S1.E6 - Redefining Summer Learning

In our final episode for the school year, Dr. Ellen Vorenkamp sits down with RESA Instructional Technology Consultants Judy Bowling and Jason Siko to discuss innovative learning strategies for summer learning that are no-tech, low-tech, and high-tech. Whether it’s a structured activity, informal learning, or a passion project, there’s plenty of ideas for educators as they share summer learning ideas with parents and students.

Length - 46 minutes

Ellen Vorenkamp: Greetings. Welcome to this episode of Wayne RESA’s Getting to the Core: Where Pedagogy Meets Practice. My name is Dr. Ellen Vorenkamp and I will be your host. This episode, we are thrilled to have Dr. Jason Siko and Judy Bowling, two of Wayne RESA’s most experienced instructional technology consultants with us to discuss summer learning opportunities for students to keep them engaged in learning during the summer. Welcome, Jason and Judy. I am going to ask each of you to introduce yourself very quickly. Judy would you like to go first?

Judy Bowling: Sure, my name is Judy Bowling as Ellen mentioned, and I'm an instructional technology and library consultant at Wayne RESA and I help support teachers throughout the county integrating technology into their curriculum. I also work to help support library media specialist as they work with their students as well.

Ellen Vorenkamp: Excellent. Thank you, Judy. Jason?

Jason Siko: Hi, everyone. I’m Jason Siko. I am also an instructional technology consultant here at Wayne RESA, and I've only been here for about a couple years. So, most of my time here has been spent working remotely. Like Judy, I do all the things that she mentioned minus the library piece, and again just glad to be here.

Ellen Vorenkamp: Excellent thank you both. We really do appreciate your time and your expertise. So, summer learning… let's talk about summer learning. As educators, we have all heard about the research around summer learning and that summer learning loss and how it can really impact student readiness to learn as they enter a new grade in the fall. So, we know that there's some evidence that suggests that some students can lose, on average, up to one month of school learning over the summer, and in the cases of some of our disadvantaged students, this may be, in fact, even higher. We also know that in our current context, with the advent of virtual learning and the pivoting back and forth between virtual and face-to-face learning due to COVID, this might be even more challenging during this upcoming summer and we will return to school in the fall. We also know, as educators, that it is more effective to approach this learning loss within our students in a proactive rather than from a deficit stance.

So, in our conversations today I’m interested to know what your thinking is on this research and, in general, what educators, in concert with parents and students, can do to the students themselves do, to kind of stave off this potential learning loss that may be impacting us this fall.

Jason Siko: So, I'll go ahead and go first on this. And again, to kind of mirror what Ellen said: you know, the research is pretty clear that, you know, summer school is not as if summer schools, we know, it is not necessarily the most effective way to make up for what you refer to as that learning loss, you know. And you can look at that; the research kind of confirms that, but also from a practical standpoint. If you have either a taught summer school or had a son or daughter that was in summer school or just kind of seen it in general, you understand that it's probably not the most engaging and students aren't necessarily the most involved. They're kind of in it, for, as we often call it, a credit recovery situation. So what can we do differently? Well the research, you know, really kind of aimed toward more engagement and it really aims toward improving attendance. And I know Ellen's last podcast episode on the Attendance Resource Team… that information really comes in handy because a lot of the research shows that attendance is one of the major problems they have with summer school. But, in general, there's this idea of relevance and why are they there in the first place? In terms of what parents and students can do, I I think the mindset of, “it takes a village;” this is going to be a summer unlike any other we have seen. As Ellen mentioned, this whole year of pivoting back and forth between online and in-person, and these learning deficits as we might want to call them although, we should take a more, you know, a strengths-based approach here, is going to be a lot different than any summer we've experienced for quite some time. So, in short, you know what can we do from the teacher side? What can we do as parents and what can we do as students, and how can we collaborate to make sure that we're bringing everybody back to where we should be at under normal circumstances? So, it's going to take a village and there's, you know, things we're going to talk about today that kind of involved not only the students themselves, but also the parents and the teachers. Judy?

