Strengthening Foundational Math Skills Over Summer
The past school year has been more difficult than most. With the stress and uncertainty of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the consequent hasty switch to distance learning, you might feel that you or your student’s math education has been negatively impacted.
The good news is that summer is a great time to assess your math skills and strengthen areas that might have fallen through the cracks. Here’s a game plan to get you started:
Reflect on the Past Year: Consider how distance learning affected your math education. Did you find it more difficult to learn new math topics online, or via specific platforms and formats chosen by your teacher? Were there particular topics that fell by the wayside while you struggled to keep up? Take time to journal about how this year’s math class went and identify areas you would benefit from reviewing, so you can feel as confident as possible going into the next level of coursework.
Review Material: Look over your coursework from the past year. Review any feedback you received from your teachers – both qualitative feedback (comments on projects and progress reports) and quantitative feedback (grades or test scores). Make sure you’re able to confidently solve problems from each topic covered. Make a list of topics you struggled with, or simply weren’t satisfied with your grades on, during the year.
Strengthen Weak Areas: Take the summer to work on these weak topics. This will help you be prepared for the school year(s) to come, and for standardized tests (like SAT and ACT) you’ll take in the future. Khan Academy is a great resource for instructional videos and practice modules for middle and high school classes, like Algebra 1 or Geometry. For younger students, math practice can be made a little more fun by having them practice their skills with math games, like those available on ABCYa.
Look Ahead: Once you feel confident in past material, spend time preparing for what’s to come. Particularly if you’re taking a challenging course like AP Calculus or IB Math, which are notoriously fast-paced and full of hard-to-grasp information, it can be very beneficial to get a head start over the summer to maximize your chances of success.
Ask for Help: Creating a framework of topics to cover – and holding yourself accountable to completing it – can be daunting. Reach out to your previous math teacher(s) for input, ask parents or older siblings for advice, or set some time up with a tutor to create a study plan you can collaboratively work through over the summer.
It can be tempting to forget about school over the summer, but taking some time (even just an hour per week!) to review now can boost your confidence, and improve your grades this fall. Get in touch if you’d like to talk further about setting your student up for success.
