The Weekly Update

I recently had the opportunity to attend a Jump Start training at the Piedmont Public Library. Jump Start is the SD State Library's training session for summer reading programs, and it was so fun to be in a room full of public librarians who work so hard for our students during the summer months!

Do you offer a summer reading program through your school library? Does your local public library offer a summer reading program? Do you collaborate with your public library on a summer reading program? Can students check out books from your school library over the summer months?

As the summer months approach, those are all questions to start thinking about! To learn more about summer programming, you can also check out the resources below from the SDSL Catalog.

A recent study from NWEA of children in grades 3-5 showed that students lost, on average, about 20 percent of their school-year gains in reading over the extended summer break.

Summer Reading Programs can effectively prevent this "Summer Slide" with your students by promoting reading and keeping their minds active!

Some other benefits and advantages of summer reading programs include:

• Encouraging life-long reading habits
• Supporting reluctant readers
• Helping children maintain their reading skills
• Stimulating interest in the library and reading
• Motivating students to read for pleasure
• Improving overall reading skills

Read more at:

https://www.ala.org/pla/resources/tools/youth-services/programming-summer-reading

Your school library doesn't have to offer a complete summer reading program in order to encourage summer reading. You can advocate for a strong reading culture and strengthen reading initiatives by:

1. Promoting summer reading (including any community programs) to your students.
2. Maximizing the use of your library collection (think summer checkouts and access to your ebook collection!).
3. Encouraging and modeling staff reading.
4. Creating a program that encourages logging/journaling number of books read (maybe with prizes as an incentive!).
5. Promoting summer reading to parents and other stakeholders.

Offer reading reminders to parents with these tip sheets from Reading Rockets available in 11 languages.

Encourage your students to stay engaged in reading over the summer months with eResources from the SD State Library.

The Weekly Update is a correspondence from the South Dakota State Library focusing on current topics in school libraries, best practices, resources, professional development, and more.

Email: scottie.bruch@state.sd.us
Website: library.sd.gov/LIB/SLC
Location: 800 Governors Drive, Pierre, SD, USA
Phone: 605-295-3152

SDSL does not endorse any service or product listed or linked to in this newsletter.