Encouraging Summer Reading

I spend the entire school year working to instill a love of reading in each and every one of my students. It certainly is not an easy task!! I have to choose just the right read-alouds to engage all. I work with students individually to establish reading goals and to find books they love at their reading levels. We practice responding to texts in meaningful ways, teaching them important reading skills, while still loving to read. By the end of every year, I am such a proud teacher, when I see how much my students have grown, and how much they absolutely LOVE to read!! But, I still worry that summer is going to come along and wipe away all of their hard work!! (and mine!!)

This year I am trying a few new approaches to ensure that my students continue to read over the summer. We are starting off with a Summer Reading Bucket List. My students always have a running list of books they want to read. By the time the school year ends, there are still many titles on their lists. The plan this year is to transfer those titles to their Summer Reading Bucket List, and brainstorm more titles to add to it, as well. This is a great time for students to share with their classmates the different books they read throughout the year, and LOVED!! I also like to make recommendations for students too!!!

SIDE NOTE: I personally allow students to borrow books over the summer. I know that this is risky business!! But I hate the idea of all of those books sitting in my classroom over the summer, not being read!! I simply keep track of who is taking what, and make sure parents sign an “agreement” to return the books at the start of the new school year.  Of course, I always lose a few. However, I rarely have a problem, and love knowing that my books are in the hands of eager readers!!

Finally, if your kiddos are up for an additional challenge, as I know mine are, I put together an additional Summer Reading Challenge Tab Book. This tab book is available in my TpT Shop!!

With this tab book, I am challenging my students to read 20 books this summer!! They can be picture books that they read to a younger sibling, novels they check out from the library, or comic books that are recommended by a friend.

They will use the first page in their tab book to keep track of the 20 books that they will read over the summer!! Then they will use the additional pages to respond to the different books they read. Page 2, “Story Summaries”, asks students to write a 1-sentence summary for each book that they read.