Summer is a very important time in the lives of children. That break away from traditional schooling is valuable for them to engage in activities and hobbies they care about and love. This helps to create a healthy, engaged child.

With that said, we often get asked how a parent can help their child over the summer with literacy. To answer this, we start with some foundational principles of literacy.

1. Literacy is a part of our everyday life. It goes beyond the confines of a school. Knowing this allows you to see literacy opportunities in your daily habits, interactions, conversations and choices.
2. Literacy comes in many forms, not just the traditionally understood ways of reading and writing as it looks in a classroom. It is building oral language and vocabulary through conversations. It is imaginary play. Oral language and imaginary play are particularly important at the K-2 level. It is literacy in different forms such as podcasts, blogging, making lists, and planning for parties. It is the skill of listening. Some of the best communicators are highly skilled in listening. Literacy is more broad than just writing a paragraph or reading a book. Think of literacy as communication of ideas, stories and experiences. This is something we do every day.
3. A key component of literacy is the development of reading and writing identity. Who does the child believe they are as a reader or a writer? Do they have a positive opinion of themself in that regard? Do they believe they can grow as a reader or writer? Do they embrace and accept that sometimes reading and writing has productive struggle in it? Do they know books they like to read and genres and modalities they like to write in?
4. Developing a reading and writing life has long-lasting impact. Does the child have plans to read books? Do they have topics, genres and ideas they plan to write about? How do they infuse reading and writing into their life outside and inside of school? Do they have a favorite place they like to read and write? Do they see it as life activity, not a school activity?
5. A goal of literacy should be to find enjoyment in it. We all have topics we love to learn about, stories that resonate with our heart and conversations we love to take part in. Realizing the joy in literacy is a huge motivator.
6. Literacy builds relationships. Having conversations about reading and writing, going to the local library together, crying over a character’s loss in a book, developing empathy for injustices in the world, and understanding ourselves and others—these topics only begin to touch the surface of how literacy builds relationships.

If we only thought of literacy as decoding words, learning to write a topic sentence or correcting spelling, then we would have a lot less kids engaged in literacy. It is the foundational believes above that help bring literacy to life and provides meaning and purpose. It is these things that TRULY create life-long literacy, which should always be the goal. And, it’s these foundational believes that drive our recommendations to parents for developing literacy over the summer.

At the bottom of the page, you will find two guides for parents. One is for grades K-2 and the other is for grades 3-6. Simply click on the image to access the pdf for download.

In addition, click on the buttons below to access the pdfs mentioned in the parent’s guide.