Literacy Now

To ensure the well-being of every child, access to books over the summer is critical. We believe that creating lifelong readers starts with ensuring there is opportunity to promote the love and joy of reading year-round. During the summer months, when most children are out of school, access to books becomes even more important. Many children do not have access to books at home, which means they don’t read over those three months.

To keep the joy and love of reading moving forward, schools need to take a vital role in planning and executing summer reading initiatives.

We have spent the past eight years with grant-funded projects working to create balanced literacy schools, with a focus on creating year-round access to books. We developed summer reading initiatives with partner schools. These initiatives, which are unique within each school setting, were also drawn from our over three decades of working in our Summer Reading Clinic at the university.

We have learned both in our work within partner schools and our university Summer Reading Clinic that families want their children exposed to print-rich activities over the summer months. Often, families do not know how to help their children and do not have access to the resources needed to do so. However, with some guidance, these obstacles can be overcome, and students can continue to thrive and grow in their love and joy of literacy over these crucial summer months.

Following are some of the initiatives we employed at our partner schools.

A read-aloud picnic

Summer is the perfect time to enjoy outdoor spaces for reading. One teacher came up with the idea to hold a read-aloud picnic. Families were invited to bring a picnic snack and blanket to a cozy space on the school grounds. They sat and discussed the read-aloud topic and then enjoyed the interactive read-aloud. Adults were just as engaged as the children, asking questions and participating.

Summer book clubs

Children love to talk about books they have read. Book clubs, held at the school or a public library, are a wonderful venue to keep these conversations going over the summer. Schools can determine what book club selections will work for which grades. One school held a book club lunch, where students discussed their selection over their packed lunches. We have had good luck recommending the latest award-winning books from both the John Newbery Medal and Honor Book winners and Jane Addams Children's Book Award lists.

Partner with the public library

Partnering with the public library can have many benefits. Some public libraries have “pop-up libraries” that travel throughout the community to bring books to children and adults. These innovative libraries serve many goals, including bringing books and librarians to people who may not otherwise go to a library, showcasing the library’s many resources and activities, and allowing readers to connect. Librarians should ensure they provide a wide variety of subjects and genres that reflects the reading interests of all students. This has been most successful initiative in our summer clinic; the local public library comes every other week, rain or shine. The children are thrilled to have this opportunity to spend time selecting books, talking, and sharing their reading with others.

Reading incentive programs

One school partnered up with a local yogurt shop for an incentive program. Children who read a specified number of books, documented in their summer reading log, were given a voucher to get a free yogurt. This worked especially well with the younger children. Searching for community partners and what they can offer will depend on the community. In our summer clinic, children get a “free” book for every five they read. Getting to select a book to keep is a big incentive, and children often take their time making their selection, being very deliberate in their decision-making process.

School’s open for books

One of our initiatives was to open the school a few days over summer for students to come and select reading materials. Carts filled with inviting books were rolled out into the hall outside the principal’s office. Days and hours were flexible and generous. The principal, school secretary, and participating teachers stood by to greet the students and offer book suggestions. Family members who accompanied younger students were delighted by the availability of books.

Margaret Mary Policastro is a professor of language and literacy at Roosevelt University (RU) where she directs both the language and literacy program and is the Summer Reading Clinic director. The summer reading initiatives evolved out of the work in the RU Summer Reading Clinic. She currently is directing the RU IL-EMPOWER partnership with the Illinois State Board of Education working to improve underperforming schools.

Diane Mazeski retired after a rewarding career as a teacher and reading specialist in Mt. Prospect and Winnetka, Illinois. She is currently the associate director of the Summer Reading Clinic. Diane served as the literacy coach at Our Lady of the Wayside School and helped to implement the summer reading initiatives.

Debra Fisher is a first-grade teacher at Our Lady of the Wayside School in Arlington Heights, Illinois. While partnering with RU, she served on the literacy team helping to transform her school into a balanced literacy school. Debra was also instrumental in creating and supporting the school’s summer reading initiatives.

My students are not a fan of my name. Throughout the year, I find a number of variations to my last name in writing and speech. I own it. Stygles, as in /Sty/ /guls/, is not an easy name to say or read. Ask Alexa. She’ll get my name wrong too! I have one of those great names that has a single vowel. Even then, the /e/ is relatively silent and the “y” functions as an /i/.

Nonetheless, I expect my students to learn my name in spelling and pronunciation. Maybe I seem “mean” because I won’t let kids call me Mr. S., but I believe teachers who abbreviate their names by reducing long names or complicated pronunciations to the initial consonant or initial vowel sound are denying students exposure to unique oral language. We are a country constructed with Spanish, Arabic, Pacific Islander, Polish, and Russian surnames, among hundreds of others. Learning the sounds of these unique surnames provides decoding insight into the English language and many others we can experience or learn.

Students who are raised in culturally homogenous communities tend have limited exposure to first and last names from various origins. Growing up in a military family provided me the opportunity to learn correct pronunciation of African American and Latinx names, much of which has carried over into my career as a teacher in terms of oral readings, pronouncing names, and helping students clarify the names of characters from various cultural backgrounds.

