Overcoming the “summer slide” : students and reading mileage, summer holidays and the school library

The “summer slump” or “summer slide” is the decline in reading achievement children suffer just from being away from school and formal literacy instruction. Sadly it is often the students who can least afford to lose the reading gains they've achieved during the school year who fall the furthest behind when they return to school after a summer break. A New Zealand masters thesis showed a 5.8 month summer reading slide for pupils in a Decile 1 school who were reading at below-average levels. In a key Baltimore study it was found that low-income children fell further behind than their classmates – characterised as the “the Harry Potter divide”, and that the effects are cumulative and long-term.

Here we are at the end of Term 4, just in time to consider what strategies your school can implement for the coming holiday to mitigate any “summer slide”.

Perhaps the two main actions to consider are :

1. Getting parents on board, informing / reminding them of the powerful benefits for children of reading and being read to, and that even just 10 minutes reading a day by or to children will maintain / develop their child’s reading skills, habit and enthusiasm. The message could be spread in newsletters, prizegivings, notices in with reports, signs in the school foyer, at every opportunity.

2. Looking at ways to get books in hands / homes during the holidays and what role the school library or the resource room might play in this – e.g. borrowing over the holidays, as well as liaison with the public library to encourage membership and use.

There are other strategies, such as:

making sure children have the skills to choose reading material independently
building some fun writing activities into their summer reading programme
or setting challenges – individual, class and school targets for reading mileage.

It would also be productive to gather evidence of the impact of any initiative you take.

Perhaps the discussion at your school could also include an invitation / challenge to teachers to extend their own summer reading of children’s books – getting to know fantastic resources that they can promote to their students next year, read aloud, incorporate into their teaching programme.

Check out the National Library’s Reading at the Beach programme for teachers, and of course, this Create Readers blog for recommended titles, or contact your Library Adviser for more ideas.

References:
1. An investigation of the effectiveness of a summer school reading intervention in a low decile school as a way of preventing the summer slide in reading, Shanthi Tiruchittampalam, University of Auckland, MEd thesis 2006
2. Lasting Consequences of the Summer Learning Gap Karl L. Alexander, Doris R. Entwisle, Linda Steffel Olson, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore in American Sociological Review, 2007, Vol. 72 (April:167–180)

Contributed by Jeannie Skinner

Sliding Dog by fd on Flickr