Many of you are already on summer vacation. Here in Michigan, most of us have two more weeks of school. Ah, yes, the can’t-start-school-until-after-Labor-Day law that is so appealing in August? We pay for it now.

So we just recently compiled lists of summer reading for our families. Thought the list might be useful to some of you out there.

Summer Reading Recommendations | Beverly Media Center via kwout

Debbie West, our Reading Recovery teacher (you may have met her in the pages of School Library Media Activities Monthly as the co-author of the lesson plan featuring Octobunnies, which was also printed in 21st-Century Learning in School Libraries) and I also brainstormed a list of those “first chapter books” for independent reading, those that, according to various readability indexes, were at a reading level of 3.0 or below.

We made it as a Google Doc so either of us could edit it easily, with a link to a Google Form so that as others discovered books they recommended, we could add it to the list.

Debbie suggested that this was a sweet spot that was hard for families to find: those books that have the appeal of “chapter book format” while still being easy enough for independent reading. And what we found is that such books really don’t exist much before a second grade reading level.

Most parents leap right to Magic Tree House, which is more than some kids can handle independently. (Our parents have two Borders stores within five miles of their home, so it absolutely makes sense that they’d buy what was most prominently featured … and we all know how many MTH books there are out there!)

We also found that many books on the list were oldies but goodies … so we’re eager for more feedback. We’d love to hear your suggestions either in the comments or on the Google Form.

Criteria:

• Chapter book format
• Reading level (from A.R. or Scholastic Book Wizard’s leveling) of 3.0 or below, or a similar Fountas & Pinnell alphabetic letter
• In print

(And yes, one of these days, we’ll actually put the list into some kind of useful order.)

Beginning Chapter Books via kwout

This entry was posted on Monday, June 7th, 2010 at 7:48 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.