Summer Reading

When I read Kylene Beers blog, I am often inspired and usually excited about an idea or two that jogs my thinking.  Yet, the other day, I was floored when with May just days old, I find a post about Summer Reading!   http://kylenebeers.com/blog/2014/05/04/guidelines-for-summer-reading/

While I do realize that summer is coming in spite of the lingering cold weather here, we'll be going to school until the end of June here in these parts and so I pushed the post out of my mind as one of those for people in other parts of the country!  

Yet, just a few hours later, at a CSE meeting, I found myself the focus of a discussion about summer learning.  I knew then and there that Kylene was not hurrying the end of the school year; rather, she was thinking about the season that will crash upon us very soon.  She was thinking about the connection between summer reading and achievement.  

Kylene makes many good points in her post, but one of my favorites is this one: 

"Summer reading isn’t about reading a certain number of titles from a list someone else has compiled.  It’s not about finishing A Tale of Two Cities before the first day of tenth grade.  It’s not about reading books at a certain Lexile level or AR level.   It’s not about preparing for a test, keeping a dialectical journal to be submitted, or logging a certain number of hours or titles in a journal that will eventually be graded"

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