Summertime is right around the corner! Dig into some fun learning activities and challenge your students to complete INFOhio's Beach Bingo Challenge. 

COSI, Center of Science and Industry, and INFOhio have teamed up to share a summer learning STEM BINGO challenge. Share this with students and families for fun, engaging, STEM challenges and learning activities. 

There are approximately 50 weekdays when students are not in school during the summer months. What could your students learn if they spent a few minutes of each of those 50 days reading?

The school year is drawing to a close but these Teach With INFOhio blog posts can help you finish the school year strong and start the summer right. 

Back by popular demand: INFOhio Beach Bags and the virtual Camp INFOhio, offered for free to all Ohio families.

Friday's post on how to keep calm, cool, and collected during the last days of school provided an example of how to implement Camp INFOhio into your classroom during the last weeks before summer break. The goal is to keep kids engaged, learning, and interested. Another resource available at no cost from INFOhio is IWonder. This student site is a collection of websites chosen by educators. The sites are categorized by asking students questions such as "Do You Want to Learn More About Technology?" and "Do You Want Help with a Project?" Students can browse to find a topic that interests them, and drill down to find specific websites where they can learn, play, and explore. Of course, one way to achieve part of the goal set is to allow the students to do just that—browse to learn, play, and explore. Without a plan of action, however, students may not be as engaged. And without engagement, well, we all know what happens in a classroom where students are not actively invested and interested!

The classroom is packed up, with bare walls and stacked-up textbooks. Students are eager to help clean and sort, preparing for the end of the school year. The teacher frantically finds activities to keep the class busy, and when all else fails, turns to a movie, the lights turned off, the room cooler without a fluorescent glare. Tomorrow is Field Day, and the temperature is sure to be high. The next day is the class picnic, and after that, the doors close for good on this school year. 

The Summer Slide sounds like a fun piece of playground equipment, but it’s something to avoid: “Students in lower-income families who don't read over the summer lose two to three months of learning, according to the National Summer Learning Association, a Baltimore group with ties to Johns Hopkins University” (Wisconsin State Journal). To learn more about the Summer Slide, try a search for “summer slide” or “summer learning loss” in ISearch (use your school or district's INFOhio username and password if prompted).

It's spring and many educators are beginning to wonder what they can do to further their efficacy, effort, and influence in the classroom for the next school year. They will think back about this year, and ask, "How can I engage my students more?" What approach might work better for teaching this concept?" "Should I consider restructuring my reading program?" That's right—the end of the school year often means it's time for some serious professional development. "Summer is the perfect time to recharge," according this to this article from Educational Leadership about ways that being a better student will lead to being a better teacher. Often districts will have prescribed summer PD, but that doesn't mean there aren't easy options for developing your own PD plan—one that will answer your personal questions and build a better educator based on your needs and expectations. INFOhio can help with that. We like to think of it as Summer Reading—Teacher Style. It's free and all you need is time, some mindfulness, and a device with an Internet connection.