10 Ways to Plan for a High-Impact Summer School

For many students, summer school isn’t just extra time. It’s a second chance to start the school year strong. It’s an opportunity to close gaps, rebuild confidence, and return in the fall ready for grade-level work.

Why is summer school important?

For students in need of remediation, summer school can make the difference between finally feeling confident at school and disengaging for good. Summer school’s flexibility allows teachers to work with small, targeted groups of students, revisit and strengthen foundational skills, and provide learners with 1:1 support. While it’s only a few weeks, a well-designed summer school program can give students a much-needed opportunity to accelerate their learning, gain some momentum, and find confidence.

Educator Precious Townsend says of summer school,

“Summer school creates a powerful opportunity for growth on both sides of the classroom. For teachers, it is a season to refine instructional skills, gain additional practice, experiment with new strategies, and build meaningful professional networks, often beyond their home schools. For students, it offers continued academic exposure, reinforced mastery of standards, individualized support, new friendships, and the confidence that comes from consistent practice and progress. Summer learning is not just about catching up. It is about strengthening foundations, expanding potential, and building community.”

How can educators ensure summer school has a big impact on students?

As you consider a structure, pedagogical approach, and curriculum or tools for your program, here are a few strategies that will ensure your attending students make maximum gains during the summer:

#1: Get to Know Your Learners

Students in summer school have varied levels of readiness, motivation, and, of course, proficiency. If you don’t already know your students, it’s important to understand both their academic needs and their personal interests and preferences.

For a quick get-to-know-you activity, try these free printable worksheets for elementary school and middle school.

#2: Leverage Flexible Structures to Meet Diverse Needs

Effective summer school programs are designed with flexibility at the forefront. Having flexible program structures, such as pace, models, and schedules, can help ensure that all learners have access to meaningful instruction that leads to progress. Varied instructional formats, adaptable pacing, and 1:1 adaptive tools will help to meet the needs of diverse learners.

Our summer school programs include both teacher-led options and individualized learning, offering a variety of formats, including small groups, mini-lessons, and adaptive technology. Leveraging a mix of these formats throughout the summer will keep students engaged while addressing all their needs.

#3: Drive with Data to Target Gaps Efficiently

Data plays a big role in shaping a successful summer school. Data enables educators to focus time and resources where they will make the greatest impact. Teachers should have access to high-quality, up-to-date student performance data that is easy to interpret and enables them to address specific learning gaps for individual students each day.

Student data can come from 1:1 tech-driven programs or from teacher-led programs. Personalized literacy platforms can provide real-time insights into Lexile growth and comprehension trends. For example, *Achieve3000 Literacy, a personalized tool that meets students at their Lexile level, provides teachers with rich data on student reading progress via a digital dashboard. [SRA Reading Success](https://mhk12.us/46tXQ3L)*, on the other hand, is a targeted intervention program where teachers introduce skills and gather real-time data through observation during guided practice. Both sources of data are valuable for informing instruction.

#4: Set Clear Goals to Put Success Within Reach

Clear, well-defined goals will set your students up for summer school success. Establishing specific objectives for students helps align instruction and set expectations. Involve students in the goal-setting process by giving them access to their own performance data and talking to them about where they feel they need the most support.

Use this printable worksheet or this poster for a simple goal-setting template.

#5: Celebrate Wins (Even the Smallest Ones!) to Motivate Learners

Involve students in tracking progress toward their goals and take the time to celebrate their progress. Even the smallest breakthroughs are worth celebrating. Students need to feel how their efforts are translating to progress to stay engaged, keep up the momentum, and carry some confidence into the next school year.

#6: Offer Students Choice for Engagement and Empowerment

When possible, create opportunities for students to make choices about what or how they learn. For most students, school isn’t the first place they would choose to spend their summer, so offering them some agency can help them reclaim a bit of ownership over their time and boost engagement.

But offering students choice doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice academic progress. Adaptive, 1:1 math tools like *ALEKS and [ALEKS Adventure](https://mhk12.us/40tND3N) allow students to choose activities that address their individual learning gaps. Allowing students to move at their own pace can be an empowering form of control, too. [SRA Reading Laboratory](https://mhk12.us/4kSuNg9)* provides self-paced, leveled reading passages that help students build comprehension, vocabulary, and fluency at their own speed.

#7: Make the Most of Limited Time with Short, Focused Lessons

Holding students’ attention can be quite the challenge during the school year, let alone during the summer months! Short, engaging lessons that focus on targeted skills will make the most of every moment without burning out your students.

For example, *SRA Reading Success *lessons are brisk, teacher-directed, and take as little as fifteen minutes.

#8: Use AI for Precise, Personalized Instruction

AI-powered technology can help quickly pinpoint students’ learning gaps and efficiently deliver targeted instruction. Programs using this technology are perfect for summer school, because they focus on exactly what a student needs, address those skills until students reach mastery, and provide the teacher with detailed insights into progress.

*ALEKS Adventure*, our AI-powered adaptive math tool for K-5, was also intentionally designed to engage and delight young learners. With a customizable avatar, personalized rewards, and built-in game breaks, students will master important skills while having fun.

#9: Support Multilingual Learners with Instruction Aligned to the Science of Reading

Summer school is a great opportunity for multilingual learners (MLLs) to accelerate English language development. It’s important to offer them targeted support aligned with the science of reading and that addresses their unique needs while honoring their strengths.

All Sorts®, our K–5 English language course, empowers multilingual learners to find their voice in English. Covering the four domains of language acquisition (reading, writing, listening, and speaking), every All Sorts unit includes vocabulary, grammar, and integrated learning lessons in science, math, or social studies.

#10: Have Fun!

Summer school isn’t just about progress and outcomes. Your students (and you!) deserve to have some fun at summer school, too. Fun can be part of the instruction: get to know your students and work their interests into instruction or readings, gamify instruction with resources like Kahoot!, or simply take class outside. Here’s a school-wide suggestion from educator Eliana Belle:

“It’s fun to have a theme! My school has done STEAM Summer Camp as a theme, as well as Summer School Olympics when it fell during Olympics season.”

When summer school is intentional, focused, and engaging, even a few weeks can create lasting momentum. With the right structure and tools, students don’t just catch up — they move forward with confidence.

To explore our intervention and supplemental summer school solutions, see:

[embed]Summer School Curriculum for K-12 Math & ELA | McGraw Hill Find a summer school math or ELA program that provides the tailored focus teachers and students need for the short…www.mheducation.com

For more summer school ideas, read:

[embed]Tips for Teaching in the Summer Whether you’re teaching summer school in your own district, running a small tutoring business over Zoom, teaching other…medium.com