What is 'The Summer Classroom' and why do we have it?
Our Summer Classrom is a set of preparative online lessons for our students to work through over the summer break. We established this initiative originally in part to combat the learning loss caused by the national lockdown over the course of the coronavirus pandemic, but it has now become an established part of the support we provide for students to combat the well-documented learning loss that occurs over the summer. The lessons are carefully curated by teachers after reviewing our students' progress throughout the curriculum over the course of the academic year, and are chosen to support students retrieve and cement knowledge key to the curriculum that students will be taught in the coming academic year.
Each lesson includes an introduction quiz with answers and the opportunity for students to review understanding; a video of a teacher teaching the topic (which students can pause and replay if they need to); an activity for students to practice what they have learned with solutions to allow them to review their own learning; and an exit quiz to help students check on their progress.
We check our students' confidence and security in the Summer Classroom areas on their return in September to make sure that the curriculum we have planned to teach our students — and the order of what we plan to teach — is appropriate.