How to Smoothly Transition Your Students Out from Summer Vacation

Students are excited about returning to school after a long and sometimes uneventful summer. Though they walk about the campus with energy in their step from day one, this energy is more likely to be released on non-academic matters. Talking, for example, is incredibly difficult for a classroom teacher to get students to do the first week of school. Students are nervous, distracted by the unfamiliar environment they are in, and afraid to take risks to avoid an embarrassing situation in front of new peers. Meanwhile, outside of the classroom setting, during breaks and lunch, they are chatter boxes.

Socializing, it seems, is immune to the summer doldrums. If you want to smoothly transition your students from being on summer mode, a relaxed state where mental energy use is secondary to either physical or quotidian energy, your best bet as a teacher is to consider doing the following suggestions:

1. Progressively raise the focus of your lessons. What this means is that you want to be as general as possible at the beginning and slowly shift the learning toward the deeper layers. Students aren’t ready mentally on week one or two to tackle thinking challenges at the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning (e.g. analyzing, evaluating, and creating). For many of them, there has been a tremendous loss of learning and skill-set from the previous school year.


2. Get them up. Be mindful of the fact that students have not been forced to sit for hours during the summer months. They have been able to get up and move at will. Preparing lessons for week one and two that involve copious note-taking is a surefire way of getting your students to begin presenting your teaching. Instead plan activities that involve group work and collaboration, and encourage them to stand. Setting up stations around your room will force students to walk about the classroom.

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