Judy Bowling: Ok, so to piggyback on what Jason just alluded to, there are so many opportunities this summer for students to engage in different learning opportunities that don't necessarily look like school but definitely support that additional learning in some innovative ways. There are different programs being offered through Wayne RESA. Things like Pop-up Literacy events which are innovative learning opportunities to engage kids in reading, writing and STEM activities. There's Camp Invention, which is a virtual STEM summer program. There are some different writing camps being offered throughout the summer. So, there's a wide variety of opportunities for our kids and we will be including many of these in the show notes. But there's also opportunities for teachers as well, because we know that teachers, although they rest during the summer, they themselves are also doing a whole lot of learning and still connecting with families and students. And so, there are a lot of webinars and summertime opportunities for teachers to engage in professional learning. So again, we'll include those in the show notes. Some of them are connected to STEM. We've got the National Writing Project, code.org; there's different opportunities for teachers to engage in learning how they might incorporate that with their students. And then Michigan Learns has a lot of resources. So, there's a plethora of resources out there for both students and teachers, but the overarching theme here is that we want to continue to keep our students engaged in that learning process throughout this summer, so that they are ready to go once school comes back in the fall.

Ellen Vorenkamp: Thank you, Judy. So, I’m hearing a couple of, as you said, major themes. One, summer school as we know it kind of from the past with the kids coming in and spending four hours, you know, sitting at a desk kind of in isolation, learning things that we think that they may not have gotten over the course of this past year…kind of sounds like that that hopefully is sort of in the past; that we're looking for things that are a little bit more engaging, that they're a little bit more innovative, that there's more collaboration that we're using that funding that we're getting from the state and let's talk about that in just a few minutes if we could, because there is some funding behind this and that's probably important to note. But that we're using that in a much different philosophy and really think of it as engaging kids in learning; in more of a fun, active, hands on, kinesthetic kind of manner that's going to really allow them to fully engage. Not just sit there and get this information, but to really immerse themselves in the learning; you know, body, mind, and, you know, emotions, to some extent so that's really, really exciting.

And thank you for sharing a couple of those opportunities that you've mentioned, and maybe we can get into a few more details on a couple of them. If you have some of that we know that they will be in the show notes. But I am interested in little bit on House Bill 4048; if either of you could speak to that in just in terms of the funding and if there's any specific requirements that the educators need to know about, as we think about this money and how we might be utilizing it over the summer to engage our students.

Jason Siko: Yeah, I think the major thing about House Bill 4048 is that it's taking some of the federal funds and distributing it in appropriate manners for summer school and learning recovery opportunities. And so, if you read through the bill there's, “if you do this you'll get this much funding per child,” and/or if teachers are involved with this, they'll get some additional funds for stipends and so on and so forth. I think the main thing that really kind of piqued my interest in this bill is the fact that they're giving additional money to districts that apply for what are called “innovative programs.” And so now, the deadline; I should note that the deadline for these plans to be submitted I believe was April 15^th, so we're talking about this in the past tense but they were providing additional funds per pupil if the district was creating what they would call innovative programs. And so, they gave an idea of some examples of that what makes an innovative program or what are some of the terms that you would use there. And so, what the bill actually list are programs that are community-based for learning recovery, or STEM-based, or take an integrated kinesthetic or cognitive growth approach, or are outdoor or adventure-based, or if they involve some sort of public-private partnerships. So, as I talked about earlier, you know, and Ellen kind of reaffirmed this idea of the summer school and when… one piece that you didn't have in your description of the typical summer school was in a hot, un-air conditioned building in a Michigan summer on a Thursday, you know, before fourth of July weekend…just completely… whatever a conducive learning environment is… the exact opposite of that. And so, you can see there from these descriptions of what would qualify as an innovative program, you can see that at least the state gets it and they know that we need to do something different this time around. So, those are kind of the elements that I think, would you know, best serve obviously for this summer, but also, you know, as you're thinking about what can I do as a parent? What can I do as a teacher if I’m just trying to give guidance to parents for the for the summer? These are the types of things we want to emphasize and make sure that they're thinking about these things as they plan for summer learning in both a formal sense, whether it be a camp or a course or even quote unquote summer school, but even also in that informal sense. Many kids don't need to go to summer school but they're still going to be at home for three months. What does that look like? How are they going to be observed if, you know, both parents are working from home? Or maybe they're starting to go back to work, you know, what type of things that they're going to do? They can't maybe play in those leagues or do those things because of COVID restrictions. And so, what are some ideas that we can give them to keep the kids engaged and interested in learning throughout the summer, I think is something that we really need to talk about.

