Summer School Activities / Space Ideas

A few years ago I taught a first and second grade summer school class for students with learning disabilities. The primary goal of the class was to continue working on reading and writing skills. My district typically schedules summer school for 6 weeks on a shorter school day, usually 8:30am-1:30pm.

I organized my class focusing first on literacy skills and second on the theme of space. I prioritized the organization because it is often difficult to find leveled books and appropriate theme related materials for reading practice. The most important goal was to have children reading at their instructional level, not reading a book about space.

The following was our daily schedule:

Morning Work Most days I put a skill page on the students' desks before they entered the room. The skill pages came from the free theme resources at The Learning Page. You have to register and set up an account, but there is no charge.


Shared Reading Trade books such as: Magic School Bus Lost in the Solar System, Planets by Gail Gibbons, My Book of Space. I had a few of these in my classroom library and found many more at the library.


Reading Groups The books for reading groups came from the curriculum materials the district provided.

Shared Writing Journals and two pen stories...more on two pen stories in another post- the explanation was getting very lengthy! :-)

Lunch


Recess


Math We did some of the math facts adding and subtracting with theme based materials and worksheets. We also played a lot of bingo and file folder games addressing time and money. I particularly like Coin Counting Bingo from PCI. I have found that many children with learning disabilities have difficulty telling time and counting the values of money. These are critical math skills that are used throughout life, so we addressed them every day in summer school.

Read Aloud I used two chapter books. Magic Tree House #8: Midnight on the Moon, Bailey School Kids: Mrs. Jeepers in Outer Space. I like having the students exposed to books that are longer passages.

Earn Time Those students who completed all of their work could make rockets and space shuttles with legos, play a card game: LAUNCH (a space shuttle game similar to UNO), various cut and paste crafts with space thems, play file folder games, etc. Those who did not finish their work had this time to complete classwork.