Tips & Tricks to Avoid a Summer Slide

What teachers know about learning loss that parents need to hear

The summer slide is real. When students step away from structured learning, academic skills can fade faster than most parents expect. Research shows that students can lose up to two months of reading and math progress over the summer. The good news: a little intention goes a long way.

What Is the Summer Slide?

The summer slide refers to the learning loss that happens when students are out of school for an extended period. It is not just about forgetting facts. It is about cognitive skills going underused. Attention, memory, processing speed, and reasoning all need regular exercise to stay sharp.

When students return in the fall, teachers spend weeks (sometimes months) re-teaching material from the previous year. That is time that could go toward moving forward.

The Cognitive Skills Behind Learning Loss

Many interrelated cognitive skills contribute to academic success. When these skills go unpracticed over the summer, students feel it in September. The key skills include:

• Attention
• Working Memory
• Processing Speed
• Long-term Memory
• Visual Processing
• Auditory Processing
• Logic and Reasoning

These skills are interdependent. They work together constantly as students read, solve problems, follow instructions, and process new information. The more they are exercised, the stronger they get.

5 Tips to Share With Families Before School Lets Out

Teachers are in a unique position to send students home with strategies that actually work. Here is what the research supports.

Keep math practical. Skip the worksheets. Cooking, shopping, and sports all involve real math. Help parents spot the opportunities already in their daily routines. A trip to the grocery store is a math lesson. So is doubling a recipe or calculating a sports score.

Read anything. Seriously, anything. Comics, recipes, audiobooks, captions, and magazines all count. The goal is that reading happens, not that it looks a certain way. Local libraries are free and usually offer summer reading programs with incentives for kids.

Move the body to sharpen the brain. 30 minutes of physical activity a day supports focus, mood, and memory. It does not have to be organized. A walk, a bike ride, or backyard time all count. Physical movement is directly linked to cognitive function.

Play learning games. Games are one of the most effective and enjoyable ways to build cognitive skills. They strengthen working memory, logic, processing speed, and attention without feeling like school. See the free games list below.

Protect sleep. The brain sorts and stores what it learned while kids sleep. Research shows that interrupted sleep can block memory formation, so a consistent bedtime, even in summer, makes a real difference. This one is worth putting at the top of the parent conversation.

Free Games List by Grade Level

Not all games are created equal when it comes to brain benefits. The list below is drawn from cognitive skills research and organized by grade level so families can find the right fit quickly.

👉Early Elementary (K-2)
GAMES: Bop-It Extreme, Simon, Uno, Slapjack, Perfection, Connect 4, Where’s Waldo?, Legos, Puzzles
FOCUS: attention, memory, processing speed

👉Upper Elementary (3-5)
GAMES: Blokus, Blink, Mancala, Sequence, Rummy, Set, Skip-Bo, Apples to Apples, Scrabble
FOCUS: logic, planning, working memory

👉Middle School (6-8)
GAMES: Chess, Stratego, Battleship, Sudoku, Cribbage, Mad Gab, Squint, Logic Links, Rook
FOCUS: reasoning, deduction, problem solving

👉High School (9-12)
GAMES: Chess, Stratego, Scrabble, Sudoku, Tetris, Cribbage, Bejeweled, Brain Age, DDR
FOCUS: executive function, processing speed, memory

How Teachers Can Help: The PD Connection

Understanding how cognitive skills develop and break down is one of the most practical things a teacher can do for their students. When you know what is happening in the brain, you can address learning gaps before they become permanent.

The online course Cognitive Skills: Understanding Learning Challenges walks teachers through the science of how students learn, why some struggle, and what strategies actually work. It counts toward your continuing education renewal hours and is available for self-study, so you can complete it on your schedule this summer.

👉 Get the Cognitive Skills course at RenewATeachingLicense.com

About the Author
Ellen Paxton is a respected expert in education and best known as the Chief Learning Officer of Professional Learning Board. As a two-time National Board Certified Teacher, Ellen has successfully published and customized online professional development courses and Learning Management Systems for 20 years to help teachers meet their state continuing education renewal credit requirements. Through ProfessionalLearningBoard.com, RenewaTeachingLicense.com, and ConnectedPD.com. Ellen has established solutions and maintained partnerships with several accredited universities, higher education institutions, teachers’ unions and state Departments of Education while setting strategic direction that makes a difference and overseeing implementation of popular online PD.