The “summer slide” or “summer slump” is the decline in reading achievement some children suffer from being away from school over the long summer holiday.

Keep students reading over summer - anywhere and everywhere!

Contents

The Summer slide
What the research shows
How principals can support summer reading
The role of families in preventing summer reading loss
Access to reading material
Strategies for teachers
The school library and summer reading
Establish a relationship with the public library
Helping children choose what to read
Teachers’and librarians own reading over the summer
Using evidence to inform practice
Recommended research and reading

The Summer Slide

It is characterised by steady progress in reading achievement throughout the school year, and a decline during the long summer holidays. Away from school, some students spend less time reading and miss out on:

• access to books and other reading resources
• reading practice
• encouragement to read
• role modelling
• support for reading

Often, students who can least afford to lose their year’s reading gains fall the furthest behind. And the loss can also be seen in maths and on their levels of confidence.

“Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.” Mason Cooley

What the research shows

A number of international studies into childrens’ reading loss over the long summer break have shown that:

• the consequences are cumulative and long lasting, often having a powerful influence on reading scores throughout high-school and beyond
• low-income children fall further behind than their classmates – dubbed the “Harry Potter divide” - the loss is less pronounced or absent in students who have access to books and holiday learning experiences such as travel, museum visits etc
• it is harder to close the gap once it has opened, so the earlier the intervention the better.

One piece of New Zealand research in a Decile 1 school found some students reading at below-average levels suffered a 5.8 month summer reading slide. (An investigation of the effectiveness of a summer school reading intervention in a low decile school as a way of preventing the summer slide in reading Shanthi Tiruchittampalam, MEd thesis, University of Auckland,2006).

More recently Professor Stuart McNaughton’s research into Summer Reading in Decile 1 schools in New Zealand; School achievement: Why summer matters reported four major implications:

1. Find out what children like to read and engage them in reading motivating texts
2. Mentor students to develop those aspects of their literacy which are to do with engagement, their development of “taste” and informational interests. Teach them to access these texts and to monitor their enjoyment
3. Give specific messages to parents about how to support children’s engagement with text.
4. Find out about students’ summer reading at the beginning of the year.

Is the “summer slump / summer slide” an issue for your students? Do you have data about end of year / beginning of year student levels, and if so what is it telling you? Is anything being done already? Consider who you could discuss this with at your school.

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How principals can support summer reading

• Show leadership and support for the school’s summer reading programme and lead by example.
• Read and be a reading role model who can discuss children’s books, recommend books and inspire students to become readers
• Share your reading with staff and students, at staff meetings and set up a school wide Good reads account where you, teachers, librarians and students can discuss books, write reviews and recommend books.

Read this inspiring NerdyBookClub blog post by Principal Matt Renwick with a couple of relevant items about summer reading, and a staff reading culture.

The role of families in preventing summer reading loss

Ensure parents and families know about the potential for loss in precious reading achievement over summer, (and to a lesser extent during other shorter school holidays).

Let parents know what they can do about summer reading. Reassure them that “little and often” makes a difference, and that it’s important to keep it fun!

Parents/whanau can:

• make reading enjoyable for their children, keeping reading fun with easy and self-selected material, talking about books, sharing books and reading time
• read aloud to their children
• make time for reading every day – little and often
• find out how to listen to children read – see the Guidelines on this page
• help their child choose “just right books”
• understand how important they are as reading role models.
• encourage them to read independently
• include some enjoyable literacy activities such as writing letters or postcards, reading recipes
• manage electronic entertainment at home -“turn off the TV or Playstation” and reward reading
• make regular trips to the public library and letting children choose books and magazines.

Send the message home through newsletters, and use other opportunities, formal and informal like parent / teacher conferences, reports, informal conversations, classroom newsletter.

The Ultimate Book Guides (Ultimate First Book Guide, Ultimate Book Guide and Ultimate Teen Book Guide) are useful resources for “what to read”.

