How to Plan for Summer School with Kiddom

Gone are the days of students staring at the clock in a hot July classroom waiting for the bell to ring. Today’s summer school planning involves hands-on learning, field trips, physical education, job shadowing programs and more. 

“Summer presents a key opportunity for school districts and community partners to accelerate learning and provide new avenues for students to safely engage with each other in fun activities. Let’s use this moment to reimagine what fun, engaging summer programming can look like…” said Dr. Miguel Cardona, Secretary of Education, in this press release. 

Summer School Planning with Kiddom

Thanks to the American Rescue Plan Elementary and  Secondary School Emergency Relief (commonly known as ESSER) funds, states and school districts are required to “invest at least 1.2 billion on evidence-based enrichment programs.” Many schools and districts are likely assessing their options for summer enrichment programs, 

What can summer school look like in your classroom? Let’s explore the qualities of a rigorous summer education program and find out how you can bring curriculum to life for your students.

Evidence-Based Curriculum

After a stressful year of teaching through waves of Covid-19 surges, the last thing teachers feel like doing is scraping together materials to use for the summer months. When high-quality digital curriculum is available on a platform for instruction, assessment, and communication, teachers get what they need more quickly, and better student outcomes become within reach. 

Kiddom partners with evidence-based digital core curriculum that receives the highest ratings according to Edreports.org. No more going from website to website or digging around in the file cabinet! Everything teachers and students need is in one place. 

Flexibility in Instruction

If the past few years have taught us anything, it’s that flexibility is key. In order to provide accessibility to all students, summer programs may need to be in-person, hybrid, or remote. Kiddom’s newest feature, Lesson Launch, allows for synchronous instruction no matter where students are. Teachers can launch a lesson in real time, preventing students from working ahead or falling behind. 

Kiddom added many new features at the beginning of 2022 to increase flexibility including a daily calendar, slide decks at the top of each lesson, interactive question types, student bookmarks, and dual roles for administrators. To read more about these features, check out this blog post. 

Student Engagement

Student engagement can be a challenge at any point in the year, especially the summer. There are many ways to combat this using Kiddom . I asked some of the former teachers on the Kiddom staff to weigh in on how they would use Kiddom to create an engaging summer program:

• Use the video or picture functionality for kids to take pictures of their fun summer activities. (Dina Kandzic, former pre-school teacher)
• Create weekly themes for the program and create warm-up or cool down activities to go along with the theme (Dina)
• Build fun and active activities (problem-based learning, outdoor discovery, etc) around skills that need remediation (Wes French, former high school teacher)
• Use video uploads to have students share their journey in completing the activity, as well as what they learned. (Wes)
• Use the different question types  such as classifying, matching, or ordering  to increase student engagement (Kaitlin Moore, former upper elementary teacher)
• Use the announcement page to promote asynchronous academic discussions (Kaitlin)

Data

Designing a summer program can be daunting if you are unsure of where to start. Kiddom can help you determine what concepts, standards, and skills need to be retaught. If you are a current Kiddom customer, you can view the students’ reports to see where they need remediation. For new customers, tracking data is as simple as creating a pre-test (or using one from our curriculum partners) to establish a baseline. As students complete assignments, Kiddom will generate a report for each student. 

Kiddom can help school districts provide high quality evidence-based instruction any time of the year. With its flexibility, data-tracking, and ability to provide high student engagement, Kiddom is the perfect choice for your summer program. Reach new heights with the rigorous, engaging, high-quality curriculum that is available digitally in Kiddom, which allows teachers to meet students where they are and appropriately challenge them at every level.