Summer Reading for Students

Summertime is Reading Time

I recently saw a sign in front of a local elementary school. The sign on the marquis said “Have a relaxing summer.” Now I am sure that many of students who have just completed the school year worked very hard, did their homework, studies for exams and had a productive school year.  For their efforts they do deserve some down time. However, a number of studies have confirmed that there is a loss of knowledge and learning skills that occurs after a 12 week hiatus from school. (See: “The Effects of Summer Vacation on Achievement Test Scores: A Narrative and Meta-Analytic Review, “Review of Educational Research Fall 1996 66: 227-268,)doi:10.3102/00346543066003227  .   In fact many classroom teachers lament the fact that they have to spend the first   few weeks of every new school year reviewing prior learning and re- teaching concepts.

If there is anything that parents and teachers can do it is to encourage students read during their summer vacation. Although there are a number of school districts around the country that have summer reading lists for student, most schools do not.   There was a recent article that appeared in USA Weekend (June 17-19, 2011) entitled “Inspire your kinds to read.” The article discussed the website launched by writer James Patterson. The site www.readkiddoread.com is outstanding. It provides teachers and parents a wealth of resources for getting children to read.

The site provides a link for teachers with lesson plans for numerous children’s books.  You will also find reading lists broken down by age group. The list starts with illustrated books for very young children and moves up from there.  Many of the books are readily available from your local library. Parents may also want to consider summer reading clubs for their children where they can get together in an informal setting, talk about the books and share some refreshments.

There are multiple goals here.  One is to get children to like reading both for knowledge as well as enjoyment.  The other is to keep children’s minds active during the summer months so that when they return to the classroom in the fall they will be ready to learn.

Back in 1955 Rudolf Flesch wrote a most controversial book entitled “Why Johnny Can’t Read”, which began to reveal flaws in the way American school children were taught to read. In 1983 Flesch wrote a follow up book, Why Johnny Still Can’t Read, illustrating that almost 30 years later students still had difficulty in learning how to read. The crisis was more obvious with socio–economically students were not read to at home and many of these students never owned a book or even had a public library card.