Preventing an individualized education program (IEP) summer slide can be a challenge when school is out and specialized instruction pauses for the season. You can help your child maintain the growth they’ve made during the school year and avoid losing valuable progress on their IEP goals.
Preventing IEP Summer Slide with Weekly Goal-Based Activities
For those students who have qualified for Extended School Year (ESY) services, it can help students maintain growth between school years. However, even if your child is not receiving ESY services, it is still a great idea to review the IEP, discuss the goals and objectives with your child, and plan weekly activities to work on those skills. Everything from reading, writing, math, social skills, and more can all be incorporated into summer schedules and routines.
Build a Summer Routine Focused on Preventing IEP Summer Slide
Have a summer schedule. Involving your child in creating a daily and weekly schedule of activities helps them stay engaged and on track, reducing stress and managing boredom. Build some time into your daily schedule for fun activities, as well as time to work on your IEP goals. Even short blocks of practice can help students maintain skill levels. You can keep a list of what they accomplish to reward completion or share with teachers at the start of the school year.
Make Daily Reading a Summer Habit
Keep reading skills sharp! As a certified academic language therapist, I encourage students to read for a minimum of 20 to 30 minutes every day. Choose books or topics that they like and may not have a chance to read during the school year. Incorporate sight word games into your daily schedule if your child is not yet proficient with this skill. The first 300 high-frequency sight words make up to 65% of all written text that elementary students encounter in stories, articles, and school texts. Improving automatic recognition of these instant words will help your child read more accurately and fluently. Listening to audiobooks can build vocabulary.
Want to do more? Phonemic awareness games, comprehension games, morphology skill games, and participating in local library summer reading programs can all help maintain and improve reading skills. Even silly activities like reading to your pet or favorite stuffed animal, or helping your child audio record their favorite story, can help build reading skills. The reading level should be where your child is reading 90-95% of the words correctly. Materials can include decodable books, age-appropriate graphic novels, chapter books, textbooks, magazines, newspapers, and other relevant resources. Students who read more become better readers.
Make Math Part of Everyday Life
Math can be fun! Every day activities can be a great way to build math skills and confidence. Cooking, card games, and map activities all involve important math concepts. Woodworking projects, gardening, and even learning how to set a budget and shop for groceries can also make math more meaningful and fun.
Writing Practice Doesn’t Have to Feel Like Work
Write! Start a weekly writer’s club or send postcards to family and friends. Encourage your child to write 5-minute short stories using different sentence starters, or let them create a cartoon strip or mini graphic novel. You can also practice cursive handwriting, typing, or writing letters to relatives. The key is to keep writing in a fun and consistent manner!
Use Technology to Support Summer Learning
Technology Tools. There are many free online resources available in game format that can help students build academic skills. Social stories designed for students with autism, or those with behavioral or social needs, are also easy to find online. Many schools and state departments of education also offer families access to a variety of resources. Be sure to check what is available to you.
Fun and Free Tools for Preventing IEP Summer Slide
Did you know that Tutor.com is a free service for military families? It covers a variety of subjects, including math, English, reading, writing, science, social studies, and several AP subjects. The tutors are available all year long, so summer might be a good opportunity to establish a tutor. Go to www.tutor.com/military.
Here’s to you and your child, and making the most of summer opportunities to keep skills sharp!
About the Author – Barbara Bratton
Barbara Bratton is a Certified Academic Language Therapist who specializes in working with students with Dyslexia and Specific Learning Disabilities in reading. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education and Special Education, as well as a Master of Education in Special Education and Multisensory Structured Language Education. She is the author of Maggie with a G, a story of a young military-connected student learning to conquer moving, monkey bars, bullies, but especially tricky sounds. Barbara is a Special Education Mentor for Partners in PROMISE.
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