Stopping slip and slide of summer

It was a steamy summer day, perfect for mindless hours of watching cartoons and playing video games. But fourth-grader Ashley Aylmer was at her Duxbury elementary school, brainstorming about ways to build a model helicopter from an old fan and a fax machine.

During a week long enrichment camp called Camp Invention at the Alden School in Duxbury, Ashley and other area grade-school pupils created carnival games, dreamed up inventions and drew up blueprints, and devised emergency plans for a volcanic eruption. The youngsters tinkered and traded ideas and experimented, letting their imaginations take flight. If it weren't summer, they might have acknowledged that they were learning something.

``Maybe a little," Ashley said with a knowing smile.

Among many educators and parents, that's cause for celebration. Worried about the so-called ``summer slide," the attrition of hard-won academic gains in the absence of daily lessons and homework, they increasingly are searching for creative ways to help children stay mentally sharp during vacations. Concerns over youngsters losing ground while school is out have intensified amid pressure to raise standardized test scores and cover required state standards, leaving little time to review material students have forgotten.

In a study released in June, the Center for Summer Learning at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore found that students typically lose one to two months of reading and math skills during summer break, and that teachers often spend up to six weeks reviewing topics already covered.

The summer slide also is widely blamed for causing low-income and minority students to fall further behind their peers, particularly those who maintained or advanced their skills during the summer months.

In response to the concerns, teachers are urging students to read more over the summer; libraries and reading-advocacy groups are creating book lists and incentive programs, like Quincy's weekly raffle for book-readers; and schools are offering more tutoring and enrichment classes.

And more students are attending programs such as Camp Invention, where enrollment has nearly tripled in the past three years to nearly 100 students. The program's popularity, teachers said, is the result of striking a balance between education and good summer fun. True, the projects are aligned with national science standards, but the students don't have to know that.

``It's almost as if they don't know they're learning," said Erin Wiesehahn , director of the Duxbury Camp Invention program and a third-grade teacher.

This summer, Scholastic.com, an educational website for K-8 students, parents, and teachers, launched a reading site targeting the summer slide. The site, which includes reading lists, tips for parents, and a message board where children can recommend and review books, has proved highly popular so far, said Sylvia Barsotti , editor-in-chief of Scholastic.com.

The strong interest, Barsotti said, indicates that many parents are searching for ways to incorporate reading into summer vacation, and that children are looking for books that will capture their interest. A Scholastic survey has found that parents and children overwhelmingly believe that summer reading helps children perform better once school starts.

Ron Fairchild , executive director of the Center for Summer Learning at Johns Hopkins, said that many students are losing important skills during vacation, particularly children from disadvantaged families who are already falling behind their peers.

``It's a major contributor to the achievement gap," he said. To Fairchild, the popular perception of summer as time off from learning needs to change, and he urges educational trips, frequent visits to the library, and daily math refreshers to keep children mentally active.

Barbara Garvey , an eighth-grade English teacher in Brockton, said she can spot summer sliders right away, as soon as she reads the essays she assigns the first day back. Students who have put their brain on pause for the summer take a while to shake off the cobwebs.

``If they've been sitting by the TV all summer, it takes them a good two weeks to get back into the school scene," she said. ``You can tell right away who's been reading and who hasn't. The ones who have are right on target."

Summer slide or not, students at the Duxbury camp were a bit hesitant to sacrifice their precious summer hours to attend school. Noah Schulman , a Plymouth first-grader busy creating a golf-like carnival game, said he was having fun, although a swimming break might be nice. He didn't think his brain had turned to mush over the summer, exactly, but acknowledged that it had lost its sharpness.

``I have forgotten all the stuff I learned about water cyclones," he said with a rueful nod.

Lindsey Crossman of Marshfield, an earnest 7-year-old, said she has been reading a lot this summer, and still remembers her lessons from the long-ago days of June.

``I write things down so I don't forget it, even in the summer."

Really? Every day?

``Well, sometimes," she said with a smile.

Ryan Barlow , a Duxbury third-grader, said he's a good student and likes school. Still, summer is summer, and as fun as it is to invent things and build carnival games, the projects are precariously close to classwork. ``Every day before this, I go onto the computer and play some games to have some fun."

Chris Fleming , a 9-year-old Duxbury fourth-grader, has to read some before he's allowed to play video games.

He used to ``really despise reading" but recently has taken to mysteries.

``If it's a good book, I'll forget about PlayStation."

Chris is building a robot designed to kill bugs. He has dubbed the prototype the ``Bug Smasher 3,000."

It's a work in progress, he said. But the brainstorming, he is sure, is honing his mind to a fine edge. ``Well, for the destruction sort of thing, maybe. Maybe science, too."

Peter Schworm can be reached at schworm@globe.com.

What do you think?

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