Avoiding the Summer Slide

For some students, the summer slump can impact students if they do not continue to take advantage of learning and keep their brains engaged in reading.

Grade Level Books to Read

• Research tells that it can take until mid-October for some students to achieve the reading level they had reached the previous June.
• In order to understand this phenomenon, we must consider the nature of the primary grade reader. Children make rapid progress in reading from kindergarten to second-grade. To come to a full stop in early June can result in the loss of skills, not just an interruption in the acquisition of new ones.
• The summer months are rich with opportunities for learning that are more relaxed and family-based than what the school setting offers. The child's immediate and extended family provides the most powerful and enduring literacy models. Through rich conversation, attentive listening, shared reading and time set aside for independent reading and reflective writing, you can create an atmosphere that fosters further growth in literacy skills. While we hope that these activities are ongoing throughout the year, the need increases in the absence of school structure.

Sprague's staff is providing you with resources that will help you and your child make independent reading part of an enjoyable, well-balanced summer.

• Reading and writing skills go hand and hand as part of a child's balanced literacy. Take the opportunity to build communication by having your child write about summer books they have read, highlighting their favorite part, the problem, the solution, or by even writing a new ending to the story.
• Letter and journal writing are also engaging ways to build writing skills.
• Read to your children! Cuddle up with some books that you enjoyed as a child that might have rich and engaging story lines. Children love it when you read to them.

All of these ideas will help keep up your child's summer literacy skills.

Making Reading Fun:

• Make recipes from cookbooks.
• Discover a new author or series.
• Read in a tent, fort…anywhere novel.
• Listen to audiobooks when traveling.
• Act out books.
• Read a book and watch the movie afterwards.
• Practice spelling sight words with sidewalk chalk. Then, erase the words with a water spray bottle.
• Play hopscotch with sight words.
• Write reviews of movies, books, or tv shows.