Summer Learning

Summer break was created to let students have fun and freedom. It's a time for students to relax and enjoy their youth with friends and families. However, when students come back into school they forget the material they learned last year. Some schools require summer projects so students can continue learning and obtain the knowledge. While some may believe letting students designed their projects gives them freedom with it, others may believe letting teachers design the project because the project would be based more on educational topics and have a set of guidelines to help the student.

Having the summer project teacher-designed gives the teacher the choice of educational topics for the project. Depending on the teacher, it can be on math, science, english, history, or any other subject that the student takes in school. This helps the student continue their learning from the previous year and keeps the topic school appropriate. The main point of schools doing this summer project is to further the learning of the student. While some people believe it's taking the freedom of choosing a topic, a student can chose anything which doesn't improve their learning. If a student chooses skateboarding, video games, sports, or food it defeats the purpose of the summer project. The teacher, however, can give many different topics to chose from which allows some freedom to the student. They can pick a topic that seems interesting, but also continues their learning for the school year that is coming ahead. Also, by letting teachers pick the topics that can be picked by the students, the students can teach the kids in the class about the learning they have learned. This gives other kids the opportunity to hear new educational topics and gives the teacher only to review over that unit. Having teachers base the topics more educational benefits the students, but as well as the teachers.

Another reason why the summer project should be teacher-designed is so they can create a set of guidelines to guide the student. The teacher can provide a rubric and rules to help the student understand what needs to be done for this project. For example, if the project needs to be a poster, tri-fold, or PowerPoint. Another aspect is if students can work in groups, duos, trios, or by themselves. Moreover, if the student needs to include any pictures, drawings, or symbols. Having guidelines helps the students be organized with their work and keeps them responsible of doing the work. If the student had designed this project they could've been confused and lost on what needed to be done. Students could've also forgotten about the project and not be prepared for the first day of school. With having this guideline, teachers can leave their email so the student can have access to help if needed. Furthermore, the teacher can leave websites and databases that help provide the student with resources for this project. These sets of guidelines can also included the choices of all the topics. This keeps the teacher informed of what students might do and what the teacher should prepare for on the first day of school. Overall, having a guideline created supports the student and keeps the teacher organized for the upcoming year.

Although creating the summer project teacher-designed takes the freedom of choice from the students, the teacher-design allows for the topics to be educational and for the teachers to create a set of guidelines to support the students. The summer project is to help keep students continue learning during their break. Teacher-design keeps that idea in place, while students can mess around with it. It is a teachers job to teach and provide guidance and not for the students to teach themselves and stress themselves out. Teacher-design is the right way to go for the summer project.