Ellen Vorenkamp: Thank you for that Jason. And you're right; I don't know how I could forget the sweltering heat in the room, in the, you know, wishing that it were 12 o'clock so you get out. Because I actually did get to go to summer school when I was in high school so… And I’m really interested in and loving what you're talking about in terms of the formal and informal and what can parents and educators do, and what can educators do for parents and what information can they give them that will help them engage their own; not necessarily putting them into some sort of formal structured program. But since Judy brought that up, I’d love to give Judy an opportunity. She mentioned several things in her little introduction: pop-up literacy events, Camp Invention; Wayne County has some things going on that they… Forward Youth, for instance, that the students might get involved with through the through the schools, the National Writing Project; Oakland University has got some things going on, Michigan Council for Women in Technology. We know that there's a lot out there. I’m wondering if there's any one piece of that Judy, that you would just like to expand just a little bit on and maybe just give us a little more in-depth information. And like Judy said, you can find all of those examples in our show notes, but I’m wondering if there's just one thing that might be more special that you would like to highlight.

Judy Bowling: Thanks, Ellen. I think that the two that that most resonate with me right now are the Pop-Up literacy events and Camp Invention. Both of them are similar in that they are coming up with some creative and innovative ways to bring making and maker-centered learning and STEM to our students. But the pop-up literacy events are using literature as the vehicle to get our kids excited about reading, but also connecting it to some other higher-level thinking around STEM activities. And so, with that, and this is going to be a segue into another example we mentioned later, but one of the things I like about that is that books are, we know how important it is for kids to read and books can be used in so many different ways. And it is just the portal, it's a familiar starting place to take that story in a lot of different directions. And so, it's a very hands-on experience, although many of these will be virtual this year, but they will still be hands-on. Camp Invention is another program that again is a very hands-on experience. It gets kids, you know, tinkering and inventing and making. It weaves in the literacy elements as well. So again, it speaks to the point that this isn't a traditional, stagnant type of a learning experience; it's very hands-on, it's very experiential, and it'll be fun for the kids. And we know that when kids are having fun…the best learning to me, is when kids are having fun and they don't even realize that they're learning. So, those are the two that that I’m really excited for our kids to be a part of this summer.

Ellen Vorenkamp: Sounds awesome. Thank you, Judy. And you mentioned something else, too. Both of you actually have alluded to the fact that, you know, over the summer it's traditionally a time for teachers to, sort of, rejuvenate and reflect and to continue their own learning and to continue to think about, you know, what their next steps might be and what they might need to add to their toolbox in order for them to feel prepared to meet their students when they come back In the fall. So, both of you had mentioned something about some opportunities for teachers in addition to, you know, the students over the summer. And I’m just wondering if either of you would be able to elaborate on some of those opportunities that are the educators listening might be interested in?

