From the Editors, with Derek Acorn & Janet MacLeod
It is not too early to make plans for initiatives to keep students engaged in activities that they will enjoy and profit from all summer long. A year ago we gathered ideas from across Canada and organized them in an article called Keep them Reading, Thinking and Making. In this article you will discover over 50 ideas and programs to inspire you to join in the bid to address the summer achievement gap for your students.
The Basics:
- Make use of your virtual school library learning commons.
- Partner with the local public library.
- Circulate books to students over the summer.
- Challenge readers to participate in deep thinking and making extensions.
- Utilize social media to communicate and engage students and build community.
- Communicate with parents and caregivers regarding summer programs available.
Leading the Way:
School library learning commons right across Canada are making plans for summer 2019. Last fall two teacher-librarians wrote articles for us providing details of their 2018 summer reading programs.
Using Tech and Social Media to Enhance Your Summer Reading Program by Derek Acorn
How We Ran a Teen Summer Book Club by Janet MacLeod
We went back to Derek and Janet and asked them to share with us what their plans are for 2019.
Update from Derek Acorn
We are excited to be launching the second annual Summer Reading Challenge at both of my schools. This year we are trying #10booksummer as our theme. We are challenging our students to read 10 books over summer holidays and to try and complete our Bingo card in the process.
Similar to last year, we are keeping the themes loose to allow for maximum flexibility. We are going to be using Padlet for students and staff to share our reading and Bingo activities within the school community. It allows for text, video, pictures and audio responses. We hope that this tool will be used frequently to create and maintain excitement about the program.
To improve on participation from last year we are getting the information out to families much sooner. We are also going to be doing tutorials with the students on how to use Padlet as well as providing families with instructions. Our other goal to improve participation was to engage staff more fully to help promote the Summer Reading Challenge and to participate along with the students. We will be presenting the program at our staff meeting and providing staff with resources to post in class.
We will also continue our use of Twitter to reach out to families over the summer and encourage them to participate. We will give reminders, book suggestions and links to the Padlet page in the weekly tweets.
We are looking forward to a great summer of reading.
Update from Janet MacLeod
Summer is Coming! Getting ready for our Teen Summer Book Club again!
Our downtown Hamilton public secondary school (HWDSB) closes this year and our students are moving to either a brand new school in the east or an established high school in the west of our city. It’s an exciting, bittersweet and nerve wracking time for many of our students, one would imagine. We thought a nice send off for our readers was one more year of the SJAM Teen Summer Book Club.
We are planning on running the club in a similar manner to the last couple of years: swag and books from generous publishers, challenges run over Twitter, Instagram and Facebook with a bag of supplies (given along with the books) to support them #maker style. We are using and reusing old items from our supply closet that would potentially otherwise be purged (decades old duct tape, donated scrapbook papers from our years running a Library Learning Commons Scrapbook Club, etc.), as well as a few items purchased from the dollar store.
We still need to reach out to our Hamilton Public Library people, but we hope to meet informally once in the summer to potentially swap books and connect with all that the public library has to offer to our downtown teens. Many of our students have already been asking about the club, but if we end up with any extra spaces, I hope to reach out to the Teacher-Librarians at the other two schools involved in the closure to see if any of their readers would like to join us.
Over to You:
- When you have your summer initiatives in place please share via Twitter. Be sure to tag @CdnSchoolLibrar in your post!
- Make use of the ‘Keep them Reading, Thinking and Making”badge on your virtual learning commons website and when sending out communications to your school library community.
- Consider keeping track of the difference your summer reading program makes on student reading engagement and learning readiness in the fall. Analyze the results and prepare a paper sharing your findings at TMC6. Consult the CSL Research Toolkit for support.
- Share articles and books on strategies to engage kids in learning over the summer such as this Mindshift short article Raising Kids Who Want To Read — Even During The Summer.
- Take a lead on closing the summer achievement gap for your school.
- Keep students reading, thinking, making and learning for fun all summer!
