Celebrating Six Years of CSL Summer Reading Campaigns!
By Carol Koechlin
All year long school library professionals work very hard to build the reading habit with students in their schools.They promote the joys and benefits of independent reading with students, staff and parents through creative displays, newsletters, book tastings, booktalks, read-alouds and many other reading initiatives. We urge you not to stop now that summer is approaching. We know that independent reading has many benefits for students during the school year so keep the benefits rolling over the summer.
We applaud the schools where school library professionals have chosen to “set books free “ for the summer. Please read a TMC8 research paper in this issue where Kelly Johnson shares her experiences over the past four years, Set The Books Free: Compelling reasons why your school library should embrace summer lending as a stand for equity. Kelly states that all of the schools cited in her research over the span of two summer lending sessions, losses have proven statistically insignificant at less than 1%. So no need to worry about lost books. That is a myth. Kelly also found that engagement is high among the students invited to participate. What more could you wish for?
Setting up a summer reading program is highly recommended but here are some other ways we suggest you can extend reading joy for your students this summer.
- Utilize the school library virtual site to connect students to lots of good ebooks, authors, reviews etc.
- Invite the local public library to inform students about access to reading and other programs all summer long.
- Create a newsletter for your school community informing them of the need to keep their children reading, thinking and making to avoid the “summer slide”.
- Share The Summer Reading Toolkit for parents designed by the Ontario Library Association to help caregivers help their kids through the summer months.
- 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 report for your school and/or a paper sharing your findings at TMC9. Consult the CSL Research Toolkit for support.
- Use CSL summer reading badges in your promotions (Available for download at the bottom of this article).
- Share your Extend Reading Joy initiatives, strategies and results on social media so we can all benefit from each other’s work and ideas. (Bluesky Social, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X)
- Celebrate the joys of summer reading with your students!
Check out these articles previously published in CSL Journal and the CSL website for lots of ideas to make summer reading work for your school and position the school library learning at the centre of reading literacy and school wide improvement.
- Support Student Reading Over the Summer
- It’s Time to Set your Books Free for the Summer
- Keep students reading, thinking and making to address the summer achievement gap
- Read some testimonials from CSL Journal publications:
Introduce students staff and caregivers to summer reading programs:
- Scholastic Canada Summer Reading
- Canadian Summer Reads from Simon & Schuster
- TD Summer Reading Club Recommended Reads
- CNIB / TD Summer Reading Club
- First Book Canada Raptors 905 Reading Challenge
Download and use any or all of these CSL Summer Reading badges, created over the past six years, to promote summer reading at your school!
Carol Koechlin was a founding member of the CSL Board of Directors, and served as Vice-Chair. She is an experienced educator who has contributed to the field of information literacy and school librarianship writing professional books, articles for professional journals, facilitating on-line courses, and presenting workshops in Canada, United States and Australia. Working with Dr. David V.Loertscher, the team has developed foundations for the transformation of school libraries and computer labs into a Physical and Virtual participatory Learning Commons. Carol is a co-founder of Treasure Mountain Canada (TMC) and has co-chaired TMC Symposiums since 2010. Carol was a contributing writer for Together for Learning: School Libraries and the Emergence of the Learning Commons and writing coordinator for Leading Learning: Standards Of Practice For School Library Learning Commons In Canada. Carol’s favourite saying, “Empower students to own the question.”