With the end of the school year either already passed or very much in sight, probably the last thing on your mind right now is what you should do to continue your study skills journey over the summer. Hopefully, many of you have taken my advice and made plans to go into next school year ready to build on what you’ve learned, and those of you who haven’t will consider doing so. Whatever your plans are for the fall, making sure you get the most you can out of your summer in every way, including academically, is a great step you can take toward making the fall the best it can be. Now that we are finally starting to see a return to normalcy after the very unique and challenging year we have had, I’m sure the temptation to focus on the return to all you had to miss last year, especially last summer, so completely that you either completely ignore summer work or put it off indefinitely, is running very high right now. I can certainly understand that sentiment, as I am very excited for my own summer plans at the moment. Unless you are in a situation where an extended school year and/or summer school is a requirement, the last thing I am advising you to do is to focus so much on your schoolwork that it negatively impacts your summer plans or keeps you from enjoying plenty of well-earned free time. What I am suggesting, just as I did in my post about the winter holiday break, is that you strive for balance and be creative. Whether you have assigned work or not, or any sort of official schooling lined up, doing whatever you can think of to enjoy your summer and continue learning at the same time is the best way to ensure that you can continue on your study skills journey and still take a well-deserved break from your school year.
Throughout my years as a special education teacher, one of my favorite pieces of summer work advice was that my students try to spend as much time on summer work, whether daily, weekly, or several days each week, as they would spend on their extracurricular activities during the school year. Spending that hour or two on schoolwork each day, or longer sessions several times a week depending on whatever else they might have had scheduled on the remaining days, allowed them and their parents to make plenty of time for schoolwork, and do so consistently, while leaving the amount of hours they would have normally spent in class available for summer plans and activities. That is my best piece of advice now as well, especially for those of you who do not have any summer school or other formal academic activities planned. If you will be in school, or will have tutoring or summer courses, those hours certainly count as school hours, and other than completing assigned work, either for your summer classes or your new school year, you shouldn’t need to schedule additional study time. If you will not be in school, scheduling some study time each week will keep you from procrastinating on assigned summer work if you have it, but if you don’t, you can use that time to go online to review weak concepts or skills, or to explore new topics or ideas that interest you, just as I suggested you do over your winter break. It’s okay if you laugh when you read this, but one of my favorite ways to learn new information when I had the chance, whether in the summer or otherwise, was to read the encyclopedia. I would start out planning to read about a single topic, but often, what I read would make me want to learn about something else, and plans to read a single article would soon lead me to lose count of how many articles I read, as well as to lose track of time. Researching new topics online could work for you in just the same way, as long as you remember that unlike in encyclopedias, not everything you find online is fact. Reading online encyclopedias and considering the source of the information on other websites will make it easier to be certain that you really are expanding your knowledge base, instead of being taken in by those who might wish to mislead you. Of course, you could also head to the library (gasp!) or download published titles, again making sure that the books you choose really will be the sources of information you are looking for.
No matter your summer plans, academic or otherwise, and no matter how full your schedule actually is, one of the best ways to prepare yourself for success in the new school year is to read for pleasure. Whether you have assigned novels or other reading or not, whether you explore new topics and ideas as I suggested in the previous paragraph or not, whether you make it part of your scheduled study time or not, reading for pleasure is a great way to improve your study skills. I don’t know if your parents or any other adults in your lives ever told you this, but before summer learning ever became widespread, accepted, and expected, summer reading programs at public libraries were one of the main ways kids were encouraged to learn through the summer months. Both free choice reading and reading books of various genres were part of the programs, and games, prizes, movie showings, and other activities were sometimes included as well. Many libraries still have programs, updated for the times, of course, and though most of you who read my posts are too old for them, asking to see their information might give you ideas about what to read, especially by reminding you of different genres you might try. While reading on or slightly above your reading level is ideal, those of you who find reading particularly challenging might wish to read books slightly below your reading level so you can increase your fluency and comprehension, and by extension, your enjoyment as well. In addition to considering genre and level, don’t forget that in the summer in particular, free choice really means free choice. Since you will not be graded on pleasure books, feel free to read whatever truly gives you pleasure, be it books by a single author, books in a series, or books in genres that your teachers might never assign, such as sports books, activity books, cookbooks, etc. Anytime during the year when you have the chance, but in the summer most of all, anything goes when it comes to reading for pleasure, because reading is reading, and as I’ve said about so many other study skills this year, the more you do it, the better at it you will become.
Another way to keep learning while also enjoying your summer, especially now that the world is opening up to you again, is to take advantage of the opportunity to learn something new wherever and whenever it presents itself. If you have the chance to go on vacation, you can learn about history, culture and landmarks, not only by going to known tourist attractions, but also by going off the beaten path, by speaking to locals, by trying their famous foods, and by doing whatever you can to immerse yourself in the experience. Whether you get the chance to travel or not, try some of these same suggestions locally, too. Many people only take the opportunity to see the attractions in their own cities when they have visitors or when they go on school trips. Since I know that just about every school trip was canceled or never even scheduled this year, take the opportunity to do over the summer the things you missed out on during the year, especially if you know there is no chance that they will be rescheduled. Instead of regretting what you didn’t get to do, find a way to do it anyway. Not only will it be a chance for you to keep learning over the summer, it will also be the chance for you to make some very unexpected memories to cap off this very unexpected year.
Now that summer is finally here, and with it has come our much-anticipated return to a more normal life, there is much to be excited about. Your time to relax and have fun after such a trying year is well-earned and well-deserved, but finding a way to balance your break from this past year with your preparation for the upcoming one is the best way to make sure you will continue to make progress on your study skills journey. If you take whatever summer learning is expected of you and find creative ways both to schedule it and to add to it, while still getting the most out of every opportunity you are given to have fun this summer, you will be well prepared to begin your upcoming year.