Walking through local bookstores this time of year, you are sure to find a table devoted to required summer reading for students (and on that table you are also sure to find at least one book you yourself had to read for school some summer long ago). Of course, ANCS has its own summer reading lists for students, one for the elementary grades and another for middle school grades. There are many reasons schools put these types of lists together—to provide a common experience for students reading the same book, to help give context for entering into a curriculum once school begins—but maybe the most important reason is to encourage ongoing reading for students through months when school is not in session. Why? Because there are not many activities as beneficial to a person’s intellectual or social development as reading.
A recent opinion piece in the New York Times cited a range of research studies that support the importance of reading among young people. One of the lines from the essay that stood out to me: “reading and intelligence have a relationship so close as to be symbiotic.” At ANCS, we place great emphasis on literacy, incorporating some element of reading and writing into virtually every task students are asked to complete. Our students’ scores on standardized tests demonstrate that this approach can help students to gain the foundational literacy skills that will be important for them in school and beyond. Well over 90% of our 5th and 8th grade students met or exceeded standards on Georgia’s writing test, and on this year’s Reading portion of the Georgia CRCT, only 2 students out of the 457 students at our school in grades 3-8 did not pass the test and a higher percentage than ever before exceeded standards. And while I appreciate how frequent reading can influence students’ ability to score well on these tests, just as important to me (maybe even more so) are the ways in which I see reading help to spark new ideas and promote passionate discussions among students. One of my favorite moments as a teacher is when a student comes back to see me with a book I recommended to him or her, wanting to talk all about it.
So we know reading can be powerful and enjoyable for students. But what about that group of students for whom reading is not an activity to be relished? Often, these “reluctant readers” are targeted with goals and incentives to get them to read more books. The Georgia Department of Education is promoting a “summer reading challenge” aimed at getting Georgia’s students to read a certain number of books. I applaud the DOE for encouraging students to read, but I find setting goals to read increasing numbers of books to be a little misguided, and, the accompanying slide show on the DOE site–with ways parents can sit down with their students using their Lexile scores to find the right books–seems like a sure-fire way to extinguish any interest a reluctant reader might have in reading. At the very least, the DOE isn’t attaching prizes to how many books a student reads—that’s pretty clearly not the way to promote sustained reading. Sitting down and talking with students about their interests, looking at lists of recommended books for reluctant readers, talking about books we like and why—all of these are, in my opinion, much better ways to engage young people in reading for pleasure.
Along those lines, what are you reading this summer? I’m looking for suggestions beyond what I’ll be reading from the ANCS faculty/staff summer reading list (yep, we’ve got one too). Feel free to leave recommendations in the comments.
P.S.: With the school year ending, my weekly blog posts are going on hiatus until early August when school resumes. I’ll still make regular posts and share links of interest through my Facebook and Twitter accounts, so please follow those if you’d like. Thanks for reading these blog posts this school year. I hope they’ve been at least occasionally thought provoking.