Seamless Summer Tutoring
Summer tutoring can be productive and fun.
Keep those learning gears turning—even in flip-flops!
Why Summer Tutoring Can Be a Game-Changer for Your Child
As the school year winds down, many students are eager to swap backpacks for beach towels. While a break is healthy and necessary, summer can also be the perfect time to strengthen academic skills through tutoring. Instead of letting hard-earned knowledge and skill development fade, summer tutoring helps students stay sharp, build confidence, and even get ahead—without interfering with the school-year pace.
The Summer Slide Is Real
According to research from the National Summer Learning Association, students can lose up to two months of skills over the summer. This phenomenon—the "summer slide"—can accumulate over the years, contributing to wider achievement gaps.
This setback, combined with academic losses during Covid, is keeping students from reaching their potential.
According to Dr. Harris Cooper, a leading expert on summer learning loss, students can lose so much progress over the summer that it takes 4 to 6 weeks just to get back to where they were. That’s valuable time your child could spend feeling confident, exploring new ideas, and building on what they already know.
Tutoring students over the summer brings me immense satisfaction, because the support I provide makes a lasting difference in their future confidence and success.
Your Child Can Still Unplug and Recharge!
Here’s the good news: your child can still take a well-deserved break—even a full month or six weeks—to relax, recharge, and just be a kid. While taking a break from learning is healthy and well-deserved, too long of a pause can make it harder for students to jump back in and stay on track. With just a little learning woven into the rest of the summer, they can keep their skills sharp.
Summer is a GREAT time to learn.
Summer offers plenty of flexibility to dive into areas of interest and passion, creating opportunities for learning in creative and engaging ways.
What Is Precision Tutoring?
Precision tutoring is an effective educational approach that targets a specific area of weakness or a particular skill set that a student may be struggling with. Rather than taking a broad, generalized approach, precision tutoring focuses entirely on helping the student improve in one particular aspect of their learning. This method allows for the identification of specific gaps or challenges a student is facing and creates an individualized plan to address those areas in a focused, efficient way. Progress can be made in even a few sessions as long as there is a solid plan in place for applying what they learned to their future studies.
Precision tutoring can be made fun by incorporating interactive games, hands-on activities, and real-life examples that turn learning into an engaging challenge, making the process feel like an exciting adventure in skill-building.
How Precision Tutoring Works:
Pinpointing the Struggle: The first step in precision tutoring is to assess exactly where the student is having difficulty. Whether it's a struggle with reading comprehension, executive functioning, or writing skills, the tutor focuses on the specific gap in knowledge or skill.
Targeted Practice: After identifying the specific problem area, the tutor tailors lessons and activities to address the student’s needs. My sessions provide plenty of opportunities to practice that specific skill, with support, tips, strategies and feedback along the way. This ensures that the student builds confidence and competence in the targeted area.
Increased Efficiency: Because precision tutoring focuses on just one specific area, it often allows for quicker progress. The student’s time is spent entirely on mastering the skill they are struggling with, instead of covering broad content. This focused attention helps prevent frustration and burnout, as students are not overwhelmed with multiple concepts at once.
Building Confidence: When a student sees noticeable improvement in one specific area, it can build their overall academic confidence. Mastery in one skill, such as improving reading fluency, encourages the student to apply that sense of achievement to other areas of learning. This boosts their motivation and enthusiasm for learning.
Long-Term Impact: By fine-tuning their abilities in a particular area, the student doesn’t just improve temporarily; the underlying skills become more solidified in the student’s learning foundation. Over time, as students improve their precision in certain skills, they will find that other subjects or skills may start to improve as well, as the techniques learned can be applied across disciplines. I always wrap up summer tutoring helping my clients make a solid plan for implementation once the school year starts.
In short, precision tutoring allows a student to build mastery in areas they are struggling with, leading to greater academic success, improved self-esteem, and a stronger overall understanding of the subject. The key to its success is its singular focus, which ensures that no time is wasted and that the student receives personalized instruction that meets their exact needs.
Make learning a part of summer fun – celebrate growth, curiosity, and discovery all year long!
What Is High-Dosage Tutoring?
One highly effective model of tutoring is called high-dosage tutoring—a structured, consistent approach that involves multiple sessions each week with the same tutor. Research from Brown University’s Annenberg Institute shows that high-dosage tutoring can produce learning gains equivalent to an extra year of schooling.
This type of tutoring works best when tailored to the individual child and focused on specific skill gaps or academic goals. The key to my work is consistency and relationship-building, which leads to increased motivation and better academic outcomes.
Making Summer Tutoring Seamless
Worried about overwhelming your child? Don’t be. Summer tutoring doesn’t have to mean hours of worksheets at the kitchen table. In fact, I highly encourage that you integrate tutoring into a balanced and engaging summer routine. Here are some tips:
Keep it brief, but regular: One or two sessions per week are enough to maintain and build skills.
Build it into your summer schedule: Treat tutoring like swim lessons or sports practice. It becomes part of the day’s rhythm.
Use it to support interests: If your child loves animals, pick reading materials about wildlife. If they’re into video games, put game writing into the mix.
Pair tutoring with enrichment: Combine tutoring with camp activities, trips, art projects, or outdoor learning to keep things exciting.
Investing in Long-Term Success
Summer tutoring is more than a short-term academic fix—it’s an investment in your child’s confidence and long-term achievement. With personalized attention and a low-stress schedule, your child can close learning gaps, explore new topics, and head into the fall semester with a stronger foundation.
As the saying goes, “Success is the sum of small efforts repeated day in and day out.” Summer tutoring is one of those small, consistent steps that can lead to big results. Your child can have a fun summer and learn at the same time. The best of both worlds!
About Kathleen
Kathleen Young, Founder of Aurora Lights Coaching, is an Academic Coach. She is also an educational specialist at a nonprofit dedicated to promoting executive function in schools. Kathleen loves helping students tap into their strengths and find a purposeful energy that moves them forward.
Kathleen’s summer includes work with students, fun times with family and friends, and adventures with her spunky dog, Norman!