It’s that time of the year! Time to think about summer reading and helping our students stave off the summer slide. Students that don’t read during the summer stand to lose between 25–30% of their school-year learning. Reading over the summer encourages lifelong reading, helps children improve and maintain reading skills, increases children’s knowledge base, motivates children to read for fun, and more.
Summer reading activities abound! Your local public library typically offers summer reading activities. There are also many free programs from businesses that your students can join. Barnes & Noble offers a summer reading program where students can win books by reading. Pizza Hut offers a program where students can win pizza. Showcase cinemas allows students to earn movie tickets for reading. Scholastic, Reading is Fundamental, and PBS also offer fun summer reading programs.
What can you do in your classroom to encourage summer reading? Create a summer reading book club! Students can read the same book, discuss online, and even meet in person for an ice cream party! Do a weekly or bi-weekly read-aloud in Google Meet or something similar. Choose a book that you can read chapter by chapter or read a different picture book each week. Provide reading lists to your students or create a reading challenge. Post your reading challenge on your Google Classroom or other classroom site or send home a paper reading challenge packet. You can also try making summer reading a game! Share summer learning resources with your student’s families.
Whatever you choose to do, make sure your students commit to summer reading! As always, check out TeachersFirst for more summer reading resources and blog posts for more ideas. Happy summer reading!