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Home > Teaching Resources > Archived Teaching Tips Faculty ResourcesTeaching ResourcesTeaching Tips | Week 5: Surviving & Thriving in Summer School Summer goes fast--it's technically Week 5 already--and it's easy to get overwhelmed or fall behind. Some faculty members feel that the short semester is a short-changed version of the longer one. That doesn't need to be the case! Research has shown no significant differences in learning between shorter accelerated courses and traditional longer ones. (Wlodkowski 2003) In addition, students who take summer courses are often more motivated because they're trying to get ahead or taking classes for personal enrichment. Here are some strategies to deal with the busy-ness and make the semester an enjoyable experience for growth & learning for both you and your students: Streamline. Look for activities you normally do in your classes that might not be as efficient in a summer semester and reconsider them: do they support your course outcomes? Are they necessary in the summer? What could you do in its place that might help students build towards their bigger final projects? Can any project do double-duty and serve two outcomes? Finally, prioritize skill over volume: Are 20 thumbnails enough instead of the usual 50? Foreground the meta-skills necessary for success. Think back to an intensive summer program you've participated in-either as a teacher or a student. What were the high & low lights? What strategies did you employ to work through that busy time? Acknowledge and coach your students on the time management and organizational skills necessary to succeed in summer school. Compare this intensive course to a professional "crunch time" you've experienced and talk about how you got through it. Encourage students to seek out help from ARC on time and stress management & project planning. Treat the summer session as an experiment. Try out a new lesson, activity, or assignment that you haven't before. The feedback from the students is more immediate and you can try something that you might not feel free to try during the school year. Plan ahead but stay flexible. Because the turnaround time is so quick and because summer semester students are generally so motivated, you'll need to plan a session or two ahead. This enables you to pull activities from other lesson plans if you blitz through an activity with time to spare. Check in more often. Since students won't have as much time between sessions to forget key concepts, you might not need to review as much, but you may need to do more comprehension checks to see if everyone's keeping up with the pace. Try some learning snapshots such as The Muddiest Point and Translating for a Second Grader to see what areas might need re-teaching.
Achieving Success in Your Summer Class Time Management Tips for Students Academic Support Referral Form |
