Summer breaks are something that all children look forward to – the much-needed break from studies and homework. However, summer breaks are long (6-8 weeks) and this continuous detachment from learning can affect the academic progress of your child.
We often do not realize how much a child loses when they are absolutely disconnected from learning experience during summer breaks. However, once schools resume both students and their teacher experience the far-reaching consequences of summer loss.
Studies suggest that students lose almost 2 months of reading skills and 2.6 months of reading skills. Can you let that happen to your child?
Summer courses are a great way of keeping children in touch with learning during the summer break. Summer programs use fun and engaging modes of learning that will push your child to work harder. With them, your child will be able to cover up the learning gaps from the previous year and may also manage to get ahead and prepare for the upcoming year. This article talks about 7 negative impacts of summer break that all parents must know.
Disrupts Learning: Learning is a continuous process that needs continuous engagement. The learning gap that is created during the summer break affects your child’s academic progress and when schools reopen again, the child ends up feeling confused.
Isolates the Children: We are living in strange times. On the one hand, the Internet offers convenience and comfort, while on the other hand, it takes away home connection and real-time communication. During school breaks, children tend to get very lonely in absence of contact with their classmates.
Hampers some Subjects more than Others: Some subjects like grammar and math get more affected by the summer break than other subjects. Both of them are applied subjects and therefore, need to be practiced every day. Experts warn that after a very long break, a child may have to start learning grammar and math from the scratch.
Hinders Future Education: The real impact of summer learning loss is realized only after the school’s resume. Children often return to school with lower academic levels than the levels before the summer break. At this time, they face the challenge of dividing their time and energy between past lessons and the new lessons. Teachers also experience the impact of learning loss equally because they have to help students relearn some crucial topics before they can move ahead in class.
Causes Concentration Issues: Children have short attention spans. Schools and teachers work extra ordinarily hard to capture their attention and keep them focused on a lesson. During the summer break, when schools are off and students are out of touch with their regular routine they tend to develop concentration issues. As a result, children often return to school after a long gap with concentration issues.
Induces Laziness: Procrastination is addictive and if a child has nothing to do for a long time, they are very likely to become addicted to lazing around. This will be very hard to bear when they have to get back to school. Moreover, it is seen that kids become more lazy once they grow into their teenage years. Thus, it is best if it never begins to set in at all because fighting laziness can get extremely difficult.
Behavioral Problems: Staying in isolation for too long can also create behavioral problems like anger, irritation, etc in children. Summer breaks also tend to get boring over time. This can also trigger many unpleasant emotions in children – some of which can be long-term as well. Children are extremely sensitive to emotions and these disruptions can cause various ranging emotions in them.
It is extremely important to always maintain a balance in life. Even during summer breaks, students cannot get totally disengaged from studies or they may experience severe learning loss. The best thing to do is keep the children engaged with learning mediums that make studying fun. With summer courses children will have the motivation to sit down to study even if for just one hour a day. They will also understand that little goes a long way – which is an important lesson for life. Doing a bit every day decreases the load of the work and doesn’t even feel like hard work at all.
