Category Archives: Summer camp

Did You Know Most Kids Lose a Lot of What They Recently Learned in School While on Summer Break? Teachers Call it the “Summer Slide.”

Posted on by

Did You Know Most Kids Lose a Lot of What They Recently Learned in School While on Summer Break?  Teachers Call it the “Summer Slide.”

Nowhere is the adage: “If you don’t use it, you lose it” more accurate than in the case of young minds and the reason behind the “summer slide.”

In today’s Learning Curve Francie Alexander explains how you can protect your child’s learning and advancement.  Learn how you can easily prevent the “summer slide.”

Francie Alexander is Vice President and Chief Academic Officer for Scholastic Education. Francie has taught at all levels, was a district reading consultant for Pre-K through high school, and has authored professional articles for educators as well as 25 “Books Kids Can Read” for children.

In today’s Learning Curve we reveal:

  • What the “Summer Slide” is.
  • The fact that teachers typically need 4 to 6 weeks in the fall to re-teach material students have forgotten!
  • The importance of “summer reading in beating the summer slide.”
  • The wonderful treasure trove of tools and resources available at the scholastic.com website.

Learn of the many initiatives and tools Scholastic has made available to you so you can beat the “summer learning loss” and also help your child in everyday learning.

  • Scholastic Summer Challenge a program where students can win prizes by logging their reading minutes online or using a new mobile app. called The Scholastic Reading Timer.
  • Scholastic Reading Timer kids can set personal reading goals, using the built-in stopwatch to reach their target number of reading minutes.
  • Storia® is a free eReading app specifically designed to support kids’ reading
  • Sushi Monster, Scholastic‘s newest free math fact fluency game available on the iPad.
  • Summer book packs for all age groups.

Get tips for parents from Francie on how to keep kids learning over the summer

For teachers, the Scholastic website is an equally wonderful resource.  Their website has been set up to serve as the content and e-Commerce hub for everything a teacher needs most for use in the classroom.  Each week, more than 1.6 million visitors to Scholastic.com access over 100,000 pages of free content and teaching resources.

This show is one of the most enjoyable Roger & Virginia has done on the Learning Curve.  And the material it makes available to parents, teachers and students is truly valuable and quite amazing.

Scholastic, Inc., is a publishing and educational industry service company whose mission is stated as:

“The corporate mission of Scholastic is to encourage the intellectual and personal growth of all children, beginning with literacy, the cornerstone of all learning. With more than 90 years of experience supporting the learning lives of children, today Scholastic remains committed to providing quality, engaging educational content in digital and print formats for the next generation of learners, and the families and educators who guide them.”

But the big surprise to Roger is that Scholastic are also the people behind bringing the Harry Potter series to America!  So it’s not all serious academics at Scholastic.

 

Click her to listen to:  June 11, 2012 Francie Alexander

Roger and Virginia at The Learning Curve.

 

What are the Real Benefits to You and Your Child of Going to Camp?

Posted on by

The Learning Curve February 6, 2012 — ACA

What are the Real Benefits to You and Your Child of Going to Camp?

Did you know many families go to camp as a family rather then sending the kids off alone?

Today’s guest is Peg L. Smith, the Chief Executive Officer of the American Camp Association, where she has been for over a decade. She has had a wonderful career and extensive experience in childhood, adolescent and young adult work.  With her BS in early childhood and family studies, she began her career in 1974 as a Head Start Teacher.  Later, in 1977 she created a career program that was implemented in five counties inIndianafor young people, following which she made Director of the Head Start Program for Child and Adult Resource Services.

Eventually in 1991, due to her performance in a number of other positions, Peg was appointed to the staff of the Governor of Indiana as Director of the Governor’s Step Ahead Initiative, and while there she also created the first Bureau of Child Development for the State and in 1995 became the director of the Indiana Youth Initiative.

Peg has vast experience in the service of and helping youngsters, so she is well qualified to give us some points of wisdom on how best to serve our children.

Hear Peg explain how best to select a camp for your child.

  • Should you make a whole family holiday out of it?
  • What special camp experiences are available?
  • How can you plan it so your child’s regular school grades benefit?
  • What other benefits can you anticipate from a properly planned camp for your child?
  • What funding and financial arrangements you can benefit from?

Peg is a font of wonderful information in this show with reference to the above and many other topics you’ll want to know about.

Contact the American Camp Association

 

Click here to listen February 6, 2012 Peg Smith

Roger and Virginia at the Learning Curve

 

 

LINKS:

American Camp Association linked to http://www.acacamps.org

 

Roger and Virginia at the Learning Curve linked to http:///www.howtolearneasily.com