Jason Siko: Yeah, just a little bit. I think, you know, teachers, as much as we want to, you know, put in the final grade on that book in the grade book and press send and walk away till August, that there's obviously, you know, that hook to kind of return. And even this year is going to be a bit more like that. I think…you read any news article right now and, “teachers brains are fried,” or, “teachers are stressed,” there might be a little less involvement this summer that may be in years past, but we all know that we have certification renewals, we all know that, you know, there's always certain things to learn and like to still take an optimistic viewpoint that teachers are lifelong learners and will always kind of look for additional opportunities. So really, just anything in your own content area is always useful, but you know just a couple, in particular… I think Judy mentioned the National Writing Project; that's always important regardless of curricular areas. Same with any of the offerings from code.org in terms of workshops or camps because, in Michigan, you have the computer science standards out and we're trying to integrate coding and computer science into all content areas and all grade levels. So, if that's an area where a teacher may feel a little uncomfortable or has kind of a mindset of, “Oh, I’m not going to do programming in my Spanish class,” well, it's definitely not just programming when we talk about computer science. And there's a lot of things in the standards that do apply to all curricular areas and can be used there. So, maybe something there. But even just, you know, a little going off script here, we noticed that the year has not only involved a pandemic, but huge amounts of social unrest and social change. So, where are some things that you might want to improve your own knowledge and mindset on as you approach the upcoming school year because these are things that, quite honestly, they didn't teach in PD and they didn't teach you in your college of ed. So, where are some areas that you might identify some gaps and, you know, be better informed about not only your general knowledge about these issues, but how to teach these issues in a way that is appropriate?

Ellen Vorenkamp: Excellent, thank you. So, one thing that we had hoped, over the course of this past year in terms of equity was making sure that all of our students had access to computers and then, of course, access to the internet in order to use that computer; in order to do some of the virtual learning that we were engaged in over the past couple of months due to COVID. And we know that we got there to some extent that, maybe not completely, and that there might still be some issues with internet access and computer access and that opportunity to learn in that way for some of our students, and that might continue into the summer months. So, I’m wondering if either of you might be able to speak about how parents or how educators can help parents with that deficit if there happens to be one in the life of the child? And then, also, we also know that having kids in front of the computer 24/7 is not necessarily the best thing; that they might need to, for their own sanity and health, wealth, and well-being, be outside or do something a little bit different. So, what's the balance and what kind of advice can we give educators to help with the internet access, but then also help parents structure a day in the life of, so to speak, so that the child is getting a nice balance of the virtual and the learning and the play and the outside and so on and so forth.

Jason Siko: Yeah, I’ll start in on the internet access and Judy, if you want to pick up on the structure that would be great. With the internet access, and this, you know, obviously, became clear to everybody, at the start of the pandemic was this idea of, “Well, we're all going remote.” Well, guess what? Not everybody has quality internet access and again, we can talk about how this generation is the digital generation, or whatever, but the fact of the matter remains is you if you can't access the internet you don't have an opportunity to participate in that… and that goes beyond just cell phone access, because a lot of the learning opportunities require high bandwidth and high data consumption. Sometimes your mobile device plan doesn't accommodate that. So many, both cable and internet and cellular providers do have opportunities for low-cost internet and data plans. And I can't list them all here they're ever changing, but there are resources available online and Wayne RESA does have a web site that provides, you know, a list of, a very lengthy list of potential leads for getting low-cost internet access or from your data plans from yourself cellular provider.

So, again we'll link to that in the show notes. And I should mention at this point that if you did not know our podcast is housed in multiple platforms, but it is found on our website at resa.net/podcast. So that's…you'll go there you'll see each episode that we've done and then you'll see the show notes. This will probably be the first episode that we've done that has a very lengthy show notes with all the links that we're going to, all these projects that we are talking about, so just kind of keep that in mind. But by and large, you know, we are probably going to see some changes in those, because I think at the start of the pandemic every provider said, “Yep, we need to do this.” I don't know how that's changed over the course of the year and if they're going to pull back. You know, we saw that a lot last year where everybody offered a lot of things for free, and then they started to pull back at the end of summer for the fall. I’m not sure how we're returning to that, but that's where a good starting point to look at. But, as you mentioned Ellen and Judy will clarify or expand on is the fact that we don't want kids to be an on the internet, all summer long. They spent almost the entire school year on the internet in front of a computer. So what can we do differently? But still you're going to need some of that screen time. So, that's one of the things that we kind of need to find more of a balance on for this summer, as opposed to other summers.

