Writing Over the Summer

It’s summertime, and the livin’ is easy – perhaps too easy. It’s a well-known fact in education circles that students generally lose between 1-3 months of their acquired learning over summer vacation. As a result, this “summer slide” means that teachers must spend nearly the same amount of time reviewing and re-teaching material at the beginning of each school year.

While most research on summer slide rightly focuses on the decline in math and reading skills, student writing skills also take a hit during extended vacations. Good writing is a learned skill, and students need to consistently practice their writing in order to become better writers. Short of assigning stacks of homework to be completed over the summer, what can teachers (and parents) do to combat summer slide?

Fortunately, there are many relatively painless options to keep students engaged in their writing over the summer. Students, for example, can blog weekly about various topics, engage in writing exercises in response to assigned summer reading, write in student journals, or create short stories. Teachers can set up a class wiki for students to post about their reading , and share insights , book reviews, and the like over the summer.
Kids can also write book reviews for their peers through their local public library, or perhaps pitch a story idea to the community newspaper – lots of editors are interested in news or events from a kid’s perspective. There are also plenty of fun sites online on which students can practice their writing: Web sites such as Bookemon, for instance, allow users to create and publish free ebooks to share with family and friends, or print bookstore-quality versions for a fee. The beauty of summer writing is that kids may feel less constrained by the stress of grades, and may experiment more with language and creative narratives than they normally would inside a classroom. Along with the resources highlighted below, we have lots of free resources on creative writing, writing prompts, and writing over the summer on the Gateway.

Below are three resources for various grade levels that can help kids to exercise their writing skills over the summer. Throughout the week, we’ll also be featuring resources on writing and other topics on our Twitter and Facebook pages, so be sure to check those pages often.

Creative Writing Lesson Plan
Subject: Writing
Grades: K-6
Kids create imaginary animals by combing different parts of real animals on this interactive virtual zoo. Students then write a short story about their animal.

Creative Writing: Middle School Lesson Plan
Subject: Writing
Grades: 7-8
In this lesson, students use what they know about story structure including setting, plot, theme, character, rising action and resolution to create their own short story or graphic novel understand the role that immigrants played in their local area’s history. While this resource focuses on the history of Pittsburgh and its steel industry, it can easily be adapted to other regions.

Creative Writing 10 LP
Subject: Writing
Grades: 9-10
This lesson presents a series of exercises in which students hone their creative writing skills. Students will write pieces that are to engage the five senses, use personification, and craft descriptive pieces with careful verb choices.