Summer Literacy Essay

Children, especially those from disadvantaged groups, often lose literacy skills while on summer vacation; it can take weeks or months to recuperate these losses. Once school resumes, the children continue to lose ground in literacy as critical time is spent re-teaching the lost skills, while students who did not regress over the summer continue to move forward (Sandberg Patton & Reschly, 2013). As the learning gap widens summer after summer, these children fall further behind, likely to never catch up (Fiore & Roman, 2010; Sandberg Patton & Reschly, 2013).
Summer reading programs, like those offered in schools, can positively influence how much a child reads during the summer (Kim & White, 2011). However, a successful summer literacy program requires more than access to books and other reading materials (Compton-Lilly, Caloia, Quast, & McCann, 2016; McTague & Abrams, 2011). Smith, Erwin & Carter (2014) agree and add that considering the educational levels of the students as well as
parents, peers, etc.), students have the potential to increase their ability to comprehend what they read (McCown & Thomason, 2014; Mahdavi & Tensfeldt, 2013). McCown and Thomason (2014) suggest strategies that assist students in activating their prior knowledge, monitoring their own reading comprehension, determining the main idea, and reviewing what they read are necessary to improve their comprehension skills. When students are instructed on which strategies to use and how to use them, they begin to use their metacognition to select strategies to use as they approach reading (McCown & Thomason, 2014). Over time, students become comfortable using these strategies, and they begin to self-select which strategies work for certain texts, which in turn enhances their comprehension skills (McCown & Thomason, 2014; Mahdavi & Tensfeldt,