Judy Bowling: Yeah, and just to piggyback off what Jason said exactly, our kids have had more screen time this year than ever and, you know, with the summertime coming and warmer weather it's the perfect time to, you know, help our kids find some balance… get outside; but that's easier said than done. So, coming up with some structures, you know, within your home to help with that balance, and of course it's going to depend on the ages of your students as well. But like I said coming up with, you know, perhaps areas that are, you know, screen free zones, you know, maybe at the dinner table. You know everybody's phone is you know, on the counter, maybe it's a room. Looking at different times during the day, maybe where again it's an unplugged time or a screen free time but, again, depending on the ages of your students or children, you know, that's going to have a bearing on that as well. But the biggest thing is, we want to help our kids find that balance. And screen time might not just be computers and laptops, too. It could be TV time and I know, you know, when my own kids were growing up, they knew that if there was a movie that they wanted to watch that was related to a book, they had to read the book first. And so, it got to the point… they didn't even ask to watch the movie until they had read the book. And so, it's just coming up with some routines and structures that, you know, assist in that. Because I think we have all gone down those dark rabbit holes where you might think, to yourself, “I’m just going to take five minutes.” And the next thing you know it's been 65 minutes, and so, we want to be intentional with that. And the other thing is, too, though with screen time screen time doesn't always look the same: being a passive consumer using the screen time versus being a creator of content, you know, is a different use of technology. And so, you need to weigh those factors into it as well. But at the end of the day, we do want to help our kids find balance.

Ellen Vorenkamp: Thank you for that, Judy. There are a couple of really great points in there, I never would have thought to have my kids read the book first before they were able to watch the movie. And the distinction between screen time and whether it's passive or whether they're actively engaged in learning and some point is really, really important. And so, I think we need our educators to really make our parents aware of that, and really help parents look for those things that are more engaging and less passive. Because, quite honestly, the summer school could end up looking very similar to the traditional summer school if all of our students are just sitting in front of the computer, you know, trying to intake information in a passive manner and that could be just as stifling, so to speak, as the traditional summer school. So, great ideas.

I think one last big question that we would that we would like to engage in and hear some of your thinking around are… for somebody like myself, who's a little less technical than somebody else and really is looking for ways to engage my students or my child in some learning activities that may be off the screen and might be a little less technical: what might we be able to offer educators to share with parents in terms of that, you know… I just keep going back to board games and having my kids play UNO or Yahtzee or Monopoly or something, because at least they're counting money or, you know, something, and maybe there's some skills in there, but I know you guys, have a lot of better ideas than that. So, what if you would be able to maybe share a couple of those with us? That would be great.

Judy Bowling: Yeah, and this is actually kind of a good segue from that balance, because there are some things that we'd like to share that are low tech, no tech, and then there is some tech.  So, we thought we'd start with just reading. We know how important reading is. The more kids read, you know, the better and again, summer is the perfect time to get your kids reading everything and anything that interests them. And this would include also, read alouds, especially for our youngest learners. And it doesn't always have to be a book, either. So again, it can be anything; I mean magazines, comics, news articles. We just want our kids reading. There's lots of digital resources out there for our kids to find reading materials. Two of my favorite online read aloud resources, so if your students, well, they can just enjoy them, but maybe they don't have anybody there to read aloud to them. One of them is Storybooks Online, which features actors reading books aloud and then the other one is Storytime from Space, which has astronauts reading books from the International Space Station. So, those are those are fun for kids to hear those stories.

If your students are looking for a print book, there's a lot of avenues for them to get a print book. I would always recommend that they start with their school library media specialist. I know every school is a little bit different but find out what materials can be borrowed for the summer; if there's going to be opportunities to borrow materials throughout the summer. And also, I think, sometimes we forget about our public libraries, but encouraging students to visit those because they not only have countless materials for kids to borrow for free, but they are also coming up with creative ways to share stories. So, for example, the Livonia Public Library has a new dial-up a story service, where you call the phone number, you select a story from a menu of choices and then sit back and listen or read along if you have the book at home. And they're always adding new stories. Public libraries also, as we were talking about summer programs, but they also have summer reading programs. They've had to make some adjustments, of course, with COVID, but it has been my experience in the past, as a former classroom teacher and media specialist that if you reach out to them, they are happy to visit your classroom and tell your students all about that because, again, we just want to get them excited.

