Summer Reading

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Summer Reading

“Literacy Informational” (background knowledge)

Summer Loss and Good Practice Research (Allington, 2012)

At-home Strategies

Literacy Informational

Literacy Related Terms

Readability - the degree of struggle a reader will encounter when engaging with a particular text complexity.

Accuracy - word-recognition and fluency.

Comprehension - understanding of the text.

Independent Level

The level of text complexity at which an individual can read without any assistance. 

98% accuracy and or at least 90% comprehension.

Homework, pleasure, learning new information, etc.

Instructional Level

The level of text complexity at which an individual can read with assistance.

95% to 97% accuracy and 60% to 70% comprehension.

In guided reading groups, F&P level, with adult assistance, etc.

Frustration Level

The level of text complexity at which an individual struggles with both word recognition and comprehension.

Less than 90% accuracy and less than 50% comprehension.

Instruction using frustration level texts is typically avoided.

Good for Read Alouds!

Summer Reading Research

Every day every child…

Will read something they have selected.

Will read something accurately.

Will read something they understand.

Will write something that is meaningful. Will talk to peers about their reading and writing.

Will listen to a fluent adult read aloud.     

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Read something they selected

Choice had a large effect size in the Guthrie and Humenick meta-analysis of research on improving comprehension.

Adults typically read texts they choose, not texts that they were assigned.

When will kids learn how to choose books if we offer only teacher-selected (or parent-selected) texts?

Reads something accurately

Reading at 98%+ accuracy is essential for reading acceleration. (Reading with independence)

Recently Ehri and her colleagues noted that volume of high-success reading (98%+ accuracy) explained which primary grade students exhibited accelerated reading growth.

O’Conner and colleagues did the same with 6th graders.

Adds to 60+ years of research on optimal text difficulty (Betts, 1946).

Read Something They Understand

High-success reading is essential to developing oral reading fluency.

It is one reason why rereading texts multiple times has been demonstrated successful at improving fluency.

But extensive high-success reading produces similar fluency gains but greater vocabulary and comprehension improvement (Kuhn, 2006).

Read Something They Understand

Reading without comprehension is simply word calling, not reading.

It also produces no reading growth.

Push for more frequent independent level reading at home

At-Home Strategies

Tips for Early Readers

Point out print in the child’s environment: on cereal boxes, food labels, toys, restaurants, and traffic signs.

Sing songs, say short poems or nursery rhymes, and play rhyming words games with your child.

Tell stories to your child.

Read aloud to your child. Point to the words on the page as you read.

Tips for Early Readers

Read a short passage several times to your child until your child can read it with you. Then encourage your child to read the passage to you.

Encourage older children to read with younger children.

Encourage your child to read (or pretend read) to you. Make this reading enjoyable. Don’t worry if your child does not read all of the words correctly but, rather, applaud your child’s efforts to read.

Go to the library together.

Tips for Early Readers

Have books, magazines, and newspapers around the house. Let your child see you reading.

Encourage your child to write messages such as grocery lists, to-do lists, postcards, or short messages to family members or friends. Don’t worry about conventional spelling at this point but, rather, encourage your child’s first efforts at authorship.

When watching television, have the captioning feature enabled so that the children view the words while hearing them performed aloud.

Tips For More Advanced readers

Talk to your child about what he or she is reading. Ask open-ended questions such as “What do you think about that story?” “What would you have done if you were that character?”

Make reading and writing a regular part of your daily home activities. Let your child see you using reading and writing for real purposes.

Tips For More Advanced readers

Visit the public library. Help your child to get his or her own library card.

Read to your child regularly, even after your child is able to read some books independently.

Listen to your child read. Use strategies to help your child with tricky words. For example, when your child comes to an unfamiliar word, you might say, “Skip it and read to the end of the sentence. Now try again—what makes sense and looks like the word that you see?”

Tips For More Advanced readers

Praise your child’s efforts at reading.

Play word games such as thinking of different words to describe the same things.

Support your child’s writing. Have writing materials such as paper, markers, and pencils available. Read what your child writes.

Set reasonable limits for television viewing.

Find the books

Scholastic Book Wizard

Website

App

Lexile levels

See Literacy Informational

Make It FUN!Lotto

Hangman

Scrabble (Jr.)

Make your own comic books

Write a sequel to a book

Screen-time options

HFW games (sight word games)

Make your own story

Alphabet games

Questions?