Students and parents alike usually view summer as a time for well-deserved relaxation and a break from learning. However, this break from learning can have consequences that are detrimental to students during the following school year and beyond. More than half of the achievement gap between low- and med/high-income students is due to unequal access to high-quality summer learning opportunities. Low-income students often can’t afford the summer camps, intensive programming or worldly vacations that their more affluent peers attend, and often spend their summers watching TV or babysitting their siblings. Most students lose about two months of mathematical computation skills over the summer. Low-income students also lose more than two months in reading achievement, while their mid/higher-income peers actually make slight gains. This achievement gap has more and more of an effect on students as they complete more schooling. These summer knowledge losses compound so greatly that it has even been identified as part of the reason that low-income kids are less likely to graduate from high school or enter college (SummerLearning.org). Not only do students lose knowledge, many also gain unhealthy amounts of weight during the summer due to a lack of balanced meals at home and lack of exercise they normally get from recess, organized sports or gym class. Students gain weight on average two to three times faster than they do during the school year (Edutopia.org). As you can see, it’s important in many aspects of a child’s life to have access during the summer to programs […]
Read MoreDecker Students Learn About Financial Stability with Chase Volunteers
Getting students thinking about making financial decisions at such a young age can be a challenge, but having knowledgeable and friendly volunteers makes it much easier! “Camp Raven” is UWATX’s free summer enrichment program at Decker Middle School, where each week students learn about an issue affecting their community and complete related educational activities with volunteers. Last week, seven Chase volunteers dedicated a total of 27 hours of their time at Camp Raven, where they led financial literacy games and activities for the campers. “ I chose to spend the most on food and healthcare because taking good care of my children is the most important thing to me.” — Kevin, 7th grade student There were two exercises that the children and volunteers participated in, a market simulation exercise and a budgeting exercise. The market simulation exercise was completed using food items such as fruit snacks, mints and juice that had different values. The students were divided into assigned groups and were classified as either buyers or sellers. Sellers had to come up with a price and strategy on how to sell their “products” for the greatest amount of dollars and create ads with the product information. The buyers group made transactions using fake money based on what the advertised prices were. Following the activity, students discussed what they learned in regards to their money making decisions. The budgeting activity taught the children how to budget their candy “money” by allocating them into realistic categories. Each student based their budgeting decisions on the idea […]
Read MoreFree Educational Summer Activities for Children
Think about when you take time off of work to go on vacation. It can be hard to get back in the groove of things when you return; this is similar to what your kids experience when they have time off from school. When school is out of session, many children struggle to find educational opportunities in the summer months. According to the National Summer Learning Association, research spanning 100 years show that students typically score lower on standardized tests at the end of summer break than they do on the same tests at the beginning of summer break (White, 1906; Heyns, 1978; Entwisle & Alexander 1992; Cooper, 1996; Downey et al, 2004). It is critical for kids to keep their minds active to avoid the summer learning loss that so many children unfortunately experience. Summer is actually a great time to strengthen a child’s academic skills while still balancing other nonacademic fun summer activities. Here is a diverse list of FREE educational summer activities for your kids to enjoy this summer that will help prevent digression in their academic skills: Literacy Luau at Bright Horizons at Round Rock On Saturday, July 18th from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. Bright Horizons at Round Rock is offering a Hawaiian-themed event that will include storytelling using Smart board technology, family-oriented literacy activities and a hula dance performance from Island Rhythms Hula Company. Parents can also learn how to document literacy for all ages! Summer Playgrounds Program Summer Playgrounds is a drop-in program providing quality recreational experiences that […]
Read More