Hands-on summer school lessons hone math, reading skills

Published 9:01 am Monday, June 22, 2026

QUINCY —Heather Humphrey told a story that ended in a math problem for Tanner Dietrich and Charles Hastings.

The incoming second graders used a number line — one of the tools available — to figure out if Holly made 15 bowls of popcorn and five were red, how many were blue.

The answer, they soon determined, was 10.

It’s a typical exercise in Humphrey’s classroom, part of Quincy Public School’s Summer Academy targeting math and reading skills in kindergarten through fifth-grade students.

“There’s a lot of learning going on,” Summer Academy Teacher Leader Jessie Huckey said. “We’re not only looking at how much level-wise they’ve grown, but skills. How has fluency been, comprehension.”

Two classrooms in each grade level, with at least two teachers, provide small group, whole group, partner and individualized instruction in reading and math

While Humphrey works on story problems, teacher Jaelyn Ehrhardt focuses on other skills with another group of students – all without the use of a computer.

“It’s all been hands-on, games manipulatives for both math and reading,” Humphrey said. “They’ve had to learn how to to work together, collaborate, learn how to problem solve. I think they like it, but one kid keeps asking when we get the laptop out.”

Charles and Tanner say summer school is fun, especially the games in the classroom.

Charles prefers the Double Dash Game where students roll a die, then double the number rolled to move across a gameboard while Tanner likes best “blah, blah, blah” where the punctuation at the end of a string of words changes the inflection when reading.

“We really hit what their needs are,” Humphrey said. “We keep talking about learning is fun and growing our brain. They’re buying into that.”

Author studies — focused on Mo Willems for two weeks, then Kevin Henkes this week — look at character and setting while reading, and another fun feature is a “retelling station” stocked with paper puppets.

“Watching them sit there and retell the book with puppets is fun,” Humphrey said. “They’re really engaged.”

Summer sessions — offered this year at Lincoln-Douglas for elementary students, Quincy Junior High and Quincy High School — offer extra support some students need to get ready to transition to the next grade level.

Humphrey, an instructional coach during the school year, benefits by introducing new games to the students.

“The more I can play around, find different engaging tasks, I take those back to my classroom teachers,” she said. “If I did it, everybody can do it.”

In the meantime, though, it’s another story problem for the boys looking to determine the total number if there are 8 potato chips and 8 tortilla chips on the plate.

They start to build an equation to solve the problem, but Tanner’s a step ahead. “It’s probably 16,” he said. “Because eight plus eight is 16.”