May 14, 2025 12:56 pm
Teaching summer school? These three practical tips will help you plan efficiently, support your students, and still make time to enjoy your summer break.
It’s that time of year again — when teachers and students alike are starting to feel the exciting pull of summer break. But you may not share that feeling if you’re teaching summer school this year.
Taking time to plan now will help make sure things run smoothly and have you sitting by the pool with a good book in no time.
Before you put “summer school lesson plans” into your favorite search engine and embark down the rabbit hole of downloadable worksheets that almost fit your needs (with a few easy tweaks that end up taking hours of your time), pause for a moment. Consider starting with the curriculum you use for daily instruction. You already know it’s aligned to your standards, plus both you and your students are familiar with it.
If you have a supplemental program that you haven’t used as much this year, that’s another great place to look for summer inspiration. While you and your students know how the program works, it will feel new and fresh for summer if it wasn’t used for daily instruction throughout the year.
Tip: Check for a shortened scope and sequence or abbreviated unit plans — these are often perfect for summer school. Imagine Math even has summer pathways designed to prepare students for the next grade level.
Summer school is typically 4–6 weeks long, which is shorter than the typical grading period during the school year. Depending on what grade level you’re teaching, you may be required to get through a certain amount of material by the end of the summer term. This can result in feeling pressured to cram in as much instruction as possible.
There are ways to cover the most important (and required) standards without overwhelming yourself and your students. If you’re following a shortened scope and sequence (from tip #1), great. If not, choose the standards most important for your students — maybe one per week of instruction — and focus only on those.
Tip: Establish a simple routine that is the same each day to maximize your class time.
Students aren’t often itching to go to summer school when they could be playing with friends or relaxing at home. For that reason, taking steps to make learning fun can go a long way. I know this seems to go against tips 1 and 2, but there are ways to add fun without adding work.
Consider taking a page from the summer camp book and having a theme for each week. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. An ocean theme could mean the text you’re focusing on is loosely related to the ocean or the science lab is related to water properties.
Going back to tip #2, add a daily or weekly time slot for a game of some kind. The game can change each day or week, or you can even use something like Kahoot or bingo to serve as an exit ticket (formative assessment and fun all at once!).
Tip: No time to add themes or create games? No worries. See if you can do part of your lesson outside and let students enjoy the summer weather while reading or working independently.
With a little thoughtful planning, summer school can be both manageable and meaningful. Stick to what works, keep it simple, and don’t forget to have a little fun along the way — you’ve earned it.