This website was designed in an attempt to guide educators in answering the question: How can a summer reading program be implemented in order to most effectively close the achievement gap and allow students to maintain literacy skills over the summer months? The site includes relevant research along with resources to help educators with designing and implementing a summer reading program in their own settings.
The idea of developing a summer reading program at my own school came about while I was enrolled in the course Foundations of Reading, K-12 at Hamline University. Week after week I would read about how access to books is one of the greatest factors leading to the achievement gap. This lead me to think about how many of my students are living in poverty, and likely do not have access to many books when they are not in school. This is when it really clicked with me--if we want the data to change, we must do something about it. If we maintain the status quo, we will continue to see the same results.
In April of 2017, I was meeting with my kindergarten colleagues during a data analysis day. We were scouring through student data and commenting on how much growth they had made over the course of the year. However, in the back of my mind, I was worried about the possibility of students losing some of the gains they had made as summer break was approaching. I casually mentioned the idea of implementing a summer reading program at our school, and one of my kindergarten co-teachers, Jackie (pseudonym) was immediately on board. The two of us worked together to design and implement a summer reading program in our own setting in the summers of 2017 and 2018. All resources we have created for our own program have been adapted and shared on this site for your use.