Read aloud to your children to help support their vocabulary and background knowledge.  We also encourage children to read in many genres: books, graphic novels, comic books, newspapers, magazines, e-books, online books, recipes, directions, etc.! 

Choice and time are variables which help children engage in reading.  Talk with children about the best time for daily reading this summer.

Encourage your child to read about an affinity, an area of passion and interest.  We know that when children read more in a certain topic, they acquire specific background knowledge and vocabulary.  This makes it easier for children to read even more challenging books on the topic. Doing this in an area of passion and interest helps children learn how to learn. Check out StartWithaBook.org to help your child explore areas of interest.  

Here are some other websites to help you find good books: 

• Nancie Atwell’s Center for Teaching and Learning where students are encouraged read at least 40 books a year and recommend books for students their age. 
• ReadKiddoRead is best-selling author James Patterson’s site for irresistible books by age and genre.  His son was a reluctant reader, so he was inspired to create this site to help get all students reading. 
• Former Library of Congress Ambassador to Reading Jon Scieszka’s Guys Read focuses on the reading needs of boys. 
• MyON has over 5,000 titles from which to choose in many fiction and nonfiction genres. Students log in with their FCPS username and password.
• Tumblebooks has a wide variety of fiction texts from which students can choose. The subscription is provided by FCPS.
• The content on Wonderopolis starts with a question from a child.

Read authors’ websites and look online for book trailers.

If a book is “just right”, students should be reading about ¾ of a page in a minute.  Children should be reading mostly “just right” books. 

Summer Reading Choice Boards

To encourage reading over the summer, we've created these choice boards for different grade levels to encourage all of the above. Please click on the links below to download the form (Adobe Acrobat required). Return it to your teacher after the summer is over!

• Incoming Kindergartners
• Rising 1st through 3rd Graders
• Rising 4th through 6th Graders

Encourage Reading Over the Summer

Try out a game called “Spoilers”, created by children’s librarian Kendra Wight from Sno-Isle’s Library on Wheels in Washington state.  The idea is simple: An adult and a child choose a book they both will read.  The adult stops reading exactly halfway through the book; the child finishes it. When completed, the child comes up with an alternate ending and shares the real and pretend endings. The adult guesses which is real. Further, Wight suggests drawing out the conversation by asking kids to relate the story to something that happened in real life or to come up with a question they’d like to ask the author.

“I think that what makes ‘Spoilers’ appealing to kids, beyond the obvious opportunity to outwit an adult, is that an adult agrees to read something that is important to them,” Wight said.  “Too often I think our ‘reading for fun programs’ lead kids to books we have selected, instead of following them to the books they already love.  And when we read together, even in this asynchronous way, we get to know each other better.”

For more ideas, check out this article from the Washington Post: Keep Your Kids Reading Through the Summer.