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Join a game of kahoot here. Kahoot! is a free game-based learning platform that makes it fun to learn – any subject, in any language, on any device, for all ages!

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Join a game of kahoot here. Kahoot! is a free game-based learning platform that makes it fun to learn – any subject, in any language, on any device, for all ages!

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ELA Final Exam 2016 Flashcards | Quizlet

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Start studying ELA Final Exam 2016. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools.

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* The origin of the traditional break is widely misunderstood, an author argues, but it serves important purposes nonetheless.

Ashley Sturgeon sat outside El Segundo High School on a hot August day, chatting with her sister and dreading the end of summer vacation.

Ashley and her sister Amber, who is starting seventh grade, have been told that the summer break is a tradition born in rural society.

But they see simpler reasons for the respite. "It's a good idea, whether you live in the city or on a farm," said Ashley, who will be in 11th grade. "Without the summer off, we might go insane."

The Sturgeons unwittingly have a better sense of the summer vacation's origins than most modern educators--or so suggests a book set to be published next year.

The book, "School's In: The History of Summer Education in American Public Schools," argues that the notion of summer vacation as an artifact of agrarian life is pure myth.

The history's author, City University of New York scholar Kenneth M. Gold, is running against a tide of public contentions to the contrary.

In recent months, school superintendents in California, New Mexico, New York, Alabama and Arkansas have cited the vacation's rural origins in scrapping what they see as an outdated break and moving to year-round calendars.

Gov. Gray Davis and members of his administration made references to the vacation's supposed agrarian origins earlier this year when they proposed to shorten it for middle-school students. In writing about extended school years, dozens of newspapers--their writers far removed from the spring planting and fall harvest seasons of the farm--routinely perpetuate the theory. Earlier this year, the paper you are now reading reported that the traditional calendar "is rooted in an agrarian lifestyle that has all but disappeared."

Gold argues, however, that summer vacation marked a conscious recognition of the value of rest, not a vestige of the farm labor cycle. As such, its misunderstood history holds lessons for modern educators in resolving questions that go beyond how to make use of July and August.

The 19th century Americans who created the modern school calendar were mostly city dwellers who wrestled with familiar issues, Gold contends. They wanted to increase attendance, prevent dropouts and provide as much schooling as possible--without breaking school budgets.

As a result, the first urban schools did not take the summer off, Gold writes. The charity system that was the forerunner of New York City's public schools operated year-round. By the 1840s, New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia all had about 11 months of school. In rural areas, school let out so students could work in the fields--but those breaks came in the spring and fall. School was in session in winter and summer.

What changed? Urbanization was one factor. City elites could afford to leave town for cooler climes. School officials, battling absenteeism, saw little advantage in opening schools on summer days or on holidays when many students wouldn't show up. Political pressures to standardize the school calendar across cities often led campuses to "the lowest common denominator"--in other words, less school.

Educational scholars also played their part. The influential 19th century psychiatrist Amariah Brigham, who closely studied children, wrote that too much schooling was contributing to a "growing tide of insanity" among the young. The poor quality of school buildings--and the heat of summer--fueled concerns about the physical health of students. Horace Mann was among those reformers who wanted to professionalize teaching. He saw the summer vacation as a good time for professional development that would further that goal.

By the turn of the century, the reformers had won. With a few exceptions, Gold writes, a September-to-June school year was the standard.

So standard that the summer break's origins were forgotten when urban crowding caused districts to begin moving to year-round schedules in the 1980s. By 1992, more than 1 million American kids were in year-round public schools. In the Los Angeles Unified School District, 224 schools now have the year-round calendar.

The theory of the summer break's agrarian origins has proved to be a handy argument: We're not adding school--we're reversing an anachronism.

That is how the Paramount Unified School District, for instance, explains its switch a few years back to year-round elementary and middle schools. "The traditional calendar was instituted decades and decades ago when it was a more agrarian society," Supt. Jay Wilbur said. "People needed summer breaks to work in the fields. We don't need that now."

Gold is a historian of education, not a theorist, but he wonders about the effect of the year-round changes. A century of summer vacations has created a culture of summer, of freedom and romance and personal growth held deeply from New York to El Segundo. That culture may be worth preserving.

"Increasing summer school may be a good educational policy for raising standardized test scores," he writes, "but is it good social policy to tamper with the season during which many families and friends forge their most enduring bonds and memories?"

Just ask the students. Without summer, they might go insane.

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A Lesson in the Value of Summer Vacation

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The origin of the traditional break is widely misunderstood, an author argues, but it serves important purposes nonetheless. Ashley Sturgeon sat outside El Segundo High School on a hot August day, chatting with her sister and dreading the end of summer vacation.

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I had to groan when I saw there's a big new push on for what's called "expanded learning time" - longer hours in school. But give kids a break. They need summer.

