Summer Slowdown; How Students And Teachers Can Keep Their Brain Power Over Summer

With summer around the corner, students are found throwing caution to the wind, when it comes down to their IQ. With two months of sweet freedom students can lose up to 20 IQ points. Which is enough to separate the average brain from Einstein’s. Losing IQ points is not a definite loss, for there are things that a student can do to keep their brain in top shape, to compete with the great minds of the world.

When students think about summer they generally think about laying out in the hot sun and hanging out with friends, but the importance of reading a book or even doing a few math problems throughout the summer not only will your brain be happy with you, but teachers will rejoice at the fact that they don’t have to reteach you everything you were supposed to learn last year.

To keep up your smarts over the summer it is very important to drink plenty of fluids, eat healthy meals and to not lay out in the sun for hours on end. According to research by Professor Siegfried Lehrl of Germany’s University of Erlangen laying unhealthy habits can cause your IQ to go down 2.5-5 points a day. Exercise is prime to a healthy mind, and actually can help you retain information 10 percent shown by a study done by Dr. Guillen Fernandez. Laying out is not the best option, so grab a book, or go for a walk. Just make sure to get out of the house.

To keep your brain in shape there are a few brain exercises you can do including: Play chess-Chess is a strategic game that causes your brain to process the information in front of you and to think several steps ahead, Meditating- Studies show that meditating for 20 minutes a day can improve efficiency, Learn a new language- learning a new language helps creates new pathways in your brain, which is very important.

Teachers have been known for assigning a summer reading that is usually due a week or two after school starts back up in august, but students are found less likely to do that homework and save it for the last minute. Highland Student Mara Murphy waits until the last two weeks of summer to do her summer homework.
“I(Mara) don’t want to do it(the homework) during summer, because i just want to enjoy summer” Murphy says

Some teachers have already assigned their summer homework. Including Ap English Language and Composition. This list includes reading a few books and memorizing advanced vocabulary that is important for their class curriculum.

This year may be different, because in the salt Lake District it is now seen as against the rules to assign homework over the summer, meaning no more summer reading, no more math packets, a perfectly wrong environment to help students retain the information they worked so hard to learn over the past year. Although this rule has been brought up it is seemed to not be enforced, for on the website you can still find information for summer homework for the incoming freshman, and the upcoming ib juniors are unaware of the new rule and have already began working on their summer homework. Despite the disbelief summer homework actually helps students.

A test a student may have passed with flying colors in the beginning of summer could fail the same test. Teachers hope students will make an extra effort to keep their brain power up over the summer.