Slowing Down That Summer Slide

Don't you get so excited at the end of the school year to look back at all the progress your students have made?  Then it's time to send them home for the summer and you know that some of them are going to experience that dreaded "summer slide" .    So disheartening that some of my students will lose what they worked so hard to gain.  I am trying something new this year to help remedy that problem of sliding backwards over the summer caused by students not reading.

I ordered a bunch of books from Scholastic and am going to mail them to my students over the summer in hopes that getting a brand new book that they get to keep will be exciting enough to make them want to read it several times. I spent a lot of time picking these books, making sure they were on the students' levels and would be interesting to them.  Scholastic had some great sales and most of the books were between $2.00 and $4.00 a piece.  I only bought books under $5.00.  When this box of books came in, I was soooo excited!  You would have thought it was a box of books for ME!  

The thought is that each month each of my kindergarten through second grade students will be mailed a new book  for the months of June, July and August.  I included in the envelopes a letter to the child explaining what I wanted them to do.  Each month's letter was slightly different 

 I also included a response sheet for each book mailed.  It is just a simple draw your favorite part and write about it.  I wanted to keep it simple, quick, and easy.  My instructions were for the students to mail me back this favorite part form in the self-address stamped envelope that was also included in the packet.  

Can you tell that I am just so super excited about this?  I cannot wait to see what kind of response I get from my students.  I am hoping that I get a good percentage of my students to respond back to me so I can justify the expense next year to my principal.  The books were not the largest part of the expense.  The postage was my main expense in this experiment.  But I already have a back up plan for the postage next year if I need it.  My teacher's aide's church may be willing to donate to that as they like to help out our school.  


I remember being enrolled in a book club when I was little and being so excited to get those books each month.  I am hoping that that same excitement will be there when my students get their books each month.  And what child doesn't like to get mail?  Maybe the parents will be prompted by this to see to it that their child  reads the books mailed to them at least once -I am secretly hoping for multiple reads!