The second semester of school arrives and grade-school students have one goal in mind; they simply want to survive until summer break. The day-dreams include fantasies of getting gorgeously tan, stretching out in a hammock to read a good book, and having wild adventures with friends every possible day. However is this the reality of what the traditional three month summer includes? No, many kids instead complain to their parents of their complete and utter boredom by the time July hits. In the states closer to the equator the sun makes the outdoors so scorchingly hot that people get dangerously sunburned rather than a bronzed tan. And in all honesty, the average American kid is not spending her/his free time by reading such an “ordinary thing” as a book. This reality of how the end months of summer break turn out do not necessarily mean that the whole break was a complete waste all together. After …show more content…
This is when students forget huge amounts of knowledge and skills they learned the previous school year due to lack of practice over the three month long span of summer break. An article from Leah Shafer who works with the Harvard Graduate School of Education illustrates exactly how this works with regards to math. She says, “On average, students lose approximately 2.6 months of learning in math over the summer — and teachers have to give up weeks of class time, or more, to make up for that loss.” It is positively disheartening to think of more than two months worth of lessons and homework simply forgotten due to such an extended amount of time without any practice. Math is not the only area that relies on former concepts to learn new ones. This practice applies to all areas of learning. Every student has to remember prior knowledge to be able to make connections to the new things that they are learning, no matter the subject at