Summer 2020 is fast approaching and there’s no doubt once that final ‘school’s out’ bell goes (physically, or virtually) for the last time in June, the kids won’t even think about school work until September comes back around… or so they think.
In normal circumstances, it’s really important to ensure pupils are sufficiently stimulating their minds over the summer months. This year, even more so; as chances are, by the time the summer holidays officially roll around, most pupils will already have surpassed 8 weeks since they last set foot in their schools.
So, here are some of our ideas for how you can keep your pupils educationally-engaged during the summer period:
Set long-term, low-attention projects
Let’s face it, the majority of pupils
aren’t going to want to sit down for hours at a time on a big project during their most eagerly-awaited 8-week period of the year. An inventive way around this is to set a project to be completed at intervals over the summer but that requires minimum attention, time and effort. This way, pupils will be regularly engaging themselves and won’t go too long without working on their education.
Example: Ask pupils to record a journal of their summer at weekly intervals, focussing on significant events and days.
Continue proven methods
Keeping students focussed on an assignment can be a difficult task, particularly if it’s something they have no interest in or find boring. A nice idea to ensure they engage themselves throughout summer is by setting them bite-sized assignments that continue already-proven learning methods. This is unique to this year – owing to the current lockdown – with an abundance of new learning methods and material being churned out daily that pupils, and many other people, are getting involved with en masse.
Example: Online video-based learning is experiencing somewhat of a ‘boom’ with people and companies, such as Joe Wicks’
‘PE with Joe’ and BBC’s celebrity-led
‘Daily Lessons’, using initiative to release and churn out these new, widely-popular learning resources. Ask pupils to keep updated with these and watch at least one or two a week.
Brain training apps can also be an engaging tool for pupils!
Challenges
With a little bit of luck, most pupils will engage themselves with either of the above methods – even if it’s to a lesser extent than anticipated. There will be some, however, who simply won’t even think about education until school comes back around in September. An effective way to combat this, and also to provide other students with a last-minute refresher, is to set pupils a challenge within the last week or two of the summer holidays.
This should be a compulsory challenge – educational, creative or otherwise – that does require a significant amount of thinking and time spent on it. The aim of this is to ease the students back into a hardworking state-of-mind so they are ready for the beginning of school.
Example: Ask pupils to either write a story on their summer/dream summer or get them to create something using items that they’ve regularly used throughout the summer.
If you think you have some creative ideas and could make for a great
Teaching Assistant, find out more below.
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