Bye-Bye Summer Reading Blues

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Bye-Bye Summer Reading Blues

September 3, 2010

Edinger

teacher, writer, and blogger at educating alice

Posted: September 3, 2010 08:12 AM

Bye-Bye Summer Reading Blues

School supplies purchased? Check.

Summer reading done?

First day outfit selected? Check.

Summer reading done?

One last cookout? Check.

Summer reading done?

Found assigned book under the bed and read it at the last possible moment?

Check.

All ready for the first day of school? Check.

Long summer breaks from school can be wonderful --- they give all the players a

chance to do something different, to take a break from the regimens and demands

of formal teaching and learning. Formal because summer can still be a time of

learning, just not one that involves tests and grades and high-stakes

assessments. And one of the most familiar forms of summer learning is summer

reading. Concerned about children returning to school with weaker reading skills

than when they left, the so-called reading slump, educators have developed a

variety of solutions. They assign single books to read, ask children to read one

from a list of books, or even just say they can read any book they want as long

as they read something.

Sounds sensible doesn't it? Well, not necessarily. Here are some of the problems

I've encountered:

* The assigned book contains upsetting material. It is one thing to read

such a book together while in school and there is a teacher to support the

students as they understand it, quite another to ask them to read it completely

on their own and then perhaps write about it or talk about it briefly when back

in school. I am saddened when I see complaints about summer reading books of

this sort because I feel that they are accidents waiting to happen. That is,

they are books that are complicated, the kind that kids need to process with

adults, they should be in classrooms and they should be read. Just not as a

summer reading book, I think.

* The small list of books contains not a single title that is of interest to

the child. This may not be a problem for avid readers, but for kids who are just

turning into readers when the summer begins I'm sure nothing is worse than

having to read, before school begins, a book that looks long and boring. I can

only imagine these kids going through the motions of reading, but getting little

out of the book except a whole lot of misery.

* Finally, there is what happens when the kids go back to school. Some

teachers do something of substance with these assigned books, but unfortunately

others do very little. They may ask the kids to write something briefly about

the book they read, discuss it briefly the first day, or actually they may not

even acknowledge it. This creates a cynical attitude on the part of the kids

that does nothing to help them when they are assigned another book to read the

next summer.

I should say (if it isn't clear already) that I am not a fan of assigned summer

reading. Those who love to read will read without any requirements from me and

they will read what they want to read, not what I think they should read. Those

who don't like to read are the worry, the reason for assigned reading in the

first place and my feeling is that these kids need something very personal and

very open --- their schools and teachers need to set up a way for them to want

to read over the summer.

Those with involved parents and sensitive schools can be helped with individual

programs. I've done this with my own students --- working with them to find

reading material for the summer that appeals (and this can be nonfiction,

comics, magazines, as well as fiction), set them up to be in touch with me about

the reading, perhaps encourage them to read together with their parents, and so

forth. The bigger concern are those children without such individual school and

home support. Summer reading programs that give these kids books, ideally

whatever books they want, strike me as the best option. My favorite of these

programs is the venerable First Books, a wonderful organization that has long

seen the value in kids both selecting and owning their own books. A new report

supports this idea. One of the report's researchers, Allington of the

University of Tennessee, noted that, " Spending roughly $40 to $50 a year on free

books for each child began to alleviate the achievement gap that occurs in the

summer. "

For children who have been in school for a few weeks, the summer reading

situation is long behind them, but I suspect that many whose first day of school

is still to come, are celebrating Labor Day by laboring away, working and

working to finish that assigned summer reading book.