Summer Reading Loss

With summer around the corner, our minds turn to sunshine, gardens, barbeques and beaches. At the library, we have our minds on summer reading loss.

Students and teachers work diligently during the school year to improve vocabulary and literacy skills. Once school stops, though, that learning can also halt. Research has shown repeatedly that a summer without reading often means starting from scratch when school starts again in September. There is an estimated three month achievement gap between students who do and do not read during the summer. Between grades one and six, this works out to approximately 1.5 years of lost reading development (Cooper, Nye, Charlton, Lindsay, & Greathouse, 1996).

So how do we encourage summer reading?

For starters, let’s remind ourselves that reading should be fun! During the school year, student may have “required reading,” but summer should mean recreational reading. Comic books, graphic novels, magazines and newspapers may not be traditional formats, but we’re still engaging in literacy when we read them. During the summer, let your children read what they gravitate towards, even if the format or content isn’t considered “high brow.”

No matter how old your children are, our core early literacy concepts still prove valuable: read, talk, write, sing and play. Encourage your children to keep a journal during the summer. Read aloud to them at the beach, or keep books on hands at the family cottage. Listening to Taylor Swift in the car can expand our vocabulary too – sing along!

Finally, you can register your children in the TD Summer Reading Club at the library. Participants simply record how long they read during the summer for their chance to win free books. We’ll also be building a Tower of Books this year: for every piece of literature a child reads, a book will be added to the tower. Can the kids of Collingwood read more than the staff at the library?

There are all kinds of ways to encourage literacy during the summer. We want everyone to read ahead, not fall behind.

Happy summer reading!

--Ashley Kulchycki

References:

Cooper, H., Nye, B., Charlton, K., Lindsay, J., & Greathouse, S. (1996). The effects of summer vacation on achievement test scores: A narrative and meta-analytic review. Review of Educational Research, 66, 227-268.