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Benefits
Motivates kids to practice reading • Makes it easy for schools to track minutes by student, grade, and class
Ideas & Best Practices:
•
Start organizing your summer reading team early. Springtime can be a busy time with testing and other
schoolwide activities, so consult with your school or
district IT staff, parent volunteers, and other school staff to
spread out the effort.
•
Set a reading goal and post it for everyone to see.
•
Motivate students with a wacky stunt or a special privilege
if your school meets its goal.
•
Initiate a challenge among grade levels or with
another school.
•
Hold a summer reading pep rally to start generating
enthusiasm!
•
Send home information in your school’s summer reading
packet or with students’ report cards.
•
Check into keeping your school library open for the summer,
even if it’s one day a week.
Additional family programs to help readers of all ages and levels:
Parents and students at your
school can try this no-cost
program together. They’ll learn how
to be detectives by investigating
informational text in a fun,
interactive way. This program
shares strategies for finding
pertinent information in nonfiction
text by scrutinizing sources that
all family members will enjoy. For
more information, talk to your Book
Fair consultant.
Make the most of parent involvement.
Children who are read to for at
least 20 minutes a day dramatically
increase their reading abilities.
Raising Readers focuses on three
ways adult family members can read
to and with their children — “I READ
TO YOU, WE READ TOGETHER, AND
YOU READ TO ME.” This interactive
workshop models simple effective
ways for families to make the reading
experience successful.
Reach out to parents of rising
preschoolers with the Kindergarten
Readiness family event program.
Simply invite those families to
your Book Fair, introducing them
to your school and its reading
culture. Then share preschool-
to-kindergarten transition tips
plus curriculum, class routine,
teacher’s expectations, and pre-
reading skills information.
Summer Reading
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EXCITEMENT
For Summer Reading how-to and
reproducible reading logs, certificates,
and flyers, look in the Toolkit. Fair Files
keyword:
SUMMER READING
The READ
100,000 and
Scholastic Summer
Reading Challenge
websites feature a dash-
board for educators to
manage classes and
track reading
progress.