School is out and you may be wondering if you should schedule tutoring in the summer for your child. Well, you have come to the right place!
I can picture it now: your child arrives home on that final day of school, grinning from ear to ear that school has finally ended. “No more homework! Time to eat ice cream all day and swim in the pool!”
As you start to adjust to your new routine, you start to wonder if all of that progress your child made during the school year will suddenly disappear. Maybe you wonder if giving your child a true break is what he or she really needs. Or maybe, summer camp starts on Monday and there simply is no time.
Wherever you are on this journey, I am here to tell you three proven benefits of personalized tutoring in the summer months to avoid the “summer brain drain.”
Before we dive into the fun stuff, let me introduce myself! I am a certified teacher, private tutor, college essay coach, and founder of JayTeach. We use a whole-child approach to develop academic and personal success within our students, from kindergarten to college. To put it simply, we zoom out that lens and look at the full picture of every child. We quickly determine academic strengths and areas for growth while also supporting a child organizationally and emotionally. Humans are complex and students are no exception!
I cannot wait to share the benefits of summer tutoring with you! Before we get into the proven advantages, let’s take a look at some different tutoring terminology:
Remediation: Think of this as “re-teaching.” The goal of academic remediation is for the student to reach mastery of a certain skill or concept. Typically a student who has received instruction that has not resulted in understanding would need remediation.
Enrichment: Think of this as “enhancement.” When we are providing enrichment, we are challenging our students to reach new levels of understanding and broadening his/her academic experience.
Assessment: Think of this as “gathering evidence.” We use assessment tools at the beginning of our sessions in order to understand how the child learns best and how we can best support him or her.
Social Emotional Learning: Think of this as the skills needed to effectively socialize and process/understand emotions. Social-emotional learning includes teaching students coping mechanisms, communication skills, and managing feelings.
Now that we have learned some tutoring lingo, let’s get to the point!
Benefits of Tutoring in the Summer
Building Confidence and Self-Esteem
There is truly nothing more important than students seeing themselves in a positive way. We hear words like “confidence” and “self-esteem” being thrown around all the time, but what a lot of people don’t pay attention to are the impacts these words have on academic performance. I will never forget my 6th grade English teacher telling me, “You are a great writer.” From that day on, I thought of myself as a great writer. And guess what? I put forth much more passion and effort into it. Summer tutoring is one way to build academic confidence before entering the next school year. It is a perfect time to enrich and support student learning. I worked with a student who had one summer goal in mind: to learn multiplication facts by the beginning of fourth grade. This brings me to the next benefit of summer tutoring: solidifying fundamental concepts.
Solidifying Fundamental Concepts
This student now had the time and energy to commit to learning all of her multiplication facts before fourth grade. And here’s the thing: she didn’t feel the pressure of having to cram them into her brain before a test or spend time studying them during the school year when she had homework and all of her extracurriculars. It was a no-pressure situation! She learned all of her facts and felt confident and prepared for the math content of fourth grade. The summer is a fantastic time to solidify concepts that are the building blocks to more advanced concepts.
Keeping Students on an Academic Schedule
One of my favorite proven benefits of tutoring in the summer is keeping students on a schedule. As much as kids love free time and summer break, they crave routine. They thrive on structure. They live for the agenda. Of course, there is room for a no-rules-fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants mindset during summer vacation and I am not suggesting that students maintain a rigorous summer schedule, however maintaining a semblance of structure can undoubtedly help students transition out of school and eventually back into school. Schedules also allow kids to feel in control of their environment and result in a secure, safe feeling. Many of my students choose to continue personalized tutoring during the summer months. I like to keep my sessions engaging, fun, and positive.
The summer is a wonderfully exciting time for students. It is also a time to build academic confidence, solidify fundamental concepts, and keep with a routine. Feel free to learn more about what I do by visiting my website. I wish you the best this summer and hope you have enjoyed sharing the benefits of tutoring in the summer with you!
You might also like:
How to Prevent Summer Brain Drain
5 Easy Ways to Incorporate Social-Emotional Learning in Your School