Access to reading material

Access to interesting reading material is essential - low-income children tend to have fewer books at home and live in neighborhoods with fewer public libraries. Children with less access to books read less on their own.

At your school discuss how you can ensure students have access to recreational reading resources at home in the holidays.

• How can your school library support home reading?
• Does the library issue books to students and / or their parents over the summer?
• How can the school encourage public library use by families?
• Is the public library running a summer reading programme that schools can promote to families?

What other avenues can be explored to get books into children’s hands during holiday times such as run a “bring a book / swap a book” programme, especially for copies of formula fiction series like Goosebumps, PonyPals, Daisy Meadows.

Strategies for teachers

“preparation, promotion and practice” time in the classroom

Talk about why holiday reading is important, that it will help them and make a difference – WALT We are learning to read independently, We are learning to be responsible for our own reading…

• Explore how to choose “just right” books – not too easy, not too hard, just right, connecting to their interests and reading levels:
  • Look at the cover
  • Read the title and the author
  • Read the blurb on the back
  • Read the first page
• Discuss where to get books from – school, public library, friends, second hand bookshops
• Make a contract – with selves, school, parents, eg to read for a certain amount of time, to keep a record of what they have read… Write a slogan – eg Read every day, Read your age plus 10 minutes a day
• Identify what might be the blocks that stop them reading and discuss strategies to address them – eg knowing what to do if stuck with a book – try another book, , talk about it with someone, skip forward or re-read, use comprehension strategies for example:
  • Previewing: selecting a ‘just right’ text
  • Connecting: making text to self, text to text and text to world connections
  • Questioning: asking questions before, during and after reading
  • Visualizing: creating visual images as they read
  • Inferring: interpreting what the author meant even if not said explicitly
  • Predicting: guessing what happens next based on clues
  • Synthesizing: combining what they know with new information
  • Determining important ideas: grasping the main ideas and important messages
  • Applying fix-up strategies: eg using context clues to define words, reading to clarify meaning, using questions and connections to make meaning
• Know how to look after books and about bringing them back after the holiday.

Promotion

• Spend time during term to allow students to share / discuss and recommend books to each other
• Share information about students reading interests with librarians and ask for their help finding suitable books
• Encourage students and families to use the school library / public library over the summer break
• Enhance access to resources, eg summer borrowing from the school library, increasing borrowing limits
• Create a list of recommendations ie 10 of your own favourite authors / titles / series, 10 of your friends’ favourites, 10 of the class favourites, 10 most popular authors borrowed from your school library and talk about reading a range of material such as magazines, comics and non-fiction

Practice

Practice independent reading in the classroom and help students develop the habit of independent reading each day.

The school library and summer reading

The school library can potentially be key to getting students to read regularly over the summer. Together with providing resources, information and enthusiasm the library can:

• support teachers and parents, reminding them that the message is reading for pleasure
• develop a special book bag for borrowed books
• review borrowing procedures such as relaxing borrowing limits, issue periods
• provide a range of reading material including books, comics, magazines, non-fiction, joke books, ebooks
• consider opening the library during the holidays eg a day a week or a few hours a day in the latter weeks of the holidays
• investigate options for moving stocktake to Term 3 so that it isn’t an issue for the end of the year library closure.

Promoting summer reading

• Make displays in the library about summer reading, show pictures of people reading on holiday, have quotes and photos.
• Develop displays and booklists of the most popular titles, themes, kids’ picks, and recommended series.
• Make a challenge chart on display in the library with students / classes / syndicates and their reading goals.
• Address postcards to the library from places students travel to – in real life or in a book.
• Teach children about caring for books – book bags, keeping books in a particular place.
• Celebrate returned books at the beginning of the new-year, with acknowledgement of books read, cared for and returned.
• Make book marks with titles, space to write.

Working with teachers

• Provide teachers with a bag of books to read over the summer – your personal recommendations from your own reading and knowledge of their interests / student year level.
• Promote the National Library Sail into Summer Reading programme and encourage teachers to take part.
• Use borrower information from the library management system to focus on students and their reading preferences.