While teaching in rural, relatively isolated schools, I’ve realized exposure to and interaction with diverse languages, other than localized lexicons, is limited. Students in these districts have fewer opportunities to practice phonetics such as letter sounds and spelling patterns.

For example, having known an Eoin, I understood how to pronounce the Irish name, “Owen.” I have seen students and teachers trip over this name in reading. I happened to “know” the pronunciation from my interest in horse racing. Otherwise, I’m sure I would have pronounced Eoin incorrectly. Likewise, learning -guez or -eaux, of Spanish and French origin, through experiences in foreign language acquisition, and the racetrack, supported my ability to read and say people’s names correctly, thus respectfully. Had somebody allowed me, or a student of mine, to say, “Mr. D.” instead of Dominguez, a learning experience would be lost.

As school districts become increasingly diverse, I think we have a responsibility as teachers to learn and impart the proper pronunciation of names, even if we must ask the student—an opportunity to foster the student’s sense of belonging and show you value his or her culture and identity. Furthermore, if we intend to teach our students appropriate letter–sound correspondence, syllables, and morphemes, we can start by modeling how to correctly pronounce names, or, again, the courage to ask when uniqueness appears. In doing so, you demonstrate that you too are a lifelong learner who is not afraid to admit a mistake.

Although my name isn’t pleasant, there are some pronunciation rules that can be transferred to other words. There as so many other names out there that create special learning circumstances. So why abbreviate a 13-letter or a four-syllable last name to a single consonant sound? Children who are learning to pronounce sounds will benefit from practice and error more than denying an experience entirely. I feel teaching students to say the full name of their classmates and teachers is a critical exercise in language development.

Justin Stygles is a fifth-grade teacher in Wiscasset, Maine. He's taught for 15 years in various settings. You can follow him on Twitter at @justinstygles.

April is National Poetry Month, which provides an opportunity for teachers and educators to bring poetry into the classroom and inspire students to read and experience works of poetry on their own. Since 1996, the national holiday has celebrated the contributions of poets while recognizing poetry's vital place in our culture and everyday lives. Following are resources and activities to help students get excited about poetry.

• ILA’s Choices Reading Lists includes works of poetry chosen for children, by children.
• This Writer’s Digest post, “The 20 Best Poems for Kids,” outlines three categories of poems (short poems, funny poems, and rhyming poems), lists popular examples of each type, and explains why they succeed with children.
• Scholastic offers poetry-related articles, lesson plans, and blog posts that are applicable to educators of various grade levels.
• Goodreads lists titles of popular works of poetry geared toward children. From Shel Silverstein to Dr. Seuss and Robert Louis Stevenson, the poems on this list will engage students and help them find their favorite authors. 
• ReadWriteThink includes poetry resources in addition to lesson plans and classroom activities—organized according to grade level—that can help to get students excited about poetry.
• Ahead of last week’s #ILAchat, Poetry, Rap, and Hip-Hop: Connecting With Students Through Rhythm and Rhyme, the ILA team rounded up a list of resources—recommended by our guest experts—for teachers to use and learn from.
• Reading Rockets shares video interviews with renown poets as well as a collection of classroom resources, including poetry booklists, activities, and lesson plans.
• ILA’s Children's Literature and Reading Special Interest Group (CL/R SIG) regularly reviews works of poetry for educators in search of inspiration.
• Edutopia’s compilation post includes resources from the web, Edutopia's most popular poetry-themed blogs, and other quick reads.

Bailee Formon is an intern at the International Literacy Association.  

A caring and inclusive classroom environment can have a significant impact on student outcomes, and one way teachers can demonstrate caring is through the books they choose for student learning. By carefully selecting the literature used in our classrooms, we aid our own growth and development as culturally responsive teachers while cultivating our students’ literacy development, capacity for compassion, and acceptance of themselves and others.

Teachers practice culturally sustaining pedagogy when they choose literature that acknowledges and respects the gamut of students’ backgrounds and experiences. This practice shows students they are cared for and valued and creates a classroom culture of care that encourages students to respect and understand diversity.

Culturally sustaining pedagogies and diversity in literature

Django Paris, professor of multicultural education at the University of Washington, theorized that culturally sustaining pedagogy “seeks to perpetuate and foster—to sustain—linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of the democratic project of schooling.” To practice culturally sustaining pedagogy, teachers must recognize that they have a leading role in initiating and encouraging discussion and dialogue about the meanings students draw from the texts they read.

Lauren Leigh Kelly, professor of urban education at Rutgers University, comments that by acknowledging the cultural identities of students, “educators can simultaneously engage students in critical literary and social dialogues while also sending a clear message that students’ lives and communities are present and relevant to classroom learning and culture.” By providing students with literacy-rich environments that promote critical thinking, we can help them to better understand the wider world and their own role as a global citizen.

