High School Summer Reading Programs
Developing a Program that Augments Curricular Objectives
Feb 18, 2009
Decades ago, educators came up with the idea that students needed to spend their idle summer months more wisely, and thus began the practice of summer reading. Every May, book stores begin to load tables with novels, memoirs, journals, and history paperbacks conforming to expected school summer reading lists. Summer reading, however, carries the burden of changing times for students and raises an on-going internal school debate.
- Should summer reading selections be tied to the fall curriculum?
- Should summer reading be for enjoyment, i.e., getting students to read?
- How do you test summer reading?
- Will objective based tests on the reading affect student’s overall impact of the book?
- Should summer reading be confined to one subject area, like English?
- How many books constitute a realistic summer reading program?
- Who ultimately selects the required book titles?
- Should parents and/or students have any input in the selections assigned?
Changing Times and Habits Might Affect Summer Reading Programs
Summer reading may be as old as the nineteen-sixties, when many high schools began to adopt reading programs, particularly on the high school level. Unlike current times, students had relatively uneventful summers, with enough time to devote to reading. It was also a time before computers, the internet, and cable television.
Today’s students lead far more complicated lives. They travel with parents and their schools on summer trips, attend a variety of specialty summer camps from athletic to drama and music. Many students work part time jobs. Students not accustomed to reading as a general habit are suddenly confronted with a summer reading list that all too often includes tomes like Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead.
Creative Solutions Offer Reading List Menus
Highly effective summer reading programs offer menus of selections that students in each grade level can choose from. If inter-departmental collaboration within the school is functioning, this menu can include selections that satisfy curricular goals of both English and History. The inclusion of novels such as the medical thrillers by Robin Cook could include Biology in the summer reading list loop.
School department heads should meet in early spring to create a summer reading blueprint that serves the needs of all affected subject areas. Many book selections satisfy two or more subject areas. The final list should be published early enough to allow all students the opportunity to purchase the books. Similarly, accountability through proper assessment must be established before the summer and the details should be published along with summer reading list selections. This ultimately affects how students read the required selections.
The Purpose of Summer Reading
Above all, school systems must develop a rationale for summer reading. If there is no definite purpose, no correlation to curriculum, no academic goal fused to standard course of studies guidelines, the program should be abandoned. Students and parents resent programs and assignments that cannot be legitimized.
Summer reading can be a highly beneficial way to promote student reading. The success of a summer reading program, however, relates directly to the goals and objectives of educators formulating curriculum. If reading is deemed important, school leaders must develop coherent programs that anticipate realistic and positive outcomes.
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