Extended School Year (ESY), aka summer school, can be extremely beneficial for students with special needs. It allows them to continue to follow a daily routine and prevents them from the dreaded “summer slide”. Here are some tips for what content teachers can cover in ESY, as well as how to collect data on student progress.
Image from myprivateprofessor.com
Review routines and procedures
In my opinion, the best way to start off ESY, especially if you are starting with a new class or have any new students, is to review school rules, procedures, and expectations. Typically, students attending ESY will have at least a week or two off after the regular school year ends. The first few days/the first week is a great time to review daily expectations for students.
This review doesn’t have to be boring, especially if you have the same students that you had all year. There are games you can play, such as this fun review game that is jeopardy style. For younger students, using social stories, like this one from SSE, can also be an engaging way to review expectations. You can also have students play file folder games to practice sequencing when it comes to following school rules.
It’s also a great idea to go over class and individual schedules for students so they have an idea of what to expect during the day. Some ESY programs are half days, some are full days, and it can look different from the regular school year. Schedules like this one from SSE can limit uncertainty for students.
Review academic material from the school year and do fun activities
ESY is mainly for students to not regress on gains they made during the school year. Personally, I do not teach any new content during ESY and instead use it as a time to review. Again, this does not have to be boring. I try to make it as engaging as possible for my students, since I know they would rather not be at school while other kids are off for the summer.
For the past three summers, I have based my ESY lesson planning off of the “national days”. Every day of the year is a national day for something, and during the summer, I try to base the day’s activities off of a fun national day. For example, August 6th is national root beer float day. On that day, we make root beer floats and do this fun states of matter activity to go along with it. It can also be as basic as having students work on a snake themed skip counting paper in math for national snake day. For national gummy worm day, we do an activity where students measure gummy worms before and after they are stretched and find the difference. You can find a list of the national days on the National Today website.
Focus on IEP goals and monitor progress
ESY is the perfect time to focus on IEP goals and make sure students have progress monitoring completed for the upcoming school year. Students can work in goal bins, which are bins (or folders, binders, etc.) that have ready to go activities that target their goal. I set aside about 20-25 minutes a day during ESY called “goal time” where students can work from their bins. You can read more about how to set up goal bins in this SSE blog post.
I prefer digital paperwork vs. physical copies, so if you’re like me, this IEP data tracking google slides form is a great way to house all of your students and their goals in one place. If students have a goal that needs to be monitored weekly, I will pull them every Friday to give them a quick assessment and mark their progress here. I do the same thing for bi-weekly, monthly, and quarterly goals. If you prefer paper copies, you could always print a physical copy of this tracking form, or use something like this to keep in a binder for each student.
ESY doesn’t need to be stressful for students or teachers! It can be a time to really get to know your students, do activities that you may not have had time for during the regular school year, review expectations, and monitor progress. Doing these things well will help ensure that students keep growing academically and socially.