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Around the time 40 education groups were making the case that summer vacation is bad, my kids were learning something I never knew. You can eat stinging nettles. And it doesn't hurt (much).

Nettles are those prickly plants we called burn weed when I was growing up in the Midwest. I never imagined that if you fold the hairy leaves just so into cubes, you can pop them right in your mouth for a crunchy, and mostly sting-free, snack. They taste like spinach.

We found this out on Stuart Island, the northernmost of the San Juan Islands, where we went last week to camp. There are no towns there, no electricity even. So by modern standards, there's not much to do.

Whittling sticks, going all "Lord of the Flies" with packs of other kids, eating nettles - this is the type of stuff that can happen when school's out and there's "nothing" to do.

So I had to groan when I saw there's a big new push on for what's called "expanded learning time" - longer hours in school. A group called the National Center on Time and Learning released a report about it last week and got 40 education groups to back a bill pending in Congress.

The gist is that in the summer, kids forget what they just learned. Kids doing well tend to fall back less than kids who are behind. So the summer slide hurts everyone but is blamed especially for widening the achievement gap.

"The conventional school calendar of 180 six-and-a-half hour days ... is simply inadequate to provide students, particularly those living in poverty, with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in the 21st century global economy," the report says.

Their solution: At least 300 hours more schooling each year (currently there are about 1,100 hours). It could come in much longer days. Six-day weeks. Or year-round schooling - meaning the end of summer vacation.

Or how about all of the above, suggested the federal education secretary, Arne Duncan, to high-schoolers last year.

"I think schools should be open six, seven days a week, 11, 12 months a year," he said, adding: "Go ahead and boo me."

OK. Booo!

How about kids will go to school six, seven days a week when Congress agrees to work more than four.

Seriously, it's probably true that summer widens the achievement gap. But wouldn't the answer to that be summertime help for those who need it?

Instead, the proposed bill in Congress, called the Time for Innovation Matters in Education Act of 2011, would give grants to schools that extend the year by at least 300 hours "for all students in all grade levels at the school."

I'm all for making school more demanding. Kids who are struggling also deserve tutors, and after-school or year-round help (it is a local embarrassment that Seattle cut its summer catch-up classes this year).

But give kids a break. They need summer. The historian Ken Gold, in his book "School's In: The History of Summer Education in American Public Schools," debunks the idea that we got summers off only to placate big industry or agriculture. The real reason so many districts, rural and urban, created the break in the 19th century was a belief that "too much schooling impaired a child's and a teacher's health."

That sounds about right to me. When school ended two weeks ago, I noticed my kids seemed almost instantly healthier and more engaged with what was going on around them. Less weary.

Their schools have been great. But there's no getting around that schools are institutions. Even the best can exact a certain toll on the soul.

When the kids hit that island after 10 months of regulated learning, they scattered like dandelion seeds. They were free.

Doesn't that value, of freedom, count anymore? Or is it all now about prepping for the 21st-century global economy.

I know, not everyone can go to the San Juans. But we could try to spread summer's spirit, instead of giving up on it.

Give more kids a chance to run free. It may not be "expanded learning time." It can expand you just the same.

Until then, if they want to take away this family's summer vacation, they'll have to pry it from our nettle-stung fingers.
Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.

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Vacation just as important as school year

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I had to groan when I saw there's a big new push on for what's called "expanded learning time" - longer hours in school. But give kids a break. They need summer. Share story Around the time 40 education groups were making the case that summer vacation is bad, my kids were learning something I never knew.

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My second-grade daughter went to school the other day and made potions in her Harry Potter class. My son's class of fourth- and fifth-graders wrote movie scripts, filmed them and learned how to edit them on the computer.

At their Alexandria public school, my kids have learned how to sail, designed entire cities in cardboard, built skyscrapers with toothpicks and marshmallows, performed in a musical and built and set off rockets on the front lawn. They've created passports and had them stamped after "visiting" countries around the world. They've learned CPR, calligraphy, Japanese, rollerblading and how to make art like Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock. My daughter was in kindergarten when she came home bubbling about Picasso's Rose period. In Spanish.

My children attend a year-round school. And these are the kinds of hands-on, big-project classes that are taught during "intersessions," or short breaks throughout the year that take the place of the long, lazy, Huck Finn summers that most Americans have come to think of as an inalienable right of childhood.

Far from grousing about missing out on the months-long summer break that will start in a few weeks, my kids love year-round school. My daughter had no idea that she was learning chemistry when her Harry Potter class made butter beer and chocolate frogs. My son developed a much better grasp of plot and character when he had to create both on film. I love their so-called modified calendar, too. And so, most of all, do the lower-income parents who've watched their kids thrive on it.

And now, it could be coming your way.

