How To Start Planning For The New Year While Enjoying Summer Break

Some of my colleagues and other teachers here in Canada are just starting their summer breaks, so they may want to put this information aside for awhile and revisit it in a few weeks. For other teachers who are halfway through their summer break, if you are anything like me, your brain is starting to think about the next school year.

At first, it's just a few ideas and possible lesson thoughts, but gradually the thoughts increase and start to invade your dreams and nighttime moments. This isn't necessarily bad, but if it starts to take over your thoughts and cause stress, something needs to be done to reduce the stress.

Years ago I learned the hard way that it doesn't always pay to have everything planned in detail too far in advance. In our district and many others across Canada, class sizes and grades can be subject to change after the beginning of the school year based on school enrollment and budgets. 
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I remember taking a trip during the early part of the summer and then planning a whole unit for school startup based on some of the ideas and material I gathered during that trip. I had the bulletin boards done and the materials all prepared, when I was told that my grade was going to change. All the work I had done was for naught as it was too difficult for the new grade. I was so disappointed that I had to give up on the idea and come up with a different plan.

Fast forward to today, and my advice for teachers is to choose some ideas and broad concepts that can be taught to the grade above and below what you are expecting to teach and build on them for the beginning of the year. Not only will the material be more appropriate for whatever grade you are given, but it also will provide some differentiation for those who need more support and those who need enrichment.

After my above mentioned episode, this was the strategy I began to use and it worked well for me for the remaining years of my teaching.

Coming up with creative ideas that will capture the attention of your students can be difficult at times, but it's worth it. Take some time during your summer break to think of what kinds of activities capture your attention and see if there's a way of incorporating that feeling into lessons you plan for the beginning weeks of school. You may be amazed at some of the ideas that you will come up with.

Because summer time is different for everyone, many children will not do as much work on practicing skills learned during the year, so you will need to be prepared to do review of many of these skills with them when school resumes. Finding activities that help with review and are engaging for those who need less review can be a challenge. Try using some activities that involve real world situations so that you can motivate your students to participate more readily. 

Hands on activities and concrete examples work best with younger children as they are not always ready for abstract work. Even those who do have that mastered enjoy the hands on activities. Take advantage of this and the engagement will help them to review and reinforce skills so they are ready to continue learning more advanced concepts.

​The weather is usually still great for getting outdoors, so take advantage of it and plan some lessons for outside. If you add in an element of play or physical activity to the lessons you will involve more of the whole child instead of just the intellectual part. 

Here's an example that I used when I was teaching music. We would play a version of California Kickball. I was the pitcher and before I threw the ball, the person who was up had to correctly tell me what rhythm I was clapping or answer another musical question.

This could be adapted to answering a math question or a science fact or whatever topic you choose, but it combined some form of academics with the game. Maybe you could do something similar with foursquare or a skipping game.

These are just a few tips to consider as you are spending time relaxing during the summer. Try to remember to enjoy your time off and not get too caught up in the planning for the next school year yet. There will be time for deeper planning as the break gets nearer to the end.

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