Students, no matter how good, tend to lose learning over the long summer break. It is a phenomenon almost every teacher and many parents are well aware of, known as “summer slide”. Studies indicate that overall, students experience significant learning losses over the summer, most notably in the area of reading, and that these losses add up over time to create a significant learning gap of one to three months.
How many students know that they could stop summer slide and prepare to tackle the upcoming school year by reading a few books? How do books help? It boils down to three basic points:
• Every book teaches something – whether it is something about our world, who we are, or the kind of books we do or don’t like;
• Books give us access to emotions and experiences we’ve never had – so, we can be people we’ll never be and visualize places we’ve never seen, and;
• Reading makes us smarter.
How do we encourage our children to read when they are not in school? An effective resource is library summer reading programs that build reading proficiency, amount of reading, and reading enjoyment in children. Library summer reading programs utilize a variety of techniques to encourage reading, such as:
• reading games or challenges,
• discussions of books,
• book related crafts,
• author visits,
• storytelling,
• rewards and incentives for reading, and more.
Many libraries across Canada offer summer reading programs. The national TD Summer Reading Club, operates in three territories and eight provinces, supporting 432 public libraries in 2,518 localities. This is Canada’s biggest bilingual summer reading program for kids of all ages, interests, and abilities where kids can:
• join activities at branches, online, on the road or wherever their summer takes them,
• access free books, read books online, and get reading recommendations,
• track their own reading and collect stickers and online badges, and
• connect and share jokes, book reviews, and more with others across the country.
The United States has The Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge, a free online reading program dedicated to encouraging kids to read every day during the summer. The program website has an extensive list of book ideas for summer reading.
Overall, evidence from literature indicates that summer reading clubs are effective and have a positive impact on children, parents, libraries and communities. Such programs tend to improve confidence in reading, increase children’s confidence and self-esteem and facilitate positive social interaction.
From my perspective as an enthusiastic English teacher/tutor, I recommend that you check your local library’s website for summer reading programs and events happening near you!
Sources: Reading all the Books, Library and Archives Canada, TD Summer Reading Club, Scholastic.
