Monthly Tip
June 2021
Monthly Tip
The Importance of Summer Reading
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The Importance of Summer Reading

Although students want their summer to be a well-deserved break, it is important to keep the academic ball rolling throughout these carefree months. While summer reading may seem optional, it is actually an essential tool to prevent the “summer slide,” or the loss of academic skills that occurs while school is out of session. In fact, the effects of the summer slide are cumulative. Researchers estimate that by the time a struggling reader reaches middle school, summer reading loss has accumulated to a two-year lag in reading achievement. Particularly for students who struggle with comprehension, these summer months are imperative to keep up with the reading skills they learned throughout the year.  
What is Reading Comprehension?
Reading comprehension is a complex, multi-step process that requires different brain functions to work together to interpret the words on the page as well as the author's intended meaning. To understand written language, an individual’s brain must process not only the literal words written on the page, but also the meaning of the words based on the relationship among the words for that particular sentence. Additionally, one must be able to tease out the subtle signs of language that evoke emotion and meaning and combine that with past knowledge, and then understand how all of the parts of the sentence contribute to its overall meaning.

Reading comprehension skills include, but are not limited to:

  • Identifying the main idea and details
  • Sequencing events in a story
  • Using context and prior knowledge to gain understanding 
  • Forming conclusions and making predictions and inferences 
  • Understanding the difference between fact and opinion 
  • Understanding cause/effect relationships
How to Support Reading Comprehension this Summer
This summer is the perfect opportunity to work on reading comprehension skills with your children. Here are some activities you can utilize over the next few months: 

Improve your children’s vocabulary. Reading comprehension is based on a combination of vocabulary, context, and the interaction of words. Therefore, a student must be able to understand each individual piece before understanding the text as a whole. Help your children use context clues to figure out what unknown words mean. If the meaning cannot be inferred, have your children look the term up in the dictionary. After learning its meaning, your children should create flashcards or a Quizlet set for these words and review them weekly. Additionally, many words have prefixes and suffixes, which can also be used to determine the meaning of a word. For example, “re-” means again; therefore, “replay” means to “play again.” Teaching your children prefixes and suffixes can help them figure out the meaning of new words. 

Pre-reading strategies. Understanding the context behind a story is important in understanding its meaning. If your children are reading a book that takes place during the Civil Rights Movement but know nothing about it, understanding and taking perspective will be difficult. Help your children fill in these gaps by discussing and doing some research to add context to the story that they are reading. 

Use visualization. Visualization is a valuable strategy that can help students improve their reading comprehension. Visuals can be developed in your children’s minds or drawn out on paper. Pictures can also be used before your children begin reading to help support their background knowledge (e.g., maps, pictures of characters, setting, etc.). One way to use visualization is to pause after reading a few sentences or paragraphs that contain descriptive information (setting, characters, actions). Talk out loud about the image you have created in your mind, and identify which words from the book helped you make your image. After modeling, ask your children to create images in their minds. You can also relate your picture to what is happening in the story and discuss how it helped you to understand the text better. Have your children take a turn and compare their images to yours. Drawing them on paper could be a fun activity!

Use audiobooks or watch the movie. Listening to audiobooks or watching the movie version of a text can make reading more enjoyable for some students. Listening to audiobooks as they read along can ease the burden if reading is difficult, as they can better focus on the story and hear the narrator invoke emotion. Watching the movie version can also help your children see the bigger picture before reading the book and can help with visualizing characters, settings, and events. Plus, your children can practice comparing and contrasting the similarities and differences between the movie and the book, which is another necessary skill for school. 

Read more often. The best way to improve reading comprehension skills is through practice, and the best way to practice is to have fun with it! Read about topics that interest your children so that reading is looked at as a fun activity. At the beginning of the summer, your children should choose books that are slightly below their reading level to make the book enjoyable to read, rather than a task they struggle through. As their confidence increases, they can increase the difficulty of the texts they read. 

Join a book club. Joining a book club or reading a book with a friend or parent can help build comprehension skills. While doing this, engage in discussions to help your children dive deeper into their reading. Readers can make connections by reflecting on the information with another reader, leading to more interaction and a better understanding of the text. Reading with a friend or family member can also make the reading process more enjoyable and allows opportunities for social interaction.
Final Thoughts
By working on these skills, your children will be better prepared to manage reading in school next year. Your children will also become more comfortable with using these strategies, such as looking up new vocabulary and visualizing, when they encounter challenging words or content. Thinking Organized is offering several summer programs to address reading comprehension for elementary, middle, and high school students, and we highly recommend signing your children up for a program to keep their reading skills sharp!
Summer 2021 Programs - Register Today!
Summer is a time of relaxation, but it is also a time of preparation. By reviewing past academic material, students can keep their skills sharp while simultaneously preparing for the upcoming school year. Thinking Organized is offering several exciting programs for students in different age ranges this summer, and we cordially invite you to sign your children up for them!

Please refer to our programs for elementary school, middle school, high school, and college on our website.
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Let's Listen this Summer!

Everyone knows that reading over the summer is an essential part of helping students to maintain their comprehension, vocabulary, and reading fluency skills. However, there’s another great way to keep your children engaged and learning while they’re out of school: podcasts! There’s no limit to what these audio recordings can teach students. They range in topics from current events, science, and technology to learning about emotional and social skills. Podcasts are great to follow on a weekly basis as they are updated, or to indulge in on a rainy summer afternoon. Here are some ideas for educational, interesting, and fun podcasts for elementary or middle school children.