You can also encourage your students to engage with other readers this summer by talking about the books that they're reading, creating projects, writing about what they've read through summer book clubs. These are a great way for kids to share their reading experiences. They can certainly organize a book club themselves with other students, but it could be something that you, the teacher, are facilitating for them. And so, just an idea of how you might be able to do that would be to create a special book class club or course in Google Classroom, Schoology, or whatever learning management system your district is using. Once you've selected a book, you've determined a schedule for how often you want to meet, what chapters will be discussed each time. You'll then just generate a few discussion questions for each chapter, just to help guide that conversation. So, for the sake of an example, let's say you're using Google Classroom and you decide to discuss one chapter virtually every Thursday using Google Meet or whatever video conference tool your district uses. So, upload your discussion questions ahead of time to get your kids thinking. Students can certainly add responses to these questions within Google Classroom itself, but the whole idea here is to get your kids talking.

And so, we want to engage them in that live conversation. It's not only fun for them to connect with one another, but we know that learning is social and when kids get the opportunity to talk about what they're reading it takes their level of understanding to the next level. So again, meeting virtually once a week with your kids to have conversations around the book is engaging, but it also builds an accountability for kids to do the reading in a way that doesn't feel like school, because it's very… it's a little laid back with some structure built in.

If you have students that prefer e-books and digital resources, I would suggest any of the following; they are all free, which is good for you. Free is my favorite word. So, again, I always say circle back and start with your school library media specialist if you are fortunate enough to have one, to see if they've purchased e-books for your school. And, if so, make sure your kids know how to access them from home this summer. Again, reach out to your public library and have them help your kids get library cards. Once they have a library card, they can access countless e-books for free from the public library from the comfort of their home. And again, the public library can help you know get all that in order. You can access EPIC, which is a great digital reading platform that provides a lot of e-books and then last but not least, as citizens of Michigan we are so lucky to have the Michigan e-Library, otherwise known as MeL, which has thousands of e-books in there for kids of all ages and other digital resources, like Britannica, World Book, PebbleGo, which are opposing viewpoints for your older readers because we do have a lot of our kids who like to read nonfiction text as well. And as we mentioned earlier, these will all be in the show notes.

Another great resource which is newer this year is the Michigan Learning Channel, which Detroit Public Television announced again earlier this year. And this is a great resource that taps into the TV, but it's also available on the internet. And basically, its instructional content to support our students learning, and one of their amazing newer programs is called Read with Roars. It's a literacy series that's geared toward grade… it's geared towards grades K-3. It's taught by Michigan teachers and it's just another engaging way to help your kids build their literacy skills through word building lessons, read aloud, and in some writing activities.

So, speaking of writing: that's another thing we would love our kids to be doing this summer, and we want to provide them with lots of opportunities to write and to see themselves as authors. There's lots of ideas, but a few might be that they could create a daily or weekly reflection journal to capture their thoughts, their notes, reflections, questions; the more questions, the better. They might create an innovative notebook to capture some ideas, designs inventions, sketching, note taking. And then, speaking of sketching, another avenue that your kids might want to take is to capture their ideas visually in a notebook that through sketch-noting or sketch-doodling. And if you've not heard of that, it's basically a form of visual writing that mixes writing, drawing, and other visual cues together. So, encouraging your students to draw. It's not only fun, but it just challenges them to explore ideas in different ways. Paper/pencil is readily available and, of course, that is a wonderful medium for writing. It's a great way to fire up their brains get them off the screen for a little bit. It's also a portable, so if they're doing some type of a notebook have them take it with them you never know when an idea pops into their mind that they want to jot down. If they're on a nature walk and they can record what they're seeing. If they are taking a field trip to a museum to record their thoughts or sometimes it's just maybe a quote or something or a drawing.

