Summer Reading Toolkit

This year I wanted to make a summer packet for my students that they couldn't ignore! It's not so much about what's inside for some of these kids, but how you present it.  If they are excited to open it and show their parents, I'm hoping they are motivated to dig in and actually do it. (If anything, I hope parents are guilted/pressured inspired to motive their kids to do it.)

We've been dabbling in close reading this year, so I wanted to incorporate that into their summer packs. 

They really love sticky notes and highlighters, so I had to include those two things! The magnifying glass was more of a prop that they really enjoyed. We'd read the first time to "get the gist", then pick up our magnifying glasses to show we were ready to read closely. Sometimes they'd put their magnifying glass around the words that gave text evidence to one of my questions too. Here is a picture of what I put in their packets:

You can find some free summer-themed bookmarks here.

You can download my summer toolkit covers here.

     

If you are looking for something to put inside these envelopes, I have two summer packets (for kinder and first) that you can find here. 

   

This is a picture of my dining room table during the last week of school. I would finish one project and then another project would take the place on that table. It was not clean all week! I thought you all would appreciate that. :)