It’s important for children to continue to read over the summer. We know that often looking at testing information, students often score lower on tests of reading in the fall than they scored the previous spring. That’s been attributed to a phenomenon called summer slump or summer slide where students don’t read over the summer and actually lose ground in what they’ve learned as readers during the school year.
The good news is that continuing to read even just a few books over the summer can help students maintain their reading levels and also continue their practice and engagement with reading. We must be mindful as parents and teachers that book access is key in keeping kids reading over the summer. So, some of the things that we could do, invite the public library to the school shortly before school comes out for a library card sign-up event.
It also gives children’s librarians at the public library an opportunity to share some of the great reading programs that they often hold for children over the summer and increase students’ access to having a library card. Schools can also look at opening the school library for certain days over the summer so that kids can continue to get books from the school. And teachers can certainly look at checking out books from classroom libraries and loaning them out over the summer.
The books are just sitting there lonely without anyone to read them. Wouldn’t it be great if kids were able to take them home? Some schools have also developed book drives where donations of books from the local community are brought in right before school ends for the school year and then those books are distributed back out to children who may not have books at home.
