Teachers, do you notice "the summer slide" effect in September?

[lovecheese]

Following on from the doing stuff during the holidays thread I am interested to know from teachers if you have experienced this in children coming back to school after a long break? And in a particular subject? BTW DH is a Head and he thinks it definitely happens.

Any thoughts?

Hardgoing - I know what you mean - you can leave off practicing some skills and when you get back to them children have made startling progress.

Sadly, it is not an infallible way of progressing!

Ds always struggles at the start and end of each term as he doesn't generally like school.

I am absolutly dreading getting him to do his first lot of homework. It has been so nice having 6 weeks off of that battle.

Lancelottie they read the books on line and answer questions about what they are reading. At the easiest levels it is a simple question at the end of the book, at the highest level there are questions throughout the book (every two or three pages) some are multiple choice others require the child to type in a response to the text. All the questions are linked to AfL so I can see at a glance which areas the child needs to practise and allocate books that practise those skills at an appropriate level. We also have paper copies of the books in school to use for 1-1 reading.

Mum2Luke and Bonsoir - Yes, some students do make astonishing progress (but not really in my current school, its a very working class area) and the sad thing is that students are not rewarded for breadth of language skills but a very narrow field of 'can they say one phrase in the past/future tense'. These are often pre-learnt and don't show a real understanding of the grammar. I would much prefer that we were able to reward students for general progress rather than the limited focus in levels 4 and beyond on specific tenses (although grammar is very important in language learning).

mrz - I didn't say that we do ignore primary school levels, I simply said that if we leave the question of levels aside then students do appear more willing and able to learn at the start of a school term. We don't get levels passed on in MFL from primaries and there is such a mixed bag going on at the moment with some schools teaching MFL and some not that we have to start from scratch with everyone.

Sorry, just to clarify, I didn't mean that my students aren't capable of making progress, just that they don't tend to holiday in the kind of places where they are exposed to foreign languages being spoken! Some of my students are very clever indeed.

My appologies Mummy2May I didn't mean to imply that you personally ignored levels my point was those heads who visited us said they ignored levels from primaries for the children starting in Y7.

MFL assessment in France is very weird indeed, too! The French bac exams for English are deeply peculiar - they get pupils to do textual analysis on esoteric American authors - absolutely no relationship to anything of any real linguistic value!

My DD1 has Aspergers, and I've noticed she has regressed in recent days, acting very babyish (she's 8yo). As soon as she is back in the company of her peers, she'll be OK again.

If a child has not touched a book all summer holiday then ofcourse there is a slide - ignoring whether they are a 1b or 1c their fluency and decoding skills are worse. Times tables go as well - and speed of mental maths. Anyone who says there is no change between summer and autumn is not being honest. Ofcourse if a child has read reasonably often, has talked lots and not just watched DVD's, has played outside and enjoyed the freedom of summer then all it takes is a week or so to get over the early mornings and back into the swing of things.

Mine have talked lots, often as early as 6am Going by tess' post they'll be just fine!

I think if you read what people have said tess is that it takes a while to get back into work mode but that isn't the same as regressing.

Ha Ha Mrz! Sure they'll be fine!

Well I'm not a teacher but as a tutor, I do often notice a slide after a few weeks break. I call it "holiday brain" and it does seem to affect more boys than girls IME. They can't remember stuff they were secure on before the break, can be less confident generally and find it hard to concentrate for as long. It takes a lesson or two to get back to where they were. Actually when children are at the "only just about getting this" stage, they can forget even over a weekend. It is why I think regular reading practice at hiome is essential for those in the early stages of learning to read ( and double essential for those experiencing difficulties).

I think all of us, if we are honest, are perhaps a bit less 'on the ball' in terms of fast recall of exactly what every process is and exactly what needs to be done next and how on the first day back after a holiday.

However, we are also rested and have lots more energy, enthusiasm, bounce and new ideas.

I don't think we'd like to hear ourselves described as 'regressing' when we are like this. 'Taking a little while to get back into work mode', perhaps?

I think that the same is true of children after the long holiday. For a few days they are a bit less sharp and a bit less quick, especially in tasks that require instant recall of facts. On the other hand, they have lots of energy to try new things and spark new ideas.

So a 'snapshot' test done on day 1, requiring instant recall, might seem to indicate that children weren't quite where they were at the end of the summer term (in the same way as an assessment of someone at work on the first day back after a long holiday might indicate that they weren't quite as quick at remembering particular telephone numbers or particular processes) but that continuous assessment over the first few weeks would give a different picture particularly if energy / ideas / enthusiasm / engagement were being measured.

I would also agree with sarahfreck that concentration times seem to be reduced after a holiday - again, it's just the getting used to sitting and concentrating, which is a habit broken over the summer that needs to be remembered.

I have a tutor that comes during the holiday but to be honest I think an overworked child would do worse .

My daughter has just finished reception. We haven't done much practical work with her this summer; ie; reading a specific phonics book, specific handwriting practice or simple arithmatic. She has done lots of alternative things though; fossil hunting, crab fishing, postcard writing, colouring etc.

But I sat her down to read a book yesterday and she really struggled with it. And I would have expected her to be fairly confident with it at the end of term. So that tells me that, while I wouldn't want to say she has "regressed", she is not in the learning "zone". She was forgetting how to blend simple sounds together and read very poorly.

Perhaps because she is so young, and so early on in formal education, she really has forgotten how to read and write properly as she needs to be doing these things every day in order for them to stick in her head.

It's made me realise that I need to be doing some more reading and writing practice over the next 2 weeks to ensure that her brain is in the right place when she goes back to school!

Think about yourself and a skill you haven't used for a while

I know how to use Excel but I don't use it often (2 or 3 times a year) and every time I need to use it I start of hesitantly but it soon comes back to me ...

WRT reading my DC seem to make a bit of a leap over the summer, especially the summers between Reception and Yr1 and between Yr1 and Yr2. It is as though they take what have learnt in school and suddenly realise that this means they can read things themselves for pleasure!

We live in a house full of books though, and I appreciate that not every child does.

MrZ "Discolite & Feralgirl remember the levels children arrive with in Y7 have been externally marked"

Not necessarily; lots of our feeders boycotted the 2010 SATs and so this year we got teacher assessed data or, in a couple of school's cases, no data at all. There are always huge gaps and inconsistencies and of course you don't get sub-levels from either teacher or externally assessed KS2 results.

IME KS2 data is often pretty useless and, as disco said, is just a stick to beat us secondary teachers with as FFT targets are based on it and are often unrealistic.

Furthermore, I know it's not true in many cases but there are lots of stories where I teach about TAs and teachers giving extra assistance to Y6s in their SATs.

feralgirl 2010 was exceptional and it's highly unlikely there will be another boycott so unless you are saying that your feeder schools never supply externally marked standardised data I would argue that perhaps you need to look at your own assessments if they don't match .
There may be stories about TAs and teachers giving extra assistance and if true the schools are playing a very dangerous game as a moderator could turn up to observe at any point during the test week.

Agree with mrz - you can't use one year of boycotts to prove your point, since every other year provides externally marked data.

don't suppose it matters does it? seeing as all the other children in the country - and most of the world - will have unlearned too.

And they'll have had a couple of months of freedom and fun hopefully.

assuming it's a fact though, all those parents paying through the nose for private schools should be up in arms at the longer summer holidays and extended unlearning period their DCs are getting in comparison to state educated children. In fact, longer unleaerning time, so presumably longer relearning time afterwards as well...