School’s out for summer, but that doesn’t necessarily mean no more pencils, no more books for local students, many of whom are already immersed in reading assignments for the upcoming school year.
While students may groan and parents may wonder what happened to the carefree vacations they remember, educators, backed by statistics, favor summer reading as a way to prevent “brain drain” — the loss of critical skills attained in the classroom and shoved in the locker when the dismissal bell rings each summer.
The numbers are grim, especially for students from low-income families.
Johns Hopkins University researchers at the National Summer Learning Association in Baltimore, Md. have determined that by the end of summer vacation, students score lower on standardized tests and suffer a two-month loss in math skills. And while middle class students show marginal gains in reading performance, low-income students lose two months or more in reading skills due to unequal access to summer enrichment activities.
Preventing the backslide
Patricia Perdue has taught ninth grade and 11th grade English at Heritage Academy for seven years. Prior to that, she taught English for four years at Columbus High School.
The trend briefly shifted away from summer reading because students weren’t complying, but when educators saw the effects, they resumed the practice, she said Wednesday.
Perdue, 61, graduated from John Carroll Catholic High School in Birmingham, Ala., and she can’t remember a summer when she didn’t have reading assignments.
Teachers benefit by being able to begin teaching on the first day of school. And though students may struggle with a piece alone, they benefit by having time to think about the material and seeing it come together in class discussions.
Perdue can vividly remember the summer she spent slogging through Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” She thought it was silly. Below her grade level.
But when she returned to school and her teacher began explaining the book’s symbolism as a political allegory, she said “a light bulb went off,” because suddenly she realized books could be read on multiple levels.
“I think students are hesitant about doing all the required outside reading, but then they explore and discover, and soon they’re more independent readers,” Perdue said. “They read it and say, ‘Wow, I get it.’ I call that ‘pulling the threads,’ because all of a sudden they know where to look.”
Her ninth grade college preparatory students are reading “Fever 1793,” a coming-of-age historical novel, and her ninth grade honors students are reading Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn,” and an additional book of their choice — either Chaim Potok’s classic, “The Chosen,” or Homer Hickam Jr.’s “Rocket Boys,” a coming-of-age memoir that inspired the movie, “October Sky.”
Her 11th grade college preparatory class is reading Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea,” and the honors class is reading Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms.”
Summer reading is encouraged for students at all grade levels, she said, and most students at Heritage — even in elementary school — have summer assignments that reflect that commitment.
“Summer reading keeps students on track,” she said. “We’re trying to prevent the backslide.”
Old classics, new favorites
Mary Douglass Kerby, who will be an 11th grader at Heritage this year, is deeply immersed in “A Farewell to Arms,” and so far, she likes the 1929 classic.
She said while summer reading isn’t always fun, it makes students who might otherwise not read at least pick up a book.
“At home, I wouldn’t read for fun,” said the sports-lover, who participates in basketball, volleyball and track. “I kind of forced myself into liking to read, because we do so much of it at school.”
A series of books has captured her interest though — the popular Hunger Games trilogy, a relatively new title that has landed on summer reading lists at several schools this year, including Heritage.
Her younger sister, Allie Kerby, attends Annunciation Catholic School, and she was assigned her choice of any three grade-level books. “Mockingjay,” the third book in the Hunger Games series, was one of her choices.
Being given free choice is a good idea, said the girls’ mother, Lisa Kerby.
“By getting to pick, they take ownership, and that’s working well for us,” she said. “If (Allie) has spare time, she’s not going to sit around and read a book. With her being able to pick it, she’s more prone to read it.”
While the classics still reign sovereign, Books-A-Million Assistant Manager Tim Clevenger is seeing a subtle shift toward mainstream bestsellers like “The Help” and books more likely to show up in a college curriculum, like “A History of the World in Six Glasses,” which relates world history through popular beverages.
“It’s not just the short, easier reading,” Clevenger said Tuesday. “Dostoevsky is never going to be anybody’s light summer reading. Over the years, (reading lists) have actually gotten more involved, more sophisticated, more adult, more advanced.”
Though the 2000 Caledonia High School graduate doesn’t remember having summer reading assignments, he does remember meeting his literary foe — Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter.”
“I absolutely hated it,” he confessed.
Carmen K. Sisson is the former news editor at The Dispatch.
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