Every year our school presents a summer reading
challenge to our students. If they meet this challenge they are able to
participate in a celebration at the beginning of the next school year. While we talk this challenge up with our students we have never had a “Summer Reading Kick-Off” to get them excited
about reading for the summer. So this year I planned our “Kick-Off”
celebration after school to help give parents some ideas to promote summer
reading through playing games. I also wanted to make sure that we include the public library in this event to help promote their summer reading program.
Parents and students arrived in the media center eager to participate. I took a few minutes at the beginning to share resources on our web page that will help their child with reading over the summer and explained the games that were set up. Then I introduced the public librarian from our local library. She shared about their summer reading plan and also read "The Bear That Ate Your Sandwich" by Julia Sarcone-Roach and "Mother Bruce" by Ryan T. Higgens. After she finished reading the parents and students rotated through the stations.
One station was “Pictionary” where students
drew the scene from the book to see if parents could tell what it was. This
helps them recall characters and events in details from the story which helps with comprehension. They could also use our "Chalkboard Table cloth" to draw their favorite characters or scenes from the story.
Another station was the “Lego” build
station. Once again students focused on comprehension and recall
skills as they build scenes from the story. This one was one of the most popular stations of today along with the book mark station. They were able to create their own book mark to use for all of the summer reading they plan on doing.
We also had a Boggle and a Hedbanz station where students could practice vocabulary skills. Each family left with an empty Boggle board and cards to use to play the game at home. The bag also included Scrabble cards.
At the Hedbanz station students put character traits on their head and had the parents give them hints to guess which trait they had. It was great to see the parents and students interacting together.
The last station was signing up for the reading program at our local public library. The librarians took the students pictures for their "Winner's Circle" wall. The students love going to the library and seeing their faces on the wall. I am so glad that they were able to attend this event. It wouldn't have been the same without them.
To see pictures and read more about the event check out our Flipbook.
