by Anna Gratz Cockerille
These days, books have a lot of competition for kids’ attention. Video games, cell phones, tablets, and social media sites all provide tantalizing sources of entertainment for kids of all ages during their off hours. As we move into the summer months, many kids will have a lot of hours to fill. As teachers, we have a lot of power to make sure that at least some of kids’ time this summer is taken up with reading.
Reading over the summer is particularly crucial for children from lower income families, as study after study has shown. Many of these children already suffer from vast achievement gaps that they can’t afford to widen. Some research estimates that children from middle-income homes read three lines of print for everyone one line read by children from lower income homes. Children from lower income homes simply cannot afford to not read in the summer if they are to catch up.
Happily, research done by the National Summer Learning Association shows that reading even 4-6 books over the summer can help lower income children to prevent a decline in reading achievement. Though we can’t remain by our students’ sides throughout the summer, we can angle our teaching to support summer reading so that we remain a voice in their ears, encouraging them to read.
Here are a few ways to set students up for a summer of reading:
At this week’s TCRWP Twitter chat, Kisha Howell and Lizzie Hetzer will lead the conversation about how to keep readers reading over the summer. Join to share and get a wealth of tips and tricks to prevent summer slide in reading
Anna was a teacher and a literacy coach in New York City and in Sydney, Australia, and later became a Staff Developer and Writer at TCRWP. She served as an adjunct instructor in the Literacy Specialist Program at Teachers College, and taught at several TCRWP institutes, including the Content Literacy Institute, where she helped participants bring strong literacy instruction into social studies classrooms. Anna also has been a researcher for Lucy Calkins, contributing especially to Pathways to the Common Core: Accelerating Achievement (Heinemann 2012), and Navigating Nonfiction in the Units of Study for Teaching Reading, Grades 3–5 series (Heinemann 2010). Most recently, Anna served as an editor for the Units of Study for Teaching Reading, K–5 series.