Friday, June 19, 2015

Summer Blog Party Kick Off: Preventing the Summer Slide


I'm so excited to be part of this fun Summer Blog Party hosted by The Reading Crew. I will talk more about our weekly linky next week. :) To kick off our Summer Blog Party, we are having a blog hop with summer reading materials to help students avoid the summer learning loss. Our hop starts today and runs until the 21st. At the end of our hop, we will be raffling off two $25.00 gift certificates to Teachers Pay Teachers. 



Make sure you hop to all of our blogs in The Reading Crew to pick up some summer freebies to prevent that "summer slide." My freebie literally came to me a couple days ago (causing a last minute change of freebie) when I was reading with my own son. He is finishing kindergarten and has everything he needs to start really reading. He's got very strong phonics skills, he knows several sight words, and he even has reading strategies (we scored with his kindergarten teacher.) What he doesn't have is stamina.  He is not used to sitting and reading an actual book for more than a few minutes (or maybe he will in class but is just more dramatic with me.) I'm so happy with how his teacher has prepared him and given him some great tools to be ready to read. He is capable, but again, he does not have the stamina. So I decided to make this summer graph. 

I was thinking about how I used to use a graph to motivate my first graders in the fall when I introduce Read to Self. So why not do that with my own kid this summer? He was really motivated by this graph when I showed him. 



He felt a lot better knowing that I only wanted him to start with 5 minutes of reading time. I told him each week we would add a minute. Of course this made him motivated to add more than one minute. Gotta love a little competitive edge. ;) I figured that if this worked for my kid, maybe other parents would use it with their kids. So here ya' go! If you don't have your own kids, save it for next year to give to your students at the end of the school year. :) Send it home and motivate your class to build their stamina or maintain the stamina that you built with them. 
I included three different options: 



Your next stop is Literacy without Worksheets.







8 comments:

  1. Great idea! Thanks for sharing!

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  2. Yes, building stamina is very important! It's great to have a concrete graph to show children how their stamina improves over time.
    -Jen
    That Literacy Blog

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  3. I needed this all year long!! I am filing and sharing the link with all my colleagues to use during the year. Thank you so much for making it, explaining it, and joining in the hop!
    Carla

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  4. Thank you! My granddaughter is keeping up with her minutes of reading this summer. Sandy

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  5. Love, love, love this! Thanks for sharing, Sarah. I'll be putting it to great use. :)
    Literacy Loving Gals

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  6. Thanks for the freebie! We keep track of stamina when starting the daily 5 and the kids love it.

    Jessica
    Literacy Spark

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  7. Super cute little stamina graph for the kiddos! Thank you! :-)

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  8. Thank you for this wonderful resource! My struggling readers can always use a little extra motivation to read over the summer, and a stamina graph is a great way for them to track their stamina and stay motivated -- thank you!

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