Every school year, I spend a month, sometimes two, combatting regression from the previous school year. Every year, I need to re-teach basic fluency, sentences, nouns, and verbs with my fifth through eighth graders. Additionally, we always spend some time getting back on track with writing. One year, I decided to send home summer packets that were optional to complete. I was surprised to find that most of my students completed the work and were actually proud to bring it in at the start of the n