[Sample Schedules] Four Ways to Organize Your In-Person or Virtual Summer Learning Program with Exact Path

In our recent live webinar, Summer Acceleration and Enrichment with Exact Path, Educational Programs Consultants Angela Bilyeu and Daryl Vavrichek explored successful strategies and considerations for summer school planning using our K–12 diagnostic-driven, direct-instruction program Exact Path to mitigate gaps and accelerate learning. As part of that conversation, they also unpacked several example weekly plans for successful implementation borrowed from real schools and districts they work with every day. Let’s explore two in-person options, as well as two virtual options, that you can take with you to your very own summer school program.

In-Person Half-Day Summer School

In this first plan, you’ll notice that we’re operating within a half-day model for a program Mondays through Thursdays. For both half-day and full-day summer in-school programs, start by considering ways to include meals—both breakfast and lunch whenever possible or a midmorning or afternoon snack. Not only will this meet students’ basic needs, but also there’s an additional level of buy-in from parents and caregivers when food is provided.

With an in-class model, we recommend committing significant time to small-group instruction and collaborative practice to enrich the learning experience. In this example station-rotation setup, Exact Path data reporting is a great tool first to help determine who should be in what group and then to discern what focus skills to prioritize. When students work on individual activities, Exact Path learning paths ensure that all students get just what they need, and during synchronous, teacher-led instruction time, skills-aligned Lesson Ideas and teacher resources support simplified lesson planning.

In-Person Full-Day Summer School

If your in-school summer learning program allows for a longer class day, particularly if you’re supporting older learners, the structure might look a little different. In this example plan, students alternate between synchronous, teacher-led instruction and asynchronous, mastery-based learning in Exact Path to accelerate growth and mitigate gaps.

In this plan, you’ll notice that there’s even more intentional time carved out to address an essential element to the whole learner by way of focusing on social-emotional wellbeing. Never before has it been as critical that educators are checking in with students and helping them to process the trauma that they’ve experienced following a severely disrupted year of learning.

Virtual Summer School, Largely Asynchronous

Although an on-site summer school program requires strict mapping of time, a virtual implementation offers significant flexibility. In this plan, each day is devoted to a different activity, but learners have agency over when and how to complete their work outside of short stints of virtual synchronous instruction.

Within this implementation model, educators can leverage Current Activities and Knowledge Map data views inside of Exact Path to pinpoint exactly what students are currently working on and where that progress fits into a larger picture of skill deficits and mastery along our complete K–12 learning progression. On either end of those check-ins, educators can engage students in goal setting around skill mastery and Trophies earned to ensure success, but it’s up to each student to determine the amount of time that level of engagement will require.

Virtual Summer School, Balanced Synchronous and Asynchronous Learning

If the flexibility of the previous sample schedule doesn’t offer the level of direct involvement you were hoping to set up, you might also consider a program for Mondays through Fridays with intentional daily opportunities for students to directly connect with their teacher around specific needs as they strive to meet specific skill mastery goals that align to the gaps in learning that they have to close.

Planning the structure of your summer program might feel like solving a 500-piece puzzle, but with these sample schedules to get you started, we hope that you feel like you have all the edges already in place and every piece turned over so that you’re that much closer to getting that perfect view of the completed picture.

Looking for even more Exact Path summer learning guidance? Check out 4 Tips to Keep Students Learning This Summer with Exact Path, as well as our accompanying editable summer learning parent letter in English or Spanish!