Sprucewood's Summer Reading Activities - Past and Present

Summer Reading 
This blog is not intend to make anyone start wishing it was summer again.  However, we start early planning our summer reading activities.  Here are examples of some of our past summer reading activities.

Y should U read
This was the kick off for our first summer reading activity.  We had students pick a team and read for their team over the summer.  It was BYU fans reading against University of Utah fans.  The students recorded the minutes, they read over the summer and the minutes were calculated as points for their chosen team.  All students who participated were given a reading reward at the close of the summer reading activity/beginning of the new school year.  During our kick-off assembly (at the end of the school year), we had the children's librarian from the Draper library  talk to the students about summer reading activities at the public library.  We had an author visit with Frank Cole and Barnes and Noble shared their free summer reading program.  We also had Swoop and a video presentation from student athletes from both universities sharing why they like to read. 

The Bookmark - Read 20 Minutes a Day
The next summer, we introduced our summer reading blog and the theme "Read 20 Minutes a Day"  The "Bookmark" is the name of our summer blog.  It allows students to share information and book recommendations over the summer. Student email us book reviews or information about the book(s) they are reading over the summer and we post them to the blog.   Each student received a dum dum sucker with a label with our blog web address and reminder "Don't be a dum dum READ 20 Minutes a Day."

Flop Down and Flip Open a Good Book was a fun kick off for our summer reading activity.  We introduced our theme by having all of our teachers wear pink flip flops and unveiled our pick flip flop bulletin board that read "Flop Down and Flip Open a Good Book."  We tied the theme into our final reading contest of the year by providing  the class with the most reading minutes a pair of flip flops for each student.  (The flip flops came with instructions that they were not to be worn until summer due to our school dress code).  Every student received a bookmark with a flip flop and the blog address so they could read and share book recommendations over the summer.

This year’s summer theme was be Get Hook a Good Book

We developed a bulletin board with a child sitting by the creek fishing with books in the water instead of fish. We  kicked off the program by having a special activity in the media center.  We had the Sandy City children’s librarian interview on  video tape and showed it to our students.  We encouraged our students to read over the summer and to know the resources available to them.  We introduced the free summer reading programs offered by Barnes and Noble and Shadow Mountain Publishing, as well as other resources.To remind students of our reading blog, we  provided each student with his or her own fishing pole (Pixie Stick) with a fish on the end.  The fish had our blog address and email address so students could contact us with book recommendations over the summer.