Notes on the "summer slide"

Overcoming the “summer slide” : students and reading mileage, summer holidays and the school library…

• The “summer slump” or “summer slide” is the decline in reading achievement children suffer just from being away from school and formal literacy instruction.
• Often it is the students who can least afford to lose the reading gains they've achieved during the school year who fall the furthest behind when they return to school after a summer break.
• A New Zealand masters thesis[1] showed a 5.8 month summer reading slide for pupils in a Decile 1 school who were reading at below-average levels. · In a key Baltimore study[2] it was found that low-income children fell further behind than their classmates – characterised as the “the Harry Potter divide”, and that the effects are cumulative and long-term.
• Term 4 is the time to consider how your school can prevent any “summer slide” and what strategies you can implement before the end of term for the coming holiday...

Perhaps the two main actions to consider are

• getting parents on board, informing / reminding them of the powerful benefits for children of reading and being read to, and that even just 10 minutes reading a day by or to children will maintain / develop their child’s reading skills, habit and enthusiasm…
• looking at ways to get books in hands / homes during the holidays and what role the school library or the resource room might play in this, as well as liaison with the public library to encourage membership and use…

There are other strategies, such as making sure children have the skills to choose reading material independently, how to build some fun writing activities into their summer reading programme, or setting challenges – individual, class and school targets for reading mileage.

It would be also be productive to gather evidence of the impact of any initiative you take.

Perhaps the discussion at your school could also include an invitation / challenge to teachers to extend their own summer reading of children’s books – getting to know children’s books that they can promote to their students next year, read aloud, incorporate into their teaching programme…

For more information, discussion or workshops at your school on this topic, please contact your National Library Adviser – Dyane Hosler or Jeannie Skinner.

1 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, University of Auckland, MEd thesis 2006
2 Lasting Consequences of the Summer Learning Gap Karl L. Alexander, Doris R. Entwisle, Linda Steffel Olson, John Hopkins University, Baltimore in American Sociological Review, 2007, Vol. 72 (April:167–180)

Messages for parents about summer reading...

Here are some notes you may wish to use as a starting point for communicating with parents… Put them onto your school letterhead or in a newsletter, and edit them as you wish…

3 important messages for parents / caregivers / whanau

We know you want the best for your children.
Here are three things you can do which will really help them :

1. Encourage your children to read.

• If your children spend 15 minutes each day reading or being read to, it will help them become excellent readers, writers and thinkers and do well at school and life.
• 15 minutes is only 1 % of each day. It could be in 3 lots of 5 minutes. It isn’t much time but it makes a HUGE difference.
• If you would like some help getting books to read and share, then please ask us, we’d be happy to help.

2. Keep reading and writing happening over the school holidays.

• Many children, especially struggling readers, forget some of what they've learned or slip out of practice during the summer holidays. If you keep reading to your child and encouraging them to read and write, then they won’t lose ground they have made over the year and “slide” back.
• Keep it fun – read anything, write anything – lists, recipes, stories, postcards, comics… Ask your child’s teacher for ideas.

3. Read aloud to your children.

• The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children.
• Reading aloud to children stimulates their interest, their emotional development, their imagination, and their language.
• Reading aloud to your children every day will help them become great readers and listeners, but most of all they will love you for doing it with them and they will remember the times you read to them all their lives !

Jeannie Skinner, Library Adviser, National Library School Services

Summer slump - NLNZ workshop 7

The NLNZ session at Workshop 7 explores the importance of maintaining the progress made by your students in your class during the year by setting up strategies to keep reading and writing happening over the school holidays - avoiding the "summer slump". In this session we discussed what teachers, parents, libraries, the school and the children themselves can do...

Contact Dyane or Jeannie if you would like a copy of the powerpoint to share at your school with staff.

Here are some links to articles about the summer slump :
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/c41/ Summary of articles...

Summer Reading Loss by Maryann Mraz and Timothy V. Rasinski (2007) http://www.readingrockets.org/articles/15218

These are some suggestions from the Whangarei JuLS group on what they plan to do:

• Intend to set up school LibraryThing to record summer reading
• Promote the library in newsletters and the need to read.
• School newsletter item about summer slide
• LibraryThing class site - link up with other classes as "friends"
• I will be better prepared to set up a focus group to monitor over summer.
• Will try and inspire community to make this work
• Look forward to bringing it up at staff meeting to discuss
  
• Good ideas for making books. Will follow through with newsletter
• Will make class slogan for summer holiday reading.
• Had not really thought about this issue deeply and now I realise we can make a difference.·
• Share at syndicate meeting.·