3 Summer Reading Challenge Strategies for Kids [episode 73]

Kelsey

You are listening to episode number 73 of wife teacher mommy the podcast three Summer Reading Challenge strategies for kids want to help your students or your own kids avoid the summer slide. A summer reading challenge is one great way to do that. And if you use these three tips that I’m about to tell you, the kids will love it.

Kelsey

Welcome to wife, teacher mommy the podcast. I’m Kelsey Sorensen, a former elementary teacher and current homeschool mom. And even though I’ve been a resource creator since 2014, I’ve realized that printables alone aren’t all you need in order to thrive as a teacher or homeschool parent. That’s why I also created this show and got certified as a life coach to help you finally kick burnout to the curb and feel competent with whatever challenges come your way. With the right mindset strategies and new teaching inspiration. You’re going to be well on your way to your best teacher life. Now let’s go

Kelsey

I know we are still in April. But I am so ready for summer. I don’t know about you. I bet you are too. And I know I mentioned this in previous episodes, but we have had the longest winter here in Utah that we have had in years. And I we finally had some amazing weather the past week. And it’s just been so nice. It’s actually cooled down a little bit. But we’re headed down to Southern Utah this weekend to see my in laws. So we’re going to be in like 70 degree weather and I just cannot wait for that. Summer is definitely my favorite time of year. Sometimes I feel like I live in the wrong place. So Mike, like maybe we need to move to like Arizona or something. So we’re still close to family. But we get the warmer weather. That’s what I love. Anyways, today we are talking about summer reading. Because as you know, there are so many fun things that we love to do over the summer, we love to soak up the sun, we you know, we and our students get a break from the regular school routine, our students or our children will be spending time swimming, playing outside getting together with friends roaming the neighborhood and so much more. But we also want to try to help them avoid the summer slide that often happens when kids go like for, say three months without instruction. And so it’s great to spend obviously more time soaking up that son enjoying that summer. But there is a lot of learning loss that can happen when they’re not engaging their minds for three months. And according to the National Summer Learning Association, the average student loses about 39% of their total school year gains during each summer. Now that is crazy, isn’t it. However, one way that you can help combat this is by encouraging children to read over the summer, that will especially help with their reading skills, comprehension. And they can also learn a lot from the materials that they’re reading, too. So today, we’re going to talk about three strategies. And then how you can use all three of those combined together to create a summer reading challenge that will make kids excited about reading over the summer. So this is going to help both school teachers and parents also because you are a parent, you can be doing this with your children at home. And that is what I plan on doing with my kids this summer. I want to make sure that we enjoy this summer, but also that we’re reading and having a lot of fun with it. And you can even like read the book outside like I mean, that’s what I love to do as a grown up and I plan on coming out with my kids and reading together out in the sun. Just a great time. But if you are a school teacher, you can still use this because you could talk to the children about it or put together a summer reading challenge that you send home with your students. It’s kind of a good send off like ending the school year and then being like, Hey, this is how you can kind of keep things going over the summer. So this will be helpful either way. Okay, so engagement strategy number one is to encourage children to read a variety of texts through the summer, especially in a summer reading challenge. So I find a lot of children, my kids to tend to pick kind of the same type of books all the time and actually my son who’s in third grade right now he loves graphic novels, and they know that is very common. But just today actually, shortly before recording this podcast is like you know, Parker, we really need to start reading some chapter books more and he’s like, will you sign a chapter book same chapters like well, they are but let’s try something else. And you know, at first he was like, I don’t know he was kind of like dragging his feet about it. But I was like, Okay, let’s just set a timer for 20 minutes, you can do it for 20 minutes. And guess what that timer went off. And he wanted to keep on reading that book. And I was so excited and so proud of him for doing that. And you know, sometimes as a teacher, we know when to challenge our students a little bit. And obviously, our kids have their preferences, but it’s nice to help them kind of step outside that box. Like even, for example, not even related to reading, but I knew that this would likely be this way with my son, because recently, my younger children were participating in this neighborhood play. And my oldest, he wasn’t sure about