Come Thursday afternoon, ANCS students will begin their summer break, and while I hope all of our students get an opportunity to spend time outside playing and exploring, go to camps, and maybe even do some traveling, the summer also provides lots of time for reading. In addition to all the books students might read on their own, every student at ANCS has some required reading for activities and discussion that will happen once the new school year begins on August 1st. Parents and caregivers, in case you missed them, here are the summer reading assignments:
For elementary campus students:
- Rising K – Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn
- Rising 1st – Me…Jane by Patrick McDonnell
- Rising 2nd – The Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig
- Rising 3rd – What Do You Do With a Problem? by Kobi Yamada
- Rising 4th – The Jacket by Andrew Clements
- Rising 5th – Wishtree by Katherine Applegate
For middle campus students:
There is a selection of books from which rising 6th, 7th, and 8th graders can choose. All of them can be found in this document put out by middle campus librarian Terri Linahan.
Not only do our students have a reading assignment for the summer, but I–and the rest of our teachers and staff–do too. Each summer, there is a common text that we all read to guide schoolwide professional learning in the coming school year. For the past several years, these texts have been focused on topics related to meeting the needs of diverse classrooms of students, and the books this summer continue that trend. Our teachers and staff will be reading Culturally Relevant Teaching & the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students by Zaretta Hammond and So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo. These books promise to spark important thinking and discussion, and ANCS parents and caregivers might find them interesting to read as well. If you do read one or both of these books (or have read them already), at some point in August, we’ll host a discussion about these books open to all in the community who have read them and want to explore the ideas in them with others. I hope you’ll consider reading one!
This will be my last blog post for the current school year; I’ll pick back up in August. However, we do have one final “Principles in Practice” newsletter which will come out in early June, and I’ll continue to post to Facebook and Twitter throughout the summer months. Thanks for reading!