Summer Reading

Read a dozen strategies to help your children keep the academic skills they learned last year. Support them as they read. Give them material that is motivating – and some of it should be easy. Help them enjoy books and feel pleasure—not pressure from reading. The summer should be a relaxed time where their love of learning can flower.

Many children, especially struggling readers, forget some of what they've learned or slip out of practice during the summer months. Try these strategies to help your reader improve her reading during the summer and beyond.

Your child walks like you, talks like you, and absorbs everything you do. So set the right example when it comes to reading. If you want your child to be a good reader, be one yourself!

Research about how much children lose ground over the summer is well documented, but kids don't have to lose ground over the summer. In fact, you can encourage your child to have a summer of fun and learning with these five free and easy things to do.

You've got the reading lists. You've got the books. But what else can you do to make your children better readers this summer?

Not everyone lives near Chincoteague lsland off the Maryland and Virginia coastline (Misty of Chincoteague) or has a chance to visit the Laura Ingalls Wilder house museum in the Ozarks (Little House on the Prairie). But books can inspire some exciting day trips.

It's not hard to help your children keep their interest in reading and learning during the summer break. Here are ten weeks of suggestions to encourage your children to open books even after school doors close.

Summer shouldn't mean taking a break from learning, especially reading. Studies show that most students experience a loss of reading skills over the summer months, but children who continue to read actually gain skills.

Teachers do their best to improve students’ fluency, but sometimes the information they have to work with is incomplete and, therefore, leads them down the wrong path. For example, silent reading or 'Round Robin' reading seem like good ways to improve fluency. But, in fact, increasing fluency requires more practice, more support, and more guided oral reading than either of these strategies can deliver.

What should fluency instruction look like? And, what can teachers do to help students whose fluency is far behind their peers'? This article should help practitioners use of fluency-based assessments and select instructional practices.

What is differentiated instruction and how can it help your child? This article helps parents understand and support differentiation in the classroom.

Reading Rockets has packed a "virtual beach bag" of activities for teachers to help families get ready for summer and to launch students to fun, enriching summertime experiences. Educators will find materials to download and distribute as well as ideas and resources to offer to students and parents to help ensure summer learning gain rather than loss.

Do you spend most of the fall reviewing what was taught last spring? Help prevent summer reading loss by finding out why it happens and encouraging family literacy while kids are at home for the summer.

Despite the need to use and develop their English-language proficiency, English-language learners (ELLs) are often quiet during classroom discussions. The Response Protocol was developed to help teachers elicit and support the oral interactions of ELL students.

Learn what reading fluency is, why it is critical to make sure that students have sufficient fluency, how we should assess fluency, and how to best provide practice and support for all students.

Screening, diagnosing, and progress monitoring are essential to making sure that all students become fluent readers — and the words-correct per-minute (WCPM) procedure can work for all three. Here's how teachers can use it to make well-informed and timely decisions about the instructional needs of their students.

Many kids lose ground during the summer months, especially those from low income families. Part of the problem is that many students don't have easy access to books. This article presents some suggestions for what schools can do.

Reading instruction does not need to stop when the bell rings. Using out-of-school time (OST) can be an effective way to boost academic skills while engaging students outside of the classroom. Education research lab McREL reviews effective afterschool and summer programs that focus on reading, and identifies the components that make them successful.

If you're a children's librarian who wants to promote an upcoming summer reading program at your public library, start by targeting the local schools. After all, that's where the children are.

The Committee for the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children has compiled detailed lists of literacy accomplishments for children of different ages. Find out what the typical child can do from birth through age three, from three to four, and in kindergarten, first, second, and third grades.

Having elementary school pupils read four or five books during the summer can prevent the reading achievement losses that normally occur over those months, a study suggests.

Research demonstrates that all students experience significant learning losses in procedural and factual knowledge during the summer months.

Many students lose the equivalent of one to two months of reading and math skills during the summer. This learning loss can have a long-term effect on their overall academic success.