doing it, but like, I’m just going to encourage you to audition. And so he did. And then he got in. I mean, everybody did, but and they accepted him. And he was like, I’ll just go to practices, I’m not sure if I want to do it. I’m like, okay, that’s okay. So we started going, and then he was like, Mom, I’m really Mom and Dad, I’m really glad you made me audition for that play, he ended up having so much fun. So this is a way to kind of be like, Hey, let’s branch out a little bit, and they’ll discover new types of books that they will love. So one way I like to do this is one first, obviously, you have to offer a variety of texts to give them those choices. So if you’re a teacher, you could put together a list of like the different genres, or actual titles of books that you would recommend like that are from different genres. If you are a parent, you can obviously you know, either order books on Amazon that are from a variety of genres, or you know, visit your local library, and check out books so they have options to read, the one thing you can do is encourage them reading a variety of textbook within that let them choose like with chapter books, I let him choose what chapter book he wanted to read, I was like what books sounds really interesting to you. And he ended up picking one that one of his friends was enjoying. So within that framework, still give them choice, because when kids get autonomy in their learning, it gets them more engaged in it. And we what we don’t want to do what we want to avoid is, you know, making students feel like reading is a chore we want, I can’t stress enough how important it is to help children learn to love reading, and that we are there to just help them find other types of texts that they will love to. And no matter the book, there’s something to be learned from it. So allowing children to select text within, you know, this broad framework of maybe you want to read like you know, a chapter book or you want them to try out some like historical fiction or some you know, nonfiction, maybe they’re only reading novels, like a broad category. Let’s try this type of book or the reading nonfiction. What is it they want to learn about? Do they want to learn about lizards? That was one of my kids a couple of years ago, we had just actually gone down to my in laws, and they’re like in the desert and we see lizards. So then they’re like, I want to learn about lizards like, okay, let’s find a book about it. So you can still within those genres, let them pick. So having, making sure they’re reading a variety, but then within that variety they get to choose. Okay, so a variety of texts to choose from is engagement strategy number one. Now, engagement. Strategy number two is setting goals with a summer reading challenge. So goals can be very motivating for anyone but especially children, and especially when you help them set their own goals. And this is important because as we discussed in the last engagement strategy, autonomy is a huge motivator for kids, when they get to make choices, and have some say in their learning. They love that when we can help children set reasonable goals for themselves, they will be more motivated to try to reach them. And a Reading Challenge is a great way to help students get summer reading goals. So just like children’s favorite sports, or their favorite video games, a reading challenge will give students something to work towards. And this could be a Summer Reading Challenge at a local library or even a family challenge. But another thing you could do is what we have like in our Summer Reading Challenge, like if you were a member of wife, teacher, mommy club, go to the members library and type in summer reading challenge or you can just go to our shop at wife, teacher mommy.com/shop and search right there and just buy that if you’d like. We have a reading challenge where it’s kind of preset where we have like the genres but it is editable so you can change it up to be exactly what will work well for you and your students or your children. And we have different levels where it’s like different numbers of books you could like you know, together with the children and be like okay, which number of books is appropriate? And then what do we want to put in these and kind of help them set their goals for the books you can even let them pick the categories within reason or you know, whatever you feel good about. We will get right back to the show in just a moment. But since you’re listening to this episode, I bet you will also love our summer event, educating rejuvenate happening on June 27 and 28th 2023. With your ticket purchase, you’ll get live keynotes with Joe Dombrowski, aka Mr. D. And Christina Kuzmich to laugh and feel inspired you would normally pay up to $75 Just to see one of these keynotes. You’ll also get a full speaker lineup with over 70 incredible speakers with a teacher track and apparent track so you can choose your own adventure and the sessions are pre recorded to do on your own time. You’ll have 10 full days to enjoy the pre recorded sessions with a general admission ticket so you don’t need to feel rushed. You’ll also get live live code with me, and certified coach Christie Nichols, we have both been certified by the Life Coach School. 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Kelsey

