effects of attending summer school, Borman et al. (2005) found students that attended summer school programs weekly scored better on fall testing than students who attended less frequently.
Summer school programs focused on content and project-based learning (PBL) are beneficial for ELLs. Dellicarpini (2009) described PBL programs as ideal because they are highly engaging with real-world problems, allow for interaction and collaboration with peers, and often include the same standards students work on throughout the regular school year. She stated, “…the students become involved in the project in ways that surpass their level of involvement in traditional academic learning environments and have value beyond the classroom” (p. 101). PBL summer programs are beneficial because they allow students to use language while investigating real-world problems relevant to their lives.
Many Opportunities for Reading
For learners to become better readers, they need to read as often as possible. Students need access to books and other reading materials over the summer. For students and schools with the privilege of one-to-one student devices, many quality reading websites have books available for listening and download to their devices. For example, Raz-Kids offers hundreds of children’s books with many available in Spanish. Teachers can also download copies of books in both languages to send home with students. Students can be encouraged to read the English version to parents, and parents can read the Spanish version to the student.
Researchers have found this to not be true: Students’ first languages should be seen as a resource, not a problem (Soltero-Gonzalez, 2009).
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English Language Learners
and the Summer Slide
by\
by Joanna Stotlemeyer