For decades, researchers, teachers and parents have observed that children who read for pleasure during summer break tend to have better scores and understanding in school. Children must have the “equipment” and opportunity to read for fun over the summer. Here are some ways to make reading for fun likely to happen this summer:
- Keep books around. Check them out of the public library. Keep a few in the car.
- Make time to read every day. Even a few minutes count. No quizzes or tests. Just fun. If the book isn’t enjoyable, give it back and try another.
- Give books as gifts.
- Ask readers what they like. Get recommendations from other readers until you find something enjoyable to you and the children in your life.
- List five books you would like to read this summer. Share your goal.
- Organize a book swap, suggests Donalyn Miller, author of Reading in the Wild: The Book Whisperer’s Keys to Cultivating Lifelong Reading Habits. In her school, teachers and students donate books and receive tickets. Then they browse and choose a “new” book in exchange for each ticket.
- Pack books for trips or errands. Keep a book to read while standing in line.
- Host a library card sign-up event, Miller suggests. Invite librarians to share details of summer reading programs.
- Read aloud to children, even after they are able to read on their own. Children take their cue for what is important from the adults around them.
Children who read during the summer are more likely to maintain or even gain reading skills, report Richard L. Allington and Anne McGill-Franzen in their book Summer Reading: Closing the Rich/Poor Reading Achievement Gap.
Citing the same research, Stephen D. Krashen points out in The Power of Reading that reading just one book over the summer was associated with a small improvement in reading comprehension. Reading five books over the summer can stop summer learning loss.
Among low-income children, summer reading loss accounts for about 80 percent of the reading achievement gap compared to wealthier classmates.
“What you may find surprising is just how consistently making books available to children from low-income families and to struggling readers enhances reading achievement during the summer months,” Allington writes.