Preventing summer slide

Summer reading without the pressure

I originally published this post on April 18, 2024. I have lightly edited it, but not much.

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I’m not an educator. I’m not a teacher or a reading specialist or a librarian, and I’m definitely not an expert on summer slide.

Do I believe it’s real? Yes — children, especially those from lower-income households, do lose some academic knowledge and skills over the summer or at other times when they take lengthy breaks from formal education or school. (About three months on average, and if there is a truly scary part, it’s that the loss is cumulative.)

Do I think it’s something to worry about? Sort of. Somewhat.

(A lot? No. I don’t advocate doing nothing — though I’ll admit I’ve done exactly that for years and my kids have been mostly fine — but I don’t advocate doing tons, either. My stance has changed a bit, after watching my then-6yo lose more skills than I expected a few summers ago, when she was just on the cusp of cracking the reading code — but as always, my first priority is preserving the love of reading and remembering that I am playing the long game here, trying to raise lifelong readers, not just readers who can perform well on reading assessments or standardized tests.)

That said, there are things you can do to prevent massive amounts of learning from flying out of your kids’ heads over the summer months, especially when it comes to reading.

I’ve come up with a few ideas.

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Build preview stacks

I stole the idea of “preview stacks” from the inimitable Donalyn Miller, a teacher and author whose work focuses on creating engaging and inclusive reading communities for all children. Her ideas are exclusive to the classroom, but I’ve found incredible value in adapting them for home.

One of which — found in two of her excellent books, The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child and Reading in the Wild: The Book Whisperer’s Keys to Cultivating Lifelong Reading Habits, both of which I recommend — is to create preview stacks.

A preview stack is simply a pile of 4-5 books you offer your reader.

The real beauty of this idea is that it can be applied to any reader, at any age — you can curate a preview stack for a 12-month-old or a 12-year-old.

What does this do for our readers?

1. It gets more books into their hands.

2. It supports them in evaluating books — learning how to sort through options and make their own choices — without overwhelming them.

To be clear, there is no requirement for kiddos to read anything from the preview stack — it’s just a way to help them find some books they might like to read. They are free to reject every one of them.

In summers past, I’ve curated a preview stack for each of my own children every two weeks. I leave the stacks on their placemats before breakfast, because reading at breakfast — what we call Morning Time, which I have written about before — has long been a rock-solid part of our reading routine. These stacks are a mixture of books we own that they haven’t seen yet (or have forgotten about, if they’re old favorites) and titles I’ve borrowed from the library.

If you decide to do this, I encourage you to:

• Make this your own. It’s not going to work unless creating preview stacks is realistic and do-able for you. You might not be able to do it every two weeks and that’s totally okay. What would work?

• Cast a wide net when choosing books. I cannot stress this enough: mix up formats (provide physical books along with audiobooks, offer picture books and magazines along with chapter books and graphic novels) and genres (think beyond fiction to nonfiction, poetry, reference books, seek-and-finds, etc).

• Consider what your readers will actually like. While it’s fine to add a book or two to your preview stacks that you’d like your kiddos to read, this is really about catering to their interests, curiosities, and abilities so that they’ll want to dive into the titles on offer. Think about and try to maximize their joy. (I once bought an overpriced magazine about Taylor Swift to include in my then-9yo’s first preview stack, because you know what? It’s not about me. Let me repeat that: it’s not about me. So I got over myself, and I encourage you to do the same.)

If you have no idea where to begin to find possible titles for these stacks, I suggest two resources:

• The archives of this newsletter. I’ve reviewed 1000+ books over the last few years. You can access many of those reviews by going to the homepage and scrolling through back issues.

• A librarian. If your child goes to school, you could contact their school librarian before the end of the year for a list of suggestions. (If they know your kid’s tastes personally, all the better.) Or you could go to your local public library and call upon the tireless public servants whose job is literally to help you find books. Please don’t be afraid to use them — they like it. (Trust me, I’ve asked.)

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Play reading games

There are many reading and ELA games on the market.

The Top 50 Games for Gameschooling Language Arts from Jessica Waldock of The Waldock Way is an awesome resource — she covers games that address alphabet and letter sounds, spelling, learning to read, vocabulary, grammar, and storytelling.