And then for those that want to do something digitally, one of my absolute favorite tools is called Book Creator. And, this is a tool that can be used across any grade level for making interactive e-books. It is free, it's super user friendly, and again, it allows you to add all kinds of multimedia. So, you can incorporate text, audio, video, photos, and then drawings; so you can make all of those ideas that we've already mentioned digital and then it can be published and shared via a link in an in an authentic e-book. So, again that's one of my favorite tools for getting kids to write digitally, because basically it's a blank platform.

Earlier we mentioned some of the Camp Inventions and pop-up literacy, and using that hands-on learning experience to get them making or tinkering. And so, sometimes tinkering and making are used interchangeably, but if you think of tinkering it's a little bit more playful as it gets really… just like looking at stuff and asking, “What can I do with it? How does it work?” Where making is taking that and moving it from an idea to an invention. And so, there's lots of opportunities in the summer where you can engage your students and challenges that encourage them to design and build and create as they work through that engineering process. And again, as we mentioned earlier, one of the best and easiest places to start is with a familiar story and just adding a design twist to it. So, looking at the problems that the characters face in the story and just finding a creative solution. So, for example, you know, create a trap to catch the gingerbread man, create a squirrel proof bird feeder, create a bus for the pigeon to drive and then, of course, you could scaffold that up you know with higher level texts. But again, just taking what you're already doing, and just adding a twist; it's a great strategy to bring these stories to life through tinkering, designing, building, and prototyping, and getting our kids doing and creating.

You know, making can also be digital. So again, we talked about how screen time can look different and we want our kids creating well, maybe some of that creating looks like stop motion or using green screen technology. And so, there's a couple of different apps like Stop Motion Studio or DoInk that again, it's very user friendly, but just gets that creative thinking of the kids doing. And, what you find with creativity is that the more you're engaged in creative activities, the more creative you get and the more you want to do. And so, those are wonderful learning opportunities for our kids.

And then just a few more; we've mentioned STEM. But again, when I think about summer, I think about it as being this time that, you know, we say the lazy, hazy days of summer, but it really is just a time to explore and investigate things driven by curiosity. And we want our kids to pursue questions they're interested in learning more about, and then gathering information, you know, by exploring and researching to deepen their understanding. Again, it's learning in an untraditional way. If your students are stuck for an idea, and they want to explore something deeper, a couple of resources that I would refer to; one of them is called Wonderopolis. This is an amazing website that is just filled with wonderings and explanations, and it also has a place where kids could add their own wondering. Another great resource is from PBS, it's a program called Curious Crew that takes a hands-on approach to scientific exploration. And again, it gets kids thinking and asking lots of questions. And so, by being a part of those it might trigger an activity that they could take them on their own and explore more. And I should mention that both of these resources to have a lot of great educator resources as well.

Because, at the end of the day, we want our kids to see STEM concepts in the world around them, not just as a class that's taught in school. We want them using the real world to explore and to just ask questions and build that sense of wonder; and, as we know, certainly this year has shown us that things change, tools change, technology changes, jobs change. The only thing that is certain is change, and so we want to build in all of these opportunities for kids to think creatively and problem solve so that, you know, they can adapt to whatever the future holds for them. A lot of times when people think of STEM they think of coding, and with that we mentioned earlier, an opportunity with code.org. But there really are a lot of resources online that are free, that are engaging and instill that creativity in kids where they can build and so it could be code.org. There are programs like Scratch, where they can code various things. They could do things in TinkerCAD if they're interested in 3D printing. And even if they don't have a 3D printer, they can still use this amazingly free program to design structures that could then be taken to a 3D printer, perhaps at their school when they come back in the fall, or just leave them as a digital file.

