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Summer Reading Loss and What to Do
By Richard Allington
University of Tennessee
For the past several years my colleague Anne McGill-Franzen and I have been studying the impact of summer reading, or the lack of it, on children's reading achievement. At this point it seems safe to conclude that children who don't read during summer vacation experience a summer reading loss. The loss is typically one of several months on standardized reading tests. But such small losses accumulate to substantial losses over time. On the other hand, children who read several books during the summer months experience no such loss and may actually find their scores on standardized tests improve a bit.
This should not be surprising to anyone. Virtually all human skills and proficiencies deteriorate without practice. Imagine an athlete who takes several months off from training. It will take weeks, if not months, of training to return to peak performance. The same is true with readers and their reading.
A primary concern that must be addressed is the demonstrated fact that two groups—economically disadvantaged children and struggling readers—both engage in little reading during the summer months. Poor children seem not to read because they have far more limited access to books during the summer than children from financially well-off families. Poor children get most of the books they read from their classroom and school libraries, and most school libraries are closed during the summer. Middle-class children get far fewer of their books from the school and far more books as personal possessions (as gifts, book club and bookstore purchases, in trading with friends).
Struggling readers, poor or not, seem to avoid summer reading even when book access is not a problem. This stems primarily from motivational and attitudinal factors associated with persistent failures as readers. But this avoidance can be overcome when engaging books at an appropriate level of complexity are readily available for these students. Personal choices from a wide array of texts, including comics and popular culture texts, seem most attractive to these readers.
Schools and public libraries must begin to develop more effective summer programs to support the reading of children from both groups. Having just returned from Mozambique, where book burros are being used to deliver books to rural communities, I will suggest that we might learn from their experiences. In fact, we might simply expand similar practices that already exist in many communities in the U.S. In Florida, a school van was converted into a small book bus that visited trailer parks weekly during the summer months to bring books to poor rural children. In Wisconsin, a similar venture brought not only books to poor communities, but also once-a-week expert tutoring to struggling young readers. In another community, teens traveled into poor neighborhoods, pulling little red wagons of books for children to select from each week. In another high-poverty community, the school and public libraries stocked the Boys and Girls Club summer program site with hundreds of books. And so on.
It would be nice to think we could attract poor children and struggling readers into visiting the school or public library during the summer months, but the school library is often closed, and the public library too often not on the agenda of either group for any number of reasons. I'm sure there are things that could be done to foster far greater library use during the summer, but I'm also sure that unless we get the books and librarians out of the libraries and onto the streets of poor neighborhoods, we will continue to see poor children and struggling readers spend their summers without books in their hands. We will continue to see both groups fail to become voluntary, avid readers.
We are a wealthy nation compared to Mozambique. Very wealthy in comparison. We must be more proactive to ensure that every child who wants a book to read in the summer has a wide selection of books at their fingertips. We must design interventions and activities that entice the struggling readers to engage in reading. It is time to begin planning for what will be done differently next summer. •
Richard Allington is a professor of education at the University of Tennessee and president of the International Reading Association. He has written several books including What Really Matters for Struggling Readers (AllynBacon) now in its second edition. To learn more about Dr. Richard Allington and his work visit http://teachersread.net.
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About the author:
Photo courtesy of teachersread.net
Richard Allington is a professor of education at the University of Tennessee and president of the International Reading Association. He has written several books including What Really Matters for Struggling Readers (AllynBacon) now in its second edition. To learn more about Dr. Richard Allington and his work visit http://teachersread.net.
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