With summer in full swing, parents, teachers, and experts across the nation worry about the famous ‘summer learning slide,’ that happens when kids are away from classrooms. When it comes to grade level reading (something we think about a lot here at Foundations), research shows that young children who live in poverty are especially prone to lose reading skills during summer, which they are forced to make up during the following school year—at the same time as they are responsible for learning new content.
While it is true that playing video games in the basement from dawn to dusk does little to support children’s learning, there are lots of other activities kids are naturally drawn toward that can help them read and write in the summer months. Yet, most of the summer resources I have seen this year focus on print books. Getting our children in the habit of reading books for pleasure early on is critical to building the strong literacy skills that will help them build successful lives. However, we need to broaden our idea of what reading for pleasure looks like, especially in summer, when play and hands-on learning is what kids are all about.
Aside from a trip to the library, what about a trip to your own PC? Having kids pick out a few blogs or frequently updated sites and then setting a time each day when they read the sites is a great way to get kids excited about reading (and away from the X-box). If the goal is simply getting kids to enjoy reading, old standbys like newspapers and comic books can count too. The literacy site Reading Rockets is also hosting a Write It, Film It video contest for kids, which is based on the equally cool Exquisite Corpse Adventure.
It will be interesting to see if and how the Kindle is used by classroom teachers and parents to get kids reading in the future. Sites like Edukindle.com are paving the way.
