When my grandsons told me not to give them more books as summer gifts, I knew they were heading into the long, eroding slide of a non-reading summer. “We have enough books, Gramps”, they said, and “School is over and summer is for fun.” If left to their own devices, children who do not read or are not engaged in “minds on activities” during their summer vacation lose any learning edge they had during the completed school year. They will begin their next school year well behind where they ended the prior school year.
We have known about summer learning regression for a long time. The National Summer Learning Association says, “All young people experience learning losses when they do not engage in educational activities during the summer. Research spanning 100 years shows that students typically score lower on standardized tests at the end of summer vacation than they do on the same tests at the beginning of the summer (White, 1906; Heyns, 1978; Entwisle & Alexander 1992; Cooper, 1996; Downey et al, 2004).
Most students lose about two months of grade level equivalency in mathematical computation skills over the summer months. Low-income students also lose more than two months in reading achievement, despite the fact that their middle-class peers make slight gains (Cooper, 1996).”
http://www.summerlearning.org/?page=know_the_facts
A child’s vocabulary is her key to unlocking future learning. When a child knows the words she encounters or has a familiarity with the word families of new words, learning maintains its natural pace. Just remember what it was like in school when a teacher or a classmate used words that you did not know. You experienced the feeling of being a stranger in the conversation and that part of the conversation did not make any sense. With continued repetition of hearing or reading words that are unfamiliar, the conversation stops because you checked out.
Beck and McKeown (1991) indicate that by age six a child should know 2,500 to 5,000 words. Anglin (1993) found that by age ten a child should know 40,000 words. And, Miller and Gildea (1997) learned that a high school graduate should know 80,000 words. Interestingly, most of our word acquisition does not happen through formal instruction.
“School age language acquisition occurs primarily through incidental experience more than formal teaching. Word learning shifts from concrete and functional to abstract and unusual. This shift occurs gradually from third grade through the high school years. Environment matters. Extreme environments extremely matter.” Times and places that are “word rich” grow working vocabularies just as times and places that are “word poor” erode working vocabularies. Sometime the environment is not our choosing, but most of the time it is.
https://languagefix.wordpress.com/2009/02/02/how-many-words-should-a-child-know/
Most of us learn words naturally because we put ourselves in front of word traffic. That’s what happens when we read. It does not matter whether the material is fiction or non-fiction, in hard cover of soft, on an e-reader or a laptop. When we put our eyes on words, we will observe words or word usage that is new to us and when we make our own natural inquiry into a word’s definition or context, we grow our working vocabulary.
I tell my grandsons, aged 7, 9 and 11, that their 67-year old grandfather finds words and word usages every day that are new, or at least seem new, to him. They tend to think that the stack of books and journals on my desk and next to chairs in every room in my home are a form of decoration or just have been forgotten where they lie.
Creating word rich environments is a thriving business in the United States. Huntington is a major educational tutorial service. They say, “Make reading a daily occurrence. Reading can be one of the most drastic regression areas, so develop a nightly reading routine for the whole household. Turn off the television and cell phones and have everyone in the family pull out their books or magazines for 30 minutes or longer. If your child needs help, read together. Keep it fun-let your child choose the reading material when you go to the library.”
http://huntingtonhelps.com/resource/article/how-to-avoid-summertime-regression/#.VYhfA9FRGUl
Having fun in the summer is important for children. Working to either take assist parents with household duties or to earn money also is important for many children. Investing in their intellectual future need not steal from fun or work, because reading can fill in the ten to thirty minutes gaps between fun/work activities or it reading can be a good relaxation activity following higher energy recreation and work.
When children learn to carry a book or magazine or an e-reader with them, they are prepared to take advantage of every opportunity that summer presents. Word acquisition through continuous personalized reading in the summer is one of the most significant strategies a child can use to expand her working vocabulary. It is shameful to lose intellectual ground just because the time of the year is summer and summer is “for fun.”