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?

I teach Reception and I always notice that the children I send up to Yr 1 have dropped a little in their level when they come back from holiday. It doesn't take too long to get them back up though.

im actually really annoyed with DDs teacher, DD kept up doing her reading and numbers etc thru the holidays and since going back has been colouring in and watching tv. she is ver frustrated.

i know teachers have to let the lazier/more relaxed kids settle back in but DD wants work to do :(

We have no colouring in or watching TV at my school!! That's really bad sjuper! Yr 1 carry on the EYrs curriculum until October half term but only for the children that are still working on it, otherwise it's the Yr 1 curriculum - your DDs teacher should be able to differentiate for whatever year group your DD is in!

MrZ and Feenie, OK so usually the data is externally assessed but I stand by my comment that, without sublevels, it's often meaningless. Surely you have to acknowledge that there's a big diff between a Y6 who scraped a level 4 and one who narrowly missed a level 5 but all we receive is a basic level. And, as I said, there are always gaps and inconsistencies.

And my own assessment is fine thanks. I have every confidence in my ability to level my students, as do my bosses in school and at county level.

they're usually a good school tbf to them but they've split the classes into composite with teachers going on mat leave plus cutbacks and i really think its messed things up for the teachers, trying to find each childs learning capabilities in the first week or 2 but, if she hasnt had work by end of monday i'll be kicking up a fuss as she really does enjoy doing the work she's given she speeds thru reading books and will happily do a weeks homework in 10 mins :(

I think definately if they haven't got it sorted by Monday say something, it's not fair on any of the children in the class.

i will do, i dont want DD to fall behind or lose her lust for learning and as you say its not fair on any of the kids. fingers crossed we at least get a reading book, never thought i'd see the day when i'd be wanting biff chip and kipper :)

Oh the delights of the Oxford Reading Tree - feel sorry for me, at least your DD is working her way up through them and you will get to share the more exciting Magic Key stories etc, I am going to have to start all over again with the boring ones like A Good Trick and The Pancake :(

i despise them with a vengeance, now they have granny and multi coloured witches et al we didnt have a good trick etc were they reception? we dont do reception we get another year at nursery or an early entrance to school.

My ds progresses massively each holiday. At least the teachers seem to comment that he has got more chatty, more engaging etc.

After summer means getting back the sleep routine in the final week and adding a bit of 'ABC' and '123' with it. Both my pre-schooler and teen have to do this after August mayhem in Mallorca! This is because I remember what it was like getting back into the swing of things at school after summer hols.

anything to make my life run smoother........oh, and for the education of my children of course!!!

sjuper they are the very early books with a few words per page "A big box; a small box; a sheet; a good trick!" with pictures of Biff Chip and Kipper pretending to be magicians etc - shite! That's interesting about not doing Reception, I think lots of children could do with an extra year of nursery.

we didnt have them when we were down south DD was going to be starting reception but i wasnt happy about it and it was one of the many reasons we moved back home.

I teach secondary so this wouldnt really work in primary, but we've tried something for the last 2 years that has really improved motivation and pace after the summer hold.

After Whitsun half term and y11 have left, the whole school moves up a year and the new timetable begins. most schools don't have a y11 for this term but we have no y7.

It gives much more purpose to that last half term as the new curriculum has started and teachers get to know their new groups so there's none of that 'settling in' disruption in September. Behaviour in summer term has been loads better as the kids like the kudos of being in the next year up a bit early.

Then when y7 start in September everyone else is used to it all and we can concentrate on helping them with the transition. Works for us!

OneOf... - Sounds like a great system!

I did a little bit each day, except when we were away, with my DS (6, going into Y2) as he did not seem to be very good at maths. He dosn't seem to find maths, numbers in particular, easy but I found that he learned a lot over the summer. He can now add and substract numbers up to 20 and more independently - he couldn't do that in July. We also did the reading challenge, despite him being a reluctant reader and he said that he enjoyed the books he chose to read (Floppy books!!).

Also, as a previous poster, we did lots of stuff during the summer, where he has taken away new experiences, e.g. camping in Amsterdam, visiting friends in Hamburg (where he realised that if he lived there he would only start school now - he did like that idea), farm stay with lots of horses and other animals. Back home, we also did different things most days - sometimes I feel DS is getting more tired during the holidays than at school.

Yes, I agree,my eldest DC definately became rusty over the 6 week holiday.

Well after being totally panicked inspired by this thread, I've stepped up reading with DS1. He left Reception a good reader: securely on white band, probably needing to move up to lime soon for the challenge, so I didn't push. I was rather hoping that this holidays he would take the initiative himself to read some longer books. We got lots from the library but he's become increasingly reluctant.

The last few days, I've pushed. He's been resistant and annoying as anything, but eventually we've managed to get into a longer story about monsters and he's enjoyed it. I've found his tracking abilities seem to ahve declined a bit but after a bit of practice they're coming back.

So much for not being pushy and competitive though. Now I wish I'd spent the whole six weeks whipping him into shape instead of letting him be a bit and hoping for the maturity bump that I reckon is what he needs to move his reading on a bit now.

Well, I don't really. I mean I subscribe wholeheartedly to the view that an education is so much more than the narrow 3 Rs push push push that a worksheet wielding parent can sometimes reduce it to. But, you know, arghghghghghghgh, panic, wibble etc. And my DS is doing really well at school!

mrsgboring your DS will be fine, don't push him to do things he doesn't want to as it will make him more reluctant in the long run. If you get a book he likes, you read a page then he reads a page and if he gets bored then change the activity. Once he's back at school and back in the swing of things he'll get back to where he was :)

Have only read OP.......yep...it happens....have looked at it from an HR (adult work effect) and research shows that adults, after a 3 month break from work, use less 50% vocabulary/range of words for up to the first three weeks after returning to work. But it comes back, as good as before.

And so what...let kids be kids and lets not stress....let them play (!)

But kids in the UK don't have a 3 month break - they have a 6 week break.

Indeed - and only 5 weeks 4 days here (and counting!)

Thanks acsec I know he will be fine. He habitually reads print when he sees it - cereal packets, a book about London Underground stations he adores, my Facebook(!) etc. so I completely left him to it and didn't ask him to do any sustained read out loud stories. It was interesting to find he's rusty on tracking line by line through a page but it's only a temporary thing.

I am not a nutter, really I'm not, just feeling temporarily a bit stressed! DS1 is punishing me for it by sending up my efforts in bizarre ways. He is great.

Personally I think once the child is a fairly competent reader text tracking is not needed so much, it's not as though we are expected to keep tracking text as an adult!

Oh no I meant eye tracking i.e. following the lines of text with his eyes - he did a bit of jumping to the next line down halfway through, or skipping a line or two down and therefore scrambling the story. Suggests he's spent the summer skim reading little bits, I suppose, and lost his stamina for longish bodies of text.