Tonya Runnels
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What types of things can we do in the summer to maintain or even gain in our reading abilities?
There is little doubt that students can lose a huge amount of fluency and accuracy over the 75 days of summer vacation. It is important that children see the value in continuing to read and that they see reading is important to their family. More importantly, reading over the summer needs to be seen as a postive reward, not something we need to finish so we can move on to a more enjoyable activity.
*Make reading a MUST-DO daily activity!!!
*Subscribe to a magazine that your child would enjoy.
*Make the library your favorite destination!
*Play reading and word games. One of my favorites is SLAM! from the makers of Scrabble.
*Have your child keep a graph of the minutes read. After 60 minutes they can choose a treat!
*Ask your child questions as they read. Reading is more than just sitting with a book. We want to make sure they are visualizing, inferrring, and making connections with what they read.
*Ask your child's teacher if there are sight words for the next grade level. Practice the words.
*Start a book club with some friends and discuss the book.
*Check out the dadcando.com website. This site has directions for fun activities and experiments to do together.
*READ! It is so important for students to return to school with a reading level that is at or better than the level they left with. It takes teachers months to help children regain their reading level-those that did read over the summer keep moving on!