With the weather warming up, we find summertime is on the horizon. As most parents understand, summer is a wonderful time for students to relax and recharge for another school year. Unfortunately, the summer vacation has been known to erode many of the skills and concepts learned during the school year.
In this era of high stakes testing and student performance, it is important to begin planning a summer reading regiment for your child.
The old adage “Fail to plan…plan to fail” is so important to consider in today’s highly competitive world. Therefore, I’m sending out this notice early, so parents can begin to prepare and schedule summer goals for their child.
In truth, I’m also selecting summer reading materials – fiction and non-fiction – for my child because I understand that the State’s benchmark for excellence has been raised. It’s going to take a lot of extra work to even achieve at a “passing” level let alone a level of excellence, so children do need to work on their skills during vacation and holiday periods.
As a matter of fact, we found out last week from the new Core Curriculum assessments that New York State means business. The exams were more demanding and challenging than expected and for children to be truly successful they will need to be involved in educational related activities twelve months a year. As touted, the assessments focused on non-fiction passages. Therefore, it is important to share these texts with your children.
Clearly, parents want to be proactive and find “high interest” non-fiction materials that their children will enjoy. This isn’t an easy task because a great deal of non-fiction can be dry and tedious reading for children. The easiest way to find high interest selections is to stop by the Island Trees Public Library and ask the wonderful staff there.
They really go out of their way to find the right books for your particular interests. In fact, they’ll even search through the Nassau County database for you. We’re really fortunate to have that small town service in the Island Trees community.