Welcoming parents

• Set up “family / whanau cards” for students’ family to borrow from the school library.
• Allow family borrowing over the holidays and help parents know what their children might like to read.

Establish a relationship with the public library

If you haven’t already established a relationship with the public library, summer reading provides the perfect opportunity to connect. Many public libraries offer summer reading programmes with events, challenges and incentives for reading. Invite the children’s librarian to visit your school to talk about their programme.

Even if there is no summer reading programme at your library it’s important to connect students and their families with regular public library services. Provide membership forms in the library or classrooms and inform families about the library and summer reading programmes in newsletters and notices.

Find out more about working with Public Libraries

Helping children choose what to read

Are children, especially reluctant readers, good at choosing the “right” book, especially without their teacher or librarian there to help them?

• Make booklists with suggestions for great reads, popular series, read-alikes “If you like this… then try this…”
• Teach strategies for choosing books like browsing, previewing, and selecting skills
• Give them guidelines to take away as well as having them on display in the library
• What are their favourite authors, genre or subject / theme, fiction and non-fiction?
• Do they have a favourite series, format or character(s)? See Best easy readers: popular series
• Remember the importance of keeping reading fun and easy, especially for struggling readers See Bad books make good reading”
• Consider book and movie tie-ins

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Encouraging book discussion and sharing

• Put notes in books for students about why you are recommending this book for them and others who have enjoyed it.
• Set up online opportunities for book sharing and recording eg blog or website or social account such as LibraryThing or Goodreads.

In What should we read this summer? by Anne Davies in Booklinks May 2005 (Available through EPIC Masterfile), the teacher created a folder for each child to encourage summer reading. A month before the end of the year, she started a class list of favourites. Students wrote a list of their 10 favourite books of the year – brainstorming first to recollect, looking at borrowing records from the library, classroom library review, read-alouds, books from science units etc.

Each child had a folder to take home with three sections:

1. Their list of 10 favourites, the class list of 10 favourites, and “Re-read an old favourite” with a class list of favourite authors brainstormed by the class
2. “Try a friend’s favourite” – each child contributed a page with titles and authors of three books that they would recommend with a sentence why
3. “Explore” – local library hours – discussion about using the public library

And at the back, “Don’t forget to write” – blank pages for addresses of friends, and a stamped, self-addressed envelope to the teacher.

Teachers and librarians own reading over the summer

Reading over the summer is enjoyable, allows you to recommend books to students and makes you a great reading role model.

What about your own summer reading? To be a reading role model (sharing what you are going to read, what you have read with your students) it’s important you continually add to your knowledge of children’s / YA literature.

• How about a challenge to read x children’s books a week – in term time, in the holidays?
• What will you read? Where will you get your books from - school / public / National Library?
• Can you encourage other teachers to read children’s books / share their reading? Are there expectations of teachers to be readers at your school?
• What genres / authors / series / formats?
• Would knowing about websites or review journals be helpful?
• What about keeping a reading log online, for example a LibraryThing account
• Liase with your school librarian to ask for recommendations
• See Teachers as Readers

Find out about our Sail into Summer Reading professional development programme

“If we want students to develop a devotion to reading, we need to show them evidence of our devotion to it.” Lucy McCormick Calkins.

Using evidence to inform practice

What evidence could you gather before, during and after an initiative regarding holiday reading / home reading to show what you did made a difference, and to inform future practice?

• If you develop / run a holiday home reading initiative, how will you know what to do, who to target, if it is an issue, where students are at, family response etc?
• Is there any existing data or testing of reading levels end of year / beginning of year eg STAR, BURT, PROBE, that you can compare this year to last year?
• What other evidence could you gather, eg strategies in different classes, targeted children, anecdotal reports, library statistics, feedback from public library, survey of parents / survey of students?

