Teaching Tips for Summer School and ESY

Unpopular opinion here folks: I actually enjoyed teaching summer school! Yes, you heard me right. Summer school isn’t all that bad. For me, one of the reasons I looked forward to summer was the change in pace and the freedom to focus on fun classroom activities rather than the usual stress-inducing, test-driven curriculum. I taught extended school year (ESY) for four consecutive years, and each year, I had a core group of students with a few new faces. Our focus was on social skills, communication, and—brace yourselves for another unpopular opinion—we even delved into new material!

Now, I understand that, as a special education teacher, ESY is traditionally a time to work on reading and writing goals and to maintain skills. However, doing the same thing year after year gets monotonous and can lead to unwanted behaviors or low attendance. So, every year, I decided to shake things up a bit. We embarked on a literary journey together, diving into a novel. That’s right, my 12 to 14 high school students read a novel with me and engaged in various English, math, and socialization activities centered around the text during our 5-week summer session…and they loved it! Some days, I had better attendance than any other classroom because my students simply needed to know what would happen next!

Let’s explore some fun, nontraditional summer school activities to support skill maintenance and promote student engagement!

Read Alouds

High school students often enjoy listening to audiobooks or being read to, as it provides a break from traditional classroom activities and allows for a shared literary experience. Reading out loud can benefit students in several ways. First, it can improve their listening skills, as they must focus on the speaker's voice and tone to understand the text. Next, read alouds can support students' comprehension and retention of the material, as hearing the text read fluently can aid in understanding the ideas from the text and provide an opportunity for them to better visualize the story. Don’t even get me started on how it can support ELL students! Overall, read alouds can be a valuable tool in the high school classroom, engaging students and fostering a deeper appreciation for literature.

In my last year teaching summer school, our novel was Animal Farm by George Orwell. I read around 80% of that novel out loud, and my students ended up staying engaged, asking questions, and enjoying the text! If read alouds aren’t your jam, a podcast series can be a great alternative! Pick up our Limetown Podcast Bundle, which includes scaffolded sketch notes for this true-crime style tale!

Word Searches and Crossword Puzzles

Word searches and crossword puzzles provide a fun and interactive way for students to engage with new words, review old vocabulary, or practice spelling. Word searches can also help students recognize patterns within words, such as prefixes, suffixes, and root words, which can aid in understanding the meanings of unfamiliar words. We’re talking summer school here — grab those highlighters & a basket of candy and have students engage in a gamified vocabulary review! Better yet, compete with them, and let them race against the teacher for a fun, rapport-building ice breaker!

Relay Races

Get your students up and moving with a good relay race! This activity fits seamlessly with all sorts of math topics. To play, students form two or three lines on one side of the classroom. Each line has one student response sheet. On the other side of the classroom is a set of math problems. One per line at a time race to the other side of the room and pick a problem to complete before running back to their team and handing the response paper off. Continue this for about 7-10 minutes, or until each student has an opportunity to answer 2 or 3 problems. Review as a class when finished! Look at our Coordinate Plane Relay Race for a fun review on identifying points and quadrants on a cartesian graph.

Art Activities

My artistic ability includes some cute flowers and some stick figures with abnormally large heads for their bodies…but I still love incorporating art in the classroom! Art encourages creativity and self-expression, providing students with a medium to explore their thoughts, feelings, and ideas in a tangible way. This can be especially beneficial for teenagers, who are often navigating complex emotions and identities. Whether it’s a characterization poster project, a digital comic, or even a diorama, allow opportunities for students to choose how to express themselves in a creative and artsy way! Knowing that not everyone is Picasso, I like to use choice board activities that provide just enough guidance to support students in a way that they can create and innovate without feeling overly pressured or insecure about their ability to draw a panda bear.

Shark Week

Last but certainly not least…Shark Week! Yes, you read that right. No matter the novel study or math lesson at hand, when Shark Week arrived, it took center stage in my summer school classroom. Whether it was reading passages, shark species web quests, writing questions to researchers, or interpreting data and graphs about sharks, that week was all about celebrating the majestic species, from the great white shark or my personal favorite, the formidable tiger shark! Need a curricular connection? Try our shark-themed properties of addition and multiplication resource! Want a fun & festive brain break? Grab this shark week word search freebie and join the celebration!

Overall, teaching summer school can be a rewarding experience for educators and students alike. It offers a unique opportunity to engage students in creative and interactive activities while focusing on specific skills and tasks. However, there are times when summer school isn't feasible. After years of teaching and loving ESY, I retired my “summer teacher” hat and happily donned my “toddler mom” hat. Whether you teach summer school or are anxiously counting down the days until the school year closes, this end of the year four corners activity is a great way to reflect on the school year and celebrate the growth of your students and classroom.

Any questions or tips of your own to share? Want to brainstorm some summer school strategies? Send us an email at hello@survivinginsecondary.com. We’d love to chat!