Does summer reading matter?

If you have been reading this blog you know that we were pretty committed to making sure that our kids read this summer.  Since we were looping our class from kindergarten to first grade, we knew we would have most of the children again this year so we had a vested interest in their reading over the summer.  My co-teacher, Tracy Ruark, and I mailed postcards and letters to the students and e-mailed pictures of ourselves reading all summer (that's me reading to the grands).   My co-teacher took pictures all over NC of herself reading The Wizard of Oz (which is our school theme this year), that I enjoyed as much as the kids! We sent personal responses to children that sent us personal mail and e-mail and made sure to write when students reached milestones in their reading, also noting it on the classroom blog.  Our class logged over 26,000 minutes of summer reading!

So... here are the results of our summer reading commitment.  Twenty-four  of our kindergartners returned to us for first grade.  Three of those students went to ELL summer school for support and three of the students attended Summer Camp at our school.  In addition to those six, ten others made a commitment at home to reading by logging hours into Scholastic.com's summer program and read for over 1500 minutes - the Principal's requirement for getting a prize when they returned to school.

Of the three who attended ELL Summer School, all maintained and two improved their end-of the year reading levels.  One jumped a single level and one jumped two levels.  It has been my experience that these students often drop back a level over the summer so this is especially encouraging.

Of the three that attended Camp at our school - a camp that made a commitment to summer reading, two maintained their levels and one jumped  three reading levels!  The student that jumped the three levels also read significantly at home, logging into Scholastic!

Of the ten that committed to reading at home, every single child jumped at least one level!  Five children jumped a single level.  Two jumped two levels; two jumped three levels and one child actually jumped FOUR reading levels! The child that jumped the four levels was also the child that won our class prize for logging the most minutes into the Scholastic system.  So... of the 16 that actively participated in summer reading - all maintained or jumped levels and some jumped significantly.  I knew the summer reading would make a difference, but we have never before had these outstanding results as we returned to school.

This is the first year ever that we haven't had a single student fall back a level over the summer, so it seems that  the Principal's summer challenge, along with Scholastic.com,, Summer School and Summer Camp and even our correspondences with the students over the summer were the deciding  factors.  What an encouraging start to the new year!

The Summer Slide

This summer I have a looping class which means that the children I taught in kindergarten will loop up with me to first grade. Although there is always some natural attrition- parents separate and divorce and move away, parents are transferred, families move back home- about two-thirds of the class end up staying for the second year. I've looped classes before and one of the things that I have seen over and over is what is now being described by Richard Allington as the "summer slide."  It's simple. Children that don't read over the summer most often fall back a reading level when they are tested at the beginning of the new school year and those that read regularly, often visiting the public library weekly, move ahead a level. As you can imagine, the students that fall back are often those that are already behind.

So this year our Leadership Team thought they'd try to do something about it. Reading Allington's research is all it really took to light a fire under this Team. . Before I knew it, our media specialist had met with the Scholastic rep and designed an online summer reading program. She met with teachers and encouraged them to get kids logging in the last week of school. Several of our children were on the computer logging in the minutes they had read that very night. Of course, as you might expect, the students that were first to log on are also the ones that are already ahead and whose families  already furnish a rich language experience in their daily lives.

The challenge has always been how to encourage the others. Fortunately this program offered handouts in Spanish which helped many of my second language learners understand the expectation.  It even provided a paper version that the students could hand in at the end of the summer for those that don't have computer access. We were fortunate to have the Principal's support so she has offered a "prize" to any student that logs in 1500 minutes during the summer. We have pushed summer school teachers at our school and the two camp leaders that meet at our school to become involved.

Now I need to take responsibility for inspiring my own students and keep them reading throughout the summer.  My goal is to have 100% of the students log in at least once during the summer or to bring me a list of minutes at the end of the summer - no small task. This week I sent a personal post card to every student who has already logged in to congratulate them on their summer reading.  I am hoping to start an exchange with those students to encourage them to not only read, but to write.

I sent a letter to those that haven't logged on yet, urging them to give the program a try and sending them their user name and password again and a log sheet just in case they haven't logged in because they don't have computer access.  Now this will be the third time I have sent this information on how to log in, but I figure if their parents keep seeing it, they might decide that it's important.  And besides most of these students (and their parents) will have to face me again in the fall! I don't know if this extra effort will really pay off but I certainly believe it will. In two weeks I will be sending encouraging emails - instead of using the postal service - and then two weeks after that I thought I'd start sending selfies of me reading at home, in the car, at the beach, to my grand kids, and every other way I can think to read.  I'd do a headstand while reading but I can't do a headstand! I  am hoping the children will begin to send me selfies back of them reading!  Can't wait to see if this eliminates the summer slide in my returning students!

Summer Activities to help get ready for Second Grade

I work with amazing colleagues and one of those is Carrie McLeod, a second grade teacher.  She put together this incredible list of Internet games and worksheets for children to use over the summer to warm up to second grade!  Enjoy!

Summer training?

I just sat through two days of professional development. The trainer was actually really good - very knowledgeable with classroom experience, good pacing. The problem was that the content, Reading Mastery, is something I've probably had a half dozen times in my career as a Special Education teacher. "Someone" decided that this year in order to get supplies to teach that teachers in my county would have to go through training in order to get their materials-regardless of how many times they had already had the training. Who makes these decisions? This is the same training whether you have never taught Reading Mastery or whether you have been teaching it for 20 years! Most of the teachers in my group these last two days were seasoned and had taught the program. They were there for the same reason I was. They wanted to have materials to teach their children on the day school started. They didn't want to wait until school was in session for a month, set up a training and miss days of instruction, and then wait for the materials to come until... maybe Christmas! Sure, there's a new Reading Mastery edition so the pictures are in color now and they've added a few new pieces, I'm sure to align with state requirements, but two days of summer vacation - just to have materials to teach on the first day. The truth is I have gotten a little rusty on the Reading Mastery signals and connection procedures over the years but that's because I haven't actually taught my own small groups of Reading Mastery in the past ten years. I have one of the most masterful paraprofessionals in our building teaching my groups, so I sat through the training knowing that I will never use one second of the program! But my para needs materials so we can start interventions on day one. The children are already behind. We don't have a moment to lose!

The parts of the program were ordered in bulk, so regardless of your needs, one size fits all and everybody gets the same thing. Efficient, I guess, if you are the person ordering and I suppose you get a better price if you order all the same pieces for everyone but how many pieces will sit on shelves and gather dust because teachers know they will not use specific pieces. I, like almost every teacher sitting in the room today, made a decision as the trainer described each piece we would be getting if we would use the piece or never plan to open it. If I had had the chance to customize my order for my needs, there are certainly pieces I would have omitted. I never plan to use them. However, there is a vocabulary piece where we are getting the Teacher's Guide but not the books that make it possible to teach the program. Many of the books may be ones that you might be able to find - if you take all that additional time to find them - but for me, it would have been a perfect supplemental program for a group of second language Special Education students. It's based on the same research of Beck and McKeown that Text Talk is based on which we use to supplement the Core with our general education students. I guess it's the waste - and the trees - that bother me so much - and the waste of taxpayer money and, of course, the waste of my own time... on my "vacation." As much as I love professional development and learning something new, this was my idea of how NOT to do PD!