Share this information with others:

• What are the implications of this for your teaching practice, your school and your school library?
• Is your school aware of a “summer slide” already? What are they doing about it? Is there a school-wide approach? Who do you need to discuss with?
• Consider a staff meeting / syndicate meeting to discuss the evidence / research, the data available / how to gather data…
• What can start to happen during the school year to set children and their families up for summer reading enjoyment and gains?

Recommended research and reading

Lasting Consequences of the Summer Learning Gap (PDF) Karl L. Alexander, Doris R. Entwisle, Linda Steffel OlsonJohn Hopkins University, Baltimore American Sociological Review, 2007, Vol. 72 (April:167–180)

School achievement: Why summer matters (PDF): Stuart McNaughton, Rebecca Jesson, Tone Kolose and Sophie Kercher (2012) Teaching and Learning Research Initiative, University of Auckland.

Solving the Problem of Summer Reading Loss (PDF), James S. Kim and Thomas G White. v92 n7 p64-67 Apr 2011
A 2008 experiment suggests that a summer books program, when combined with teacher scaffolding lessons and parent support, can significantly improve the reading achievement of low-income children.

Summer Reading: Where the real damage occurs - Jim Trelease’s brochure for parents

Summer Reading Loss Maryann Mraz and Timothy V. Rasinski The Reading Teacher Vol. 60, No. 8 May 2007

Summer slump verses the summer reading programme, Michelle Anderson, Library Life (Online), 15 Mar 2012
Advocates a library Summer Reading Programme (SRP) for preventing a ’summer slump’, but acknowledges the intensive staffing required and other barriers to meaningful engagement with traditional non-users of libraries.

The Best Resources on the “Summer Slide” - Great list of resources on the by Larry Ferlazzo

What reading does for the mind (PDF) article by Anne E. Cunningham and Keith E. Stanovich.

Three Ways to Prevent Summer Slide by Francie Alexander - short article aimed at parents

There are Reading Rockets and School Library Journal articles on summer reading as well as the Scholastic Summer reading site.

EPIC articles

The following articles are available through EPIC, a subscription based suite of databases the Ministry of Education provides for all New Zealand schools. EPIC is an excellent resource for finding professional reading not otherwise available on the web. Talk to your school librarian to find out your username and password, or otherwise contact the 0800 Lib Line (0800 542 5463) to ask for assistance in accessing EPIC and these articles.

Summer Reading Goes Web 2.0 Teacher Librarian, Cohen, Sydnye; Spencer, Elizabeth (2012) , 01/02/2012, Vol. 39, Issue 3, p. 39-4. Describes a program where teachers facilitated online student discussions of books during the summer vacation period. Students interested in a specific title were grouped together, rather than use school-wide assignments for the program. Also includes a bibliography of popular books from the program.

What should we read this summer? Davies, Anne (2005) May 2005, Book Links,Vol. 14 Issue 5, p14
Author describes the process of helping primary school children create summer reading lists through collating teachers, class and friends’ favourites.

Independent Reading for summer Vacation-“Looping” in the Library. Locke, June (2006) Book Links, 01/05/2006, Vol. 15, Issue 5, p. 11-13.
The author wanted the students to view summer reading as an enjoyable summer activity. Provided books they could read with ease and accuracy, plastic drawstring and catchy bookmarks. The author prepared packets for each teacher to take home for the summer. Inside the packet include postcards, lists of students’ name and addresses and parent letter.

An initiative to counter the “summer reading drop”: An iterative process Set: Research Information for Teachers; Wright, Paul and Wright, Cathy (2011) May 2011, no. 2 (NZCER Press), pp. 38
Sharing strategies to support reading at home during the holidays through a “summer reading contract”, enabled Clayton Park School (primary) to reduce the drop in reading achievement over the summer, including for the lowest performing students across all ethnicities.

See also the ‘Helping your child become a reader handout’ for download below.

For me, summer reading slump refers to my prone posture on the couch, reading happily.”
Donalyn Miller, The Book Whisperer

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• Sail into Summer Reading workshops

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• Helping your child become a reader

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