Other learnings that could take place this summer are, you know, family field trips. We here in Wayne County have a lot of great places that kids could go to, whether it be the Henry Ford, the DIA, as it's free for our residents; there's the Charles Wright Museum. So, we have a lot of places local. The zoo, of course, taking kids to the park; getting creative with that as well. And then, if those physical field trips aren't possible, there are a lot of virtual field trips; not the same, but it still allows your kids to travel around the world without leaving the comfort of their home. And so, even the Charles Wright Museum, if you can't go in person, they do have a virtual tour that you can take of that museum. And again, we're going to include these links in the show notes, but there… you can tour farms; there's the Google Arts and Culture that has over 1,000 virtual tours of museums and archives around the world.

And so, this is just a splattering of ideas that are out there. Hopefully, you heard a little bit of some low-tech ideas, some no tech ideas, but then some tech ideas. But at the end of the day, what we want is to get our kids in learning experiences, whatever that looks like; get them wondering, get them questioning, get them reading, and get them writing, get them doing so that we keep their brains active all summer.

Ellen Vorenkamp: Thank you so much, Judy. What a wealth of information and ideas. I think our listeners have a lot to chew on there, and a lot of different opportunities that they're going to be able to engage their students with and share with parents. Jason, I’m going to give you just one last opportunity; is there anything else that you would like to share that has come to mind as we've heard all of these wonderful opportunities from Judy?

Jason Siko: Yeah, you know, we talked about structure and we talked about what, as teachers, can we do to facilitate these types of things. And I think, as Judy mentioned, a lot of these ideas, you know… one way you could approach this as to say, “Okay let's do as much no tech as possible,” but when it comes to, you know, maybe demonstrating your knowledge or demonstrating your understanding… that's where we call on the tech. So, for example, if we are going out in nature and we're doing things, that's great. Grab your notebook, go. But when you come back, possibly sit down in front and blog about it, or create a video about it, or do these things that require technology. So, that creates a nice little demarcation of when to use tech and when not to use tech and do as much as you can in the real physical world, but then when you're reporting or, you know, constructing or deconstructing your knowledge and figuring out what you what you're trying to say and what you've learned, that's where the technology can come in. So, you're kind of getting the best of both worlds there.

The other thing, and I'll kind of end on this, is that circling back to our initial discussion about summer school and learning loss slash learning recovery is that we probably have some data about where students are struggling. And there are plenty of resources online that are standards-based or they have activities and resources that are aligned to standards. One thing that teachers could do potentially is find, you know, get the data, get the NWEA scores, get the state standardized test scores, whatever they have in their hands and say, “Okay. [to a student] You're struggling in these particular areas that aligned to these particular standards. Here are some resources; go find activities that relate to these standards that you're having trouble mastering.” And there's a lot of websites on the internet that have standards-based content: PBS Learning Media, Khan Academy, National Geographic Kids, Smithsonian, Library of Congress… and just go into these places. You go to the search bar or the search button and it'll say search by keyword or search by standard, and go find those standards and then go search for activities that relate to those standards. So that might be another opportunity as teachers: how do we help guide or scaffold for the parents for the students on how to embark on a summer learning journey, if you will? Because if we just say, “Hey!  Go out there and do this stuff and learn, learn, learn, read, read, read, write, write, write…” Some kids will do that, but a lot of kids need a bit more structure than that, and this might be one way to promote that structure.

Ellen Vorenkamp: That is an excellent point, Jason. I think the more focused and intentional and purposeful we can be about some of the summer learning, that really will hit some of those misconceptions or gaps that teachers might have identified within the students in the standards and that alignment between that getting to that level of proficiency. I think that's an excellent point. And I think you guys have shared with our educators a wealth of resources, and a wealth of information, and sites and opportunities and ideas that there's got to be something for everybody in this episode.

And we really just appreciate so much you guys taking your time and sharing your vast knowledge with us. We truly appreciate you and all that you have shared with us and what you have done for the teachers and students of Wayne County, and really the State of Michigan and wherever this podcast might be heard. So, thank you very much. We appreciate both of you helping us get to the core and being part of this Wayne RESA podcast.

Jason Siko: Thanks for having us on.