I also recommend the fantastic Games for Reading: Playful Ways to Help Your Child Read by Peggy Kaye:

This review first appeared in issue No. 74 — I’ve edited and updated it here

This book is chock-full of, yes, playful, genuinely fun activities for kindergarten through 2nd grade (though you could start a little earlier and extend it a little longer, depending on your needs) that focus on games for the eye and the ear, games for understanding, games for making sense. Games like Consonant Box, Rabbit Sounds, and my personal favorite with my older daughter, Gift Words, run the gamut of skills, covering nearly everything a beginning reader needs to learn, and — as stated in the introduction — “draw on one skill all children have in abundance, the ability to play.”

What you’ll find here is simple and effective and perhaps best of all, none of it requires special material beyond what you probably already have at home (index cards, a sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper) or a ton of upfront work to assemble. It’s not “open and go,” but it’s not “open and spend two hours creating a game you’ll play for 10 minutes if your child is in a great mood,” either — in fact, many games are simply verbal and require no materials at all. It was written in 1984 and it has 1984 vibes — meaning, Pinterest did not exist, and these games (and anyone who uses this book) are all the better for it.

(If you like this one, I also highly Kaye’s other ELA book, Games for Writing.)

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Add some reading around the house

This one is pretty simple: make reading — and writing — more visible.

How?

Use the front of your refrigerator, a bulletin board, a dry-erase board, or any other means of posting something to write, or have your readers write:

• Your children’s daily or weekly schedule, which is especially helpful if it varies during the summer

• A summer bucket list — or a grocery list, or a chore list, or a to-do list — on your refrigerator

• Meal plans, if you’re a meal planner, for the next few days or week

• A list of movies you want to watch together

• A list of activities you’d like to do as a family, or individually

These are just a few ideas, and don’t overthink them: the point is to take the things you already have to (or want to or could) keep track of during these months, bring it out from your Google Calendar or your Notes app or your planner, and make it so your kids can read it, too.

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Expand your idea of ELA

Did you know that English Language Arts actually has four parts? Yes, it includes reading, but it also includes listening, speaking, and writing.

That’s excellent news if you want to tackle the summer slide from a variety of angles.

If you’d like to expand your idea of ELA, let your kids:

• Write letters and/or postcards to family and friends

• Write emails to the same

• Watch a poetry slam on YouTube or go to one in person

• Attend a play

• Go to storytime at your local library or independent bookstore

• Narrate stories to you — either ones they’ve read or heard, or ones of their own

• Dictate their narrations into a voice memo app or other recording device

• Write or type stories they’ve read or heard, or ones of their own

• Play with letter tiles — like Bananagrams or Scrabble (and it doesn’t matter if they play the actual game)

• Create a zine from a single sheet of paper, á la Austin Kleon

• Create mini books — staple printer paper together, buy little notebooks from the Dollar Spot at Target, provide a stack of index cards

• Make blackout/erasure poetry

• Use Magnetic Poetry on your refrigerator (there are a ton of different, fun versions)

• Listen to audiobooks, together or solo

• Create their own comics

• Join a children’s book club — check to see if your local library offers this, find a virtual one on Outschool, or start one yourself

• Practice their handwriting or learn cursive or creative lettering

• Use children’s crossword or word search books (I have found many, for all different ages, on Amazon)

• Plan and put on a play or a puppet show

• Read a book and act it out

• Produce a family newspaper (physical) or newsletter (physical or digital)

• Create a timeline of anything at all — e.g., a timeline of women in astronomy, a timeline of Morgan le Fay’s appearances in the Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne, a personal timeline of events in their own life (there are no limits!)

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Read aloud!

This one is self-explanatory, but also bears repeating all the time: there is nothing more powerful and nothing that has a greater impact on your kids’ reading abilities than reading aloud.

So don’t forget about it! Read aloud all summer, as much as you can, whenever and wherever you can.

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To prevent summer slide, you definitely don’t have to do all of the things I’ve suggested here — but choosing a few, rather than doing nothing, will go a long way toward heading off the loss of reading skills over the months your children aren’t in school.

And please remember: the best caregivers are the ones who try, not the ones who are perfect. You don’t have to build the perfect family reading life, have the perfect reading routine, or prevent summer slide perfectly — putting thought into it, being intentional, remembering why you’re making this effort to begin with, and doing the best you can is what matters the most. You’re doing an amazing job — keep going.

Sarah

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