Okay, engagement strategy number three is reading together for the summer reading challenge. And I love reading together with my children. And obviously, this is one that you will do more if you were the parent doing this with your own children. But if you were a teacher, I would encourage the students to read together as a family, either with their parents or with their siblings or with a friend even that reading together can be a great way to have more fun with it. And it can even be kind of like a book club where maybe like they and family members or friends are reading the same book and talking about it or physically reading together either way is great. And also obviously depends on the ages of the children. Obviously, if you have very young children like kindergarten, preschool first grade, there might be more of just literally reading out loud together. And all of it is wonderful. When we read together with their families, it’s a lot easier for children to create the habits than if they’re simply reading on their own. And it can be encouraged in several ways. Like I mentioned, you can read a book aloud with your children. This works especially well for younger kids. And if you have children at similar reading levels, or an only child, you could choose one book for everyone in the family reads and have discussions about it, like we just mentioned. And if you have children at a variety of reading levels, you can set aside a time each day that everyone spends reading, like you could call it like a family read a THON, and everybody kind of has their own book and you’re reading but you’re physically reading together. And then you can even talk about what you’re reading. And again, as a teacher, you could like put together a letter and be like, hey, I really encourage families to read together over the summer and put all of these tips together. So the families have them. Because a lot of parents don’t know all these things. parents aren’t all teachers. And you know, we do have our homeschool parents who are like learning about these things. But most of the parents who if they send their children to public school, they might not know as much about like reading engagement strategies. So you could like send home a letter that kind of goes over everything that I’m sharing today. And you can just quickly type it up and send that home. And if you’re looking for a way to kind of combine all of these strategies together and make it super fun, be sure to check out that summer reading challenge that I mentioned in this episode is a perfect way for teachers to send their students home on summer break, you can have this challenge printed out. And there’s actually a letter in there too. So then you don’t have to type up that letter on your own. You can make hey, here’s a reading challenge. It incorporates everything we’ve talked about. And it has the genres, it’s really cute. It’s like summer themed with like, a yellow background, you can even it’s editable, so you can add the students names on there, and it has enough for a class, you can do it all at once. There are cute little bookmarks they can use, they can mark up, it is also great for parents to grab if they want to motivate their children to read over the summer. So if you want a lot of this already done for you where you don’t have to think about it, you just want to have these really cute printables that your kids will be excited about, you can grab that at wife, teacher mommy.com in our shop, or if you’re a wife, teacher, mommy Club member, go into the club area with the resources and grab that, we will put the link to that in the show notes. So you can grab that and use that if you would like. But again, you could also just take all of these strategies that I mentioned on this episode today and implement them on your own to Okay, so let’s kind of recap those reading strategies that I mentioned in this episode. So first engagement strategy number one is letting children choose from a variety of texts. So we want to expand their horizons and help them read different types of things. But then within their while we’re helping them expand their horizons, let them pick. So my example was like with my oldest and he he hadn’t been reading chapter books much and I wanted to kind of expand his horizons. But hey, let’s try a chapter book, you know, one that doesn’t have pictures. But from there, let him pick, I did not care what book he picked. Because I know that if they get to pick that they will enjoy the reading more. And it’s just going to be a better experience for everybody. Engagement. Strategy. Number two is setting goals and your summer reading challenge and doing it alongside the children. So you can even talk about this. If you’re a teacher, you could do it as a class and talk about it before you send it home. And if you’re a parent, you can really talk with your children and figure out what goes how many books which categories and really customize it to your own like and for engagement strategy number three reading together that can be physically reading the same book together like reading out loud. It can be you are physically together or reading your own books and then talking about it or it can be like you’re separately at different times reading the same book and then you come together and talk about it. There are lots of different ways to read together. But no matter what, it’s more just about kind of building that community around reading And, and that really been builds in accountability and just makes it more of an experience than doing it all on your own. So the Summer Reading Challenge will challenge students to read that variety of texts over the summer. And it includes a book tracker, reading logs, awards, those bookmarks I