Both President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have called the traditional school day and school year outdated and inadequate for the demands of 21st-century life. Students in countries that routinely outscore the United States on international tests go to school for as many as 230 days each year, 50 more than kids typically attend here. "Go ahead and boo me," Duncan said in April to Denver students. "I think schools should be open six, seven days a week, eleven, twelve months a year."

Obama's recently passed $100 billion stimulus plan for education includes innovation grants and $5 billion for incentives to transform a public education system that produces too many high-school dropouts and too many failing urban schools. And the administration has made clear that it's ready to give high priority to proposals to extend the school day and year.

Though different schools and districts have different schedules, our modified calendar works like this: The first day back to school typically falls in the first week of August. The children attend regular classes for nine weeks. Then they have a two-week break, or intersession, in October, when they can choose either to attend fun, creative classes or to go on vacation. Then they have nine more weeks of school, winter break, and then a week of intersession in January. Nine more weeks of school, then a two-week intersession that bumps up against spring break. The school year ends in June, at the same time as schools on the traditional calendar. But summer break lasts five or six weeks, rather than the traditional 10.

If students choose to pursue the intersession classes, by the time they've gone from kindergarten through fifth grade, they'll have attended what amounts to an additional year of school. And this isn't just the same test-prep, paper-and-pencil, drill-and-kill stuff that so much public education has become. Done right, intersessions are a time to open minds and discover passions. At our school, students have learned karate, ballet, photography, cooking and a host of other things. Children needing extra help are invited to attend half-day remedial classes. But these are remedial classes with a twist. Like Math You Can Eat. My son learned fractions using brownies. Students learning English hone language skills in Books Come Alive by reading such classic stories as Goldilocks, writing their own scripts and acting them out.

Still, when Mount Vernon Community School first considered the idea of going to a modified calendar a few years ago, it was a battle royale. Some middle-class parents argued that it was important for children to lie on their backs and watch the clouds for hours over a long summer break. That a year-round calendar was just another way to institutionalize our kids in the often dull busy-work of school.

I worried, too. But honestly, my children weren't idling their summer days away like ol' Huck on the Mississippi. A 10-week summer meant that my husband and I staggered our work schedules, shoved our kids in camps, set up carpools, cobbled together babysitters and imposed on neighbors and friends whenever one piece of our elaborately jury-rigged schedule fell apart. And because 71 percent of women with children under 18 work outside the home, I would imagine that most families experience summer much the same way.

But many middle-class parents left our school rather than lose a long summer. The ones who stayed, albeit uneasily at first, were in for a pleasant surprise. We found that intersession classes gave our children the kind of engaging school experience we had always wanted for them. The lower-income and immigrant parents, who had voted overwhelmingly to support the modified calendar, were convinced from the start that it would help their children academically and give them opportunities they could never provide. One of the most popular intersession classes recently taught children how to swim.

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Brigid Schulte -- The Case for Year-Round School

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My second-grade daughter went to school the other day and made potions in her Harry Potter class. My son's class of fourth- and fifth-graders wrote movie scripts, filmed them and learned how to edit them on the computer.

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THE American ideal of lazy summers filled with fun has an unintended consequence: If students are not engaged in learning over the summer, they lose skills in math and reading. Summers off are one of the most important, yet least acknowledged, causes of underachievement in our schools.

Decades of research confirm that summer learning loss is real. According to a report released last month by the RAND Corporation, the average summer learning loss in math and reading for American students amounts to one month per year. More troubling is that it disproportionately affects low-income students: they lose two months of reading skills, while their higher-income peers - whose parents can send them to enriching camps, take them on educational vacations and surround them with books during the summer - make slight gains. A study from Johns Hopkins University of students in Baltimore found that about two-thirds of the achievement gap between lower- and higher-income ninth graders could be explained by summer learning loss during the elementary school years.

This learning loss is cumulative, summer after summer. It has a tremendous impact on students' success, including high school completion, post-secondary education and work force preparedness.

As a result, no matter how effective other school reforms are, our traditional 180-day school calendar creates an incredibly inefficient system of learning. We cannot afford to spend nearly 10 months of every year devoting enormous amounts of intellect, energy and money to promoting student learning and achievement, and then walk away from that investment every summer.

This waste is preventable. According to the RAND report, good summer programs with individualized instruction, parental involvement and small classes can keep children from falling behind and reduce the achievement gap.

Yet many districts, including New York City, have not fully embraced the summer's potential. In New York, around 34,000 third through eighth graders are required to take summer school classes this year in order to be promoted to the next grade. The classes typically last only half the day, leaving many on their own for the afternoon. And since such classes are primarily remedial, they often carry a stigma that can affect struggling students and their parents.

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THE American ideal of lazy summers filled with fun has an unintended consequence: If students are not engaged in learning over the summer, they lose skills in math and reading. Summers off are one of the most important, yet least acknowledged, causes of underachievement in our schools.