Teachers stress importance of preventing 'summer slide' before returning to school

TAMPA - Thousands of Tampa Bay children are about halfway through their summer breaks, and their time outside the classroom can come at a cost to their learning.

Teachers warn that children can experience the "summer slide," basically losing months of learning when they don’t stay focused. It’s something Nicole Brown of United Way Suncoast works to fight against with bridge program books for children.

"It’s a book that helps reinforce the skills that they’ve learned in one year and prepare them for the skills that they’re going to need the next year," said Nicole Brown, the vice president of community impact at United Way Suncoast.

The learning loss kids can face during summer break can be large. Third grade teachers like Tracey McConnell see it when school starts.

"You can see kids lose a couple of years, a couple levels and go back even a whole year of learning. It can be caught up, but it takes a couple of months to catch them up," said McConnell, a third grade teacher at North Central Elementary in Pinellas County.

McConnell says reading is at the foundation.

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"If kids aren't able to read, they're not going to be able to do math because they can't read the word problems and things," she said.

According to the Florida Scorecard, a little more than half of Florida’s third graders can read at their grade level.

"If they lose that level of their reading, there is more of a chance for them to be retained and have to repeat third grade. So reading is seriously important," said McConnell.

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That’s where programs like the United Way Suncoast’s camps and the Book Bus in Pinellas County step in to help.

"This year we expect to see around 6,500 kids and give out 13,000 books," said Brianna Ray, the community collaborations coordinator for the Juvenile Welfare Board of Pinellas County.

But parents can do things on their own too.

"Just engaging with your children, reading. There’s a lot of research that shows even just reading two books during the summer can really help keep those literacy skills in check," said Brown.

Brown said she worked on reading with her own kids when they were younger.

"I would not say that they’re all natural readers. My older daughter did struggle with reading and so that was something that we definitely had to put a lot of effort in. Luckily, she’s really successful now," said Brown.

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Whether they are going into kindergarten or in high school, educators said what matters is keeping your child’s mind engaged.

"Anytime is a great time for you to be engaging with your children and helping them to explore their world. I don’t think there’s just one way of learning," Brown said.

United Way Suncoast said reading two books over the summer is enough to keep up your child’s literacy. Educators said you can find workbooks or puzzles for the little ones at the dollar store and even do home experiments to work on their preparedness and engagement for school.

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