Spotlight on summer learning: resources for parents, educators, and advocates

The third in a three-part series on summer learning.

Parents and educators have long been worried about summer learning loss. But as we’ve recently blogged, summer learning is efforts are benefitting from national attention and action in cities.

Today we’re sharing a round-up of summer learning resources for parents, educators, and advocates.

For Parents, Educators, and Librarians

The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) offers parents five tips for promoting their children’s summer learning.

Among the suggestions:

– Take your child to a live performance, discussing the event before and after so that children learn about what they’ll see and how to behave. Parents and children should also discuss the event afterwards.

– create mini learning centers at home that have things like blocks, musical instruments, books, and costumes for pretend play, and

– visit museums and libraries in your town, they have a range of summer activities.

Reading Rockets, a national multimedia literacy initiative, has a web page full of ideas for teachers to share with parents, including:

– use museums’ online resources such as videos from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History’s dinosaur videos, and

– the NASA kids club, which features images from the powerful Hubble telescope

Educator-specific resources include:

– The New Bedford Whaling Museum’s K-3 reading list of books about whaling

– A National Summer Learning Association tip sheet for principals and teachers, and

– A Harvard Graduation School of Education article about how summer learning gains grow when teachers have the flexibility to personalize summer learning programs.

In addition, “Creative Summer Learning Experiences: A practical guide for libraries” is a guide that provides examples of programs and best practices in California. The guide uses the acronym CREATE to describe programs that are child-directed, risk-friendly, exploratory, active, provide time for imagination, and for an exchange of ideas. It was created by the California Library Association and the California State Library.

Advocates

Telling the story of summer learning is easy to do with these two videos that can be shared on social media.

Education Week posted this short video on summer learning:

And the YMCA of Greater Nashua posted this video:

For research and policy briefs, check out the National Summer Learning Association’s knowledge center. The association’s “Summer by the Numbers” infographic is posted here.

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Finally, please share the message that what makes summer learning successful is fun and family engagement.