mentioned and motivational posters that are really cute that you can like put on your bulletin board or on your fridge just to remind kids about reading. They say the posters, they’re super cute. They’re like flip flops, and swimsuits and bright colors and polka dots. One of them says summer fun is reading in the sun. And the other one says reading is a splash. They’re just really cute. And then there are also awards that are editable. So when kids finish it, you can like give them this actual certificate that they like finish their reading challenge, that always feels really good. And you could always choose like some type of reward that they get to do when they finish this. So that can be like the family goes out to dinner together or they do some special activity totally up to the family. So you know, if you’re a teacher sending this home, you can, they can just do this certificate as well. But I would highly recommend checking this out whether you’re a teacher or you’re a parent, you can find it super handy. And there are two versions level one and level two. And the differences in the levels are the number of books and the category suggested. So level one suggest 25 books and five genres plus one that’s your choice. And then level two suggest 42 books and nine genres plus your choice. And each is editable. So you get to choose the suggested genres. And we already have suggestions typed in so is Print and Go but you can delete and edit it as you please. And you can even get creative with it if you want if you want to do instead of genres you can type in other categories such as like, books from an award winning author, or books your parents read as a child or a book, the cover is your favorite color or a book with an interesting cover. Anything you could really think of you could put there as a category. So you could really have fun with that. And it does have that teacher info and parent letter. So it’s easy for you to send it home if you’re a teacher. So again, this really works well whether you’re a parent or a teacher. Okay, so those were the three engagement strategies. And for more about summer review in other ways besides reading, because reading does help with the summer slump a lot. But you might want to also review math or review like language arts and make sure they’re not losing all those skills. We do have summer reading packet. So if you are a wife, teacher, mommy Club member, be sure to go in and grab those as part of your club membership. Remember, you have access to all these incredible resources. So be sure to take advantage of that. If you’re not a wife, teacher, mommy club member one you can go look into the club if you’d like I would love to see you there. We do those incredible coaching calls to but also you can go to the shop and just find those as well as the reading challenge. So I will link to the summer learning packets in the show notes. But also we have a podcast episode that I aired last year that talks all about summer learning strategies for math and language arts. We talked about different board games, I like different activities you can do and we even did another episode about road trip learning so how when you’re on the road doing your trips throughout the summer, you can learn all along that way too. So that is episode number 11. It was really back when I first started the podcast it’s called Summer review must dues for math and language arts, I would highly recommend checking that one out. And then I also did episode 15 with Heidi and Emily from second story window all about designing your dream summer if you’re really in the summer mood Be sure to check out those episodes from last year where we’re talking about summer and road trip learning. I know this episode this week was a little bit shorter. So it’s a great time to go back and catch up either on summer episodes from last year or on the interviews that I’ve been doing with our incredible educating rejuvenate presenters. So I would love for you to check all those out. And be sure to hit subscribe so you don’t miss Tuesday’s interview with Teresa Kwan about escape games, another exciting engagement strategy that you can use in your classroom or with your own children. Really excited for you to check out that conversation. I already did that interview with her. And it was so much fun. So really excited to talk escape games with you on Tuesdays so hit subscribe so you don’t miss it.

Kelsey

If you enjoyed this podcast, be sure to hit subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. And if you’re ready to take the next step, come grab your ticket to join me educate and rejuvenate the education event of the year on June 27 and 28th 2023. This year, we have two incredible live keynotes. Joe Dombroski, aka Mr. D. and best selling author and video creator Christina Kismet. We have over 60 incredible speakers speaking on topics such as math, language arts, reading, social emotional learning, classroom management, homeschooling and tackling burnout. We start the day with a workout together each morning. We have panels with the presenters and you’ll even get to join live live coaching with me and even raise your hand if you would like to be coached. Plus, we give away tons of prizes throughout the event too. It is the best PD you could ever attend. And all of this is happening from the comfort of your own home. It’s just $19 per ticket and past attendees that said that this is what finally lit a fire under them to enjoy teaching again and that it was well worth every penny go to educate and rejuvenate.com to learn more about the 2023 event, or if you’re listening to this later that link will show you what’s up next is we will continue to do events like this. I hope to see you at educate and rejuvenate.