Diversity in literature promotes student voice

Perhaps more than any other academic activity, reading has the potential to facilitate identity development and give voice to marginalized students. As Paris states, there can be no “democratic project of schooling” if students don’t feel confident and secure enough to contribute to the democratic process.

Scholars agree that providing diverse texts in literacy development helps students connect to or challenge the various representations of “truth” presented to them through their assigned readings. The voice students gain from finding themselves in literature creates an opportunity for classrooms to come alive with multiple perspectives and divergent thinking.

Diversity in literature provides access to other worlds

As part of the goal of culturally sustaining pedagogy is to foster respect and appreciation for linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism, recognizing that literature—especially children’s literature—is a powerful medium for entering other worlds is important. Exposing students at a young age to other worlds through children’s books creates multiple safe opportunities to recognize and explore human variations. Conceivably, this early access to diverse realities could positively influence a child’s present and future humanity toward others. These mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors, a phrase coined by children’s literature scholar Rudine Sims Bishop, help students to better understand themselves and the world around them.

Some studies suggest that books may even provide children who are otherwise socially isolated by mind-set, geographic location, or life circumstances, with a vehicle to meet people unlike themselves and gain a broader acceptance and appreciation of individual likenesses and differences. To extend cultural pluralism as part of the democratic project of schooling, teachers must ensure all students have an opportunity to hear the stories that tell their own narrative and those of others. 

Diversity in literature fosters social justice

When individuals have access to other people, other cultures, other lifestyles, and other worlds, they tend to recognize systemic inequities and their own personal biases and predispositions that threaten peaceful coexistence. By analyzing beliefs and values of characters in a book, teachers and students can realize and then challenge long-held biases that negatively affect human interaction.

Ultimately, teachers pave the road toward authentic, caring relationships when they choose books that demonstrate interest and respect for the variety of cultural, social, spiritual, and socioeconomic variances represented by their students. Teachers assign value to books simply by choosing to place them on the class bookshelf or include them on the course syllabus, and the message teachers promote through the literature they choose should convey respect and acknowledgment of diverse cultures.

Diana Wandix-White, an ILA member since 2016, is a doctoral candidate and graduate research assistant at Texas A&M University, College Station. After teaching English/language arts for over 20 years, she decided to pursue her PhD, researching urban education and the culture of care in K–12 public schools. Additionally, her teaching experience, along with her master’s degree in reading education, continues to draw her to issues of literacy. Combining her research interests leads her to the study of issues at the intersection of literacy, cultural diversity, and the importance of care as demonstrated through teachers’ selections of culturally relevant texts.  

If you love organization or Netflix, you’ve probably heard of Marie Kondo. This tidying-up expert has transformed households across the world by asking one simple question: Does it spark joy? Rather than view living spaces with disdain and focusing on what to remove or change, Marie focuses on what we love and need to live the life we envision for ourselves. As I completed the process in my own house, I thought, what if we were to do the following:

• Design classrooms based on the literate learning we hope to achieve?
• Privilege materials that ensure meaning making and spark joyful learning?
• Cull excess papers and worksheets devoid of intentional instruction?
• Weed classroom libraries to ensure relevant, current, and diverse texts for the readers in front of us?
• Decorate classrooms with student work rather than commercial products?

The following guidelines, inspired by the KonMari Method, will help you create a joyful, productive space:

• Visualize. Imagine your classroom exactly as you would like it (layout, color scheme, books, writing materials, community spaces, classroom library, etc.). Dream within your physical space but outside the box with possibilities. What kind of literacy practices do you want students to engage in, and what kind of space do you need to support those practices?
• Tidy your classroom by category, rather than location. Possible categories are textbooks and workbooks, stored books, files, wall hangings and decorations, manipulatives and materials, writing supplies, arts and crafts, worksheets, classroom library books, and sentimental items. Gather items in the middle of the room to comprehend their volume and ensure they reflect the importance we want them to have.
• Gauge each item’s value. Touch each item and ask if it sparks joyful learning: Does it foster authentic reading, writing, learning, and meaning-making opportunities? Does it have a meaningful purpose for instruction? Value your teaching expertise over all else, and remove items that do not serve your teaching goals. Share them with colleagues or donate to those who need them.
• Organize for engagement. Once you’ve decided what to keep, store materials in ways that invite students to engage with them. Use clear bins that are easily accessible and neatly labeled. Create homes for each of your items and ensure students can easily understand and access your organizational system. After all, this is their classroom too.

Finally, celebrate learning! Be grateful for the opportunity to grow readers and writers. By using KonMari’s approach in our classrooms, we can cultivate authentic literacy practices and bring joy to teaching and learning.

Stephanie Affinito, an ILA member since 1999, is a literacy teacher educator in the Department of Literacy Teaching and Learning at the University at Albany in New York. She has researched literacy coaching as part of her doctoral studies and focuses much of her current work on how technology and digital tools can impact teacher learning and collaboration. You can find her on Twitter at @AffinitoLit.