Summer Reading Excitement!
A MiddleWeb Resource Roundup
I think that if teachers are going to assign us books to read over the Summer or something then they should at least take the time to make it somewhat oh what’s the word yeah, FUN!! If they don’t it leaves kids with a feeling of not liking to read which I don’t agree with because I love to read, but all you need is an exciting or good book to really get you going! All I’m saying is READING SHOULD BE FUN FOR EVERYONE!!! (Mepride) What Kids Can Do, from a 2005 YALSA collection
Teachers have labored to enliven summer reading for decades. Writing in an NCTE quarterly in 1997, Florida middle school ELA teacher Gloria Pipkin observed, “There may be a handful of students who can’t wait to tackle our scintillating assignments on their summer vacation, but for the most part, summer reading assignments are regarded as a plague and a pox, even by avid readers, who much prefer choosing their own books.”
Why, Pipkin wondered, “don’t we devote some time during the last couple of weeks of school to promoting real summer reading? Not mandating or requiring or assigning but encouraging it.” Pipkin, who wrote books for Heinemann and edited for Scholastic in the 2000’s, offered a long list of suggestions to catch kids’ attention. Among them: Have students write brochures of recommendations, like the one her students wrote on “Beach Books.” (These days the brochures might become blog posts.) She also suggested using high-interest books as prizes for recognition assemblies. Teachers might reveal favorite reads from their own middle grades days. Or prepare annotated book recommendations by genre (with audio selections thrown in where available at local libraries).
High school librarian and NeverEnding Search blogger Joyce Valenza recently discovered a teacher librarian who is just as determined to help make summer reading a hit with students in the 21st century as Gloria Pipkin was in the 1990’s. Using iBooks Author and Bookry, Elissa Malespina worked with her colleagues at South Orange (NJ) Middle School to develop Choices Summer Reading, an attractive 33-page “book” that offers summer reading choices across a range of fiction & nonfiction genres. (Click on the Expand button in the book icon and then click through the book’s pages to see how up-to-the-minute graphics and succinct summaries can draw in young readers.)
Writing from her 5th grade classroom, Pernille Ripp shares her ideas for Helping Students Find Great Books Over the Summer Break. Her goal: a huge list from which students can choose freely. Among her methods: Skyping reading suggestions with other classrooms, checking Scholastic trailers, getting suggestions through her Twitter survey, and book speed dating. She links to Colby Sharp’s book speed dating blog post on selecting books for quick looks and how his 4th graders browse in a hurry.
Teachers will find more suggestions for building summer reading enthusiasm in a 2011 Scholastic blog post by Mary Blow. She shares ideas for promoting summer reading. In addition to providing family-friendly links about summer academic slide, she includes ways to avoid a slippage in reading skills both in fiction (series books can help less proficient readers) and in nonfiction. Blow also touches on poetry, myth, and folklore. She suggests having students read aloud to younger friends or the elderly as community service. Blow concludes with ideas for professional and general reading for teachers.
Books They’ll Go For
Do you have students who are “reading ahead” and are searching for books written for high schoolers? At YALSA’s Hub, Erin Bush discusses Cross-Unders – teen books attractive to tween readers – and offers an annotated list including Spacer and Rat by Margaret Bechard and The Gallagher Girls series by Ally Carter.
What happens when kids select their own books? Librarian Travis Jonker has tallied the Top 10 Circulated Books of 2013 for 3rd and 4th graders at his elementary school in Michigan. All ten are nonfiction. Jonker, who blogs at School Library Journal and is a member of the 2014 Caldecott Award committee, plans to compile lists for his other grades, too, as the school year winds down. Fifth & sixth grade lists should be available soon.
For more reading recommendations for 4th grade (and younger), visit Reading Rockets, a project of WETA, and its 2013 Big Summer Read. Their brief, lively write-ups for ages 6-9 feature fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Highlights include ninja meerkats and punctuation marks with personality. Not to mention Iditarod dogs and Albert Einstein. Reading Rockets is also a great place to check for lists of award winning children’s books.
Of course, Reading Rockets goes beyond lists to help teachers and parents build kids’ interest in reading. Get Ready for Summer! Ideas for Teachers to Share with Families includes a lengthy list of family-friendly resources, including free children’s books online, interactive educational sites, and other resources to encourage literacy. A quick check of random links yielded a few dead ones. Students who want to get a look at their favorite authors can visit Reading Rockets’ brief video interviews.
To give students a global take on reading, introduce them to the International Children’s Digital Library. The website, started by the University of Maryland and now run by the ICDL Foundation, leads children to books in many languages. Elementary and middle school children will likely enjoy being turned loose on the site filled with online books in many languages, some with several translations. But you may want to show them all the search possibilities: book length, age, topic, genre, setting, shape (! ) and much more. Students can register for free to keep up with their reading or just drop by to browse. The Teacher Training Manual suggests ways to use the site during the school year.
Students who are hankering for online classics, written in English or in English translation, can visit the Library of Congress for Kids Read or Teens Read. Both pages also link to book lists. Teens are treated to author videos.
Nonfiction, anyone? Writing in School Library Journal, Kathleen Odean suggests nonfiction books rather than excerpts help students grasp deeper learning as required by the Common Core State Standards. Her annotated list of 20 lively reads has offerings for every age.
More Lists
For an easy handout or website feature, check out the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) Summer Reading List K-8 brochures, which you can personalize. Available in color or black & white, the PDF’s feature books predominately published in the 2000’s. You may want to remind students that they can also enjoy the summer exploring all the super websites at the ALSC’s Great Websites for Kids.
Want more lists of award winning books? Don’t miss the Cybils selected by KidLitosphere Central: The Society of Bloggers in Children’s and Young Adult Literature. The 2012 winners, announced in early 2013, join lists going back to 2006 arranged by genre and age. KidLitosphere also hosts hundreds of book reviews collected from a variety of sources, organized by author and by title.
And here’s another list, the 2013 CLA/NCTE Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts. The Children’s Literature Assembly, an affiliate of the NCTE, selects 30 books for grades K-8 which meet high standards in language and style, encourage reader participation, and represent their genre’s benchmarks. The archive of winners reaches back to 1997.
Students may want to check out 20th and 21st century novels via the silver screen this summer. Not only The Great Gatsby but also Judy Bloom’s Tiger Eyes (1971) and more recent books from Rick Riordan and Cassandra Clare will venture into the multiplex in coming months. School Library Journal rounds up these and many more in Page to Screen: Summer Reading Blockbusters, Dystopian Teen Lit, and Childhood Classics, an article by Shelley Diaz.
Online Student Reading Challenges
Students can tackle nonfiction – news, features, essays, and more – this summer via the NYT Learning Network’s fourth Summer Reading Contest starting in mid-June. But kids must be 13 and over to submit favorite reads to the NYTLN contest (COPPA requirement). To get a suggestion for using a similar program with younger students, check the comments section of the article. Students can access NYT content through Learning Network links – and there are lots of them – at no cost. And the Times still has its ten-free-articles-a-month policy in its tiered subscription system.
Like some public library summer programs such as those based on the Collaborative Summer Library Program, Scholastic encourages kids to keep a log – online – of time spent reading as part of its 2013 Summer Challenge. Teachers or the kids themselves can register. Scholastic offers long lists of books arranged by age. And there’s the possibility of prizes for ardent readers. Teachers will find articles and other materials to help build student engagement.
Photo credit: Bogart the Cat by Elaine Vigneault
