Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Summer Reading

Hello!
This is the last week of school for us and likely you as well. I know that some of you will be taking summer courses, some will be traveling, some will be working in the yard and around the house taking care of those jobs there is just not time for during the school year, and some may be just sitting around with a dazed look for a few days.

How many of you have asked or told your students to read over the summer? This simple act of reading 15 minutes a day will help keep their skills up and very likely increase reading scores. Did you realize that? Just 15 minutes a day can increase a student’s reading ability by a grade level. That’s just the commercial time for about one hour’s television viewing. If you haven’t said anything to parents and students, this may be a fantastic time to mention this. What about offering a prize to students who keep a reading log signed by parents? You could have your class set the goal and then give prizes next year when school begins.

Now that you have your students set with their summer reading goal, what about you? What is your goal? How will you keep track of your reading? It would be fun for the students for you to report on your reading over the summer. A number of years ago when I lived in Texas, one of our best friends who taught in the English department said he had a goal of 50 books to read over the summer. He wanted me to make a device for recording each book. I was teaching third grade at the time and loved the idea. I made large trees on full sheets of poster board and cut out apple shapes. Each time one of us read a book we filled out an apple and glued it on our tree. My husband, our two friends, and I had a great time with this. It sounds childish, but it was fun. Now I keep track of the books I read on the computer through LibraryThing. LibraryThing is free for the first 200 books you list. I started this about 7 years ago as a way to keep track of the books I have at home. I soon gave up because I just have too many. Now I just put on LibraryThing the books as I read them and record the month and year I read the book. Whatever you do to keep track of your books, just do something that will be fun for you and help you keep track of your summer reading. What a great example for your kids! You may be surprised at how much you read after all.

One more thing. As you are reading this summer, you will likely come across a great book that you want to share. Please send these titles to me and I’ll make a list and post it for others.

Have a great summer and rest up.
Audrey
Sdalibrarian.blogspot.com