While summer break is a highlight for most students, it can come with a headache for parents and guardians. Students are excited to finally relax, hang out with friends, scroll through their favorite social media apps without interruption, and sleep late, while parents grapple with the never-ending thought of, “will they remember all they’ve learned this year?”

The “summer slide” is a term commonly used in the education community to describe the academic regression many students experience during summer vacation due to the break in learning. This is highly common in young learners who are in the beginning or developmental stages of acquiring literacy skills. As a first grade teacher myself it can be disappointing to see the learning loss that occurs due to the break in daily reading instruction.

But there is hope! With the end of the year comes end-of-year assessments that provide valuable insight for families regarding their students’ growth and current reading ability. Look closely and you’ll see many summative and interim assessments include a student’s Lexile reading measure, which can be paired with student-focused tools and resources on the Lexile and Quantile Hub, helping parents beat the summer slide with resources tailored to their child’s needs.

What is a Lexile Measure?

Let’s dive a little deeper into Lexile measures and how they can be used to promote reading growth, even during breaks in instruction. A Lexile reading measure indicates a student’s reading ability and a Lexile text measure indicates the complexity of a text.

Millions of students across the nation already receive Lexile measures through their state summative assessments and benchmark assessments. It’s important to note that this reading measure is not a reading level, however, it can be used to better understand a student's reading ability on a developmental scale and find texts in their comprehension range.

The Power of Hub Tools for Parents

Good news, Lexile measures make student assessment data even more meaningful when you have the right tools and resources! Let's explore some of these free tools and resources available on the Lexile® & Quantile Hub and see how they can help families prevent that “summer slide”.

Foster a Love of Reading: Lexile Find a Book

Let’s start with one of my favorite Hub tools - Lexile® Find a Book. This tool uses a database of thousands of books to help search for books based on a student’s Lexile reading measure. Simply enter your student’s Lexile measure and hit search. If you don’t have Lexile measures, you can also search by grade range.

And we all know those students who can’t find a book that looks interesting, right?

Lexile Find a Book also has the capability that allows teachers and parents to search for books based on their students’ interests while also remaining in their targeted Lexile range. This takes the guesswork out of finding a just-right book to engage young readers during the summer. 

Science Of Reading: Lexile Decodable Passages

Another useful Hub resource for growing readers is the Science of Reading-based Lexile Decodable Passages, located in the Hub’s Resource Center. These passages are easy to download and print, making them perfect to send home for the summer. You can get a few free passages with a Basic+ account, and you will have access to even more if you have a Premium Hub membership. 

Decodable passages include instructional focus sounds (short a, short o, etc), which give parents the opportunity to reinforce key phonetic skills that were taught during the school year. Families can read one decodable passage with emergent readers daily to try and prevent “summer slide”. I encourage families to make it engaging by:

• First, having their child use their favorite color to highlight each instructional focus sound they hear and see, as the adult reads the decodable passage. 
• After the decodable passage is read aloud to the child, they can read the passage along with the parent. 
• The final time the decodable passage is read, the child can read it independently and answer the comprehension questions provided at the end of each section. 

This is an awesome way to monitor the child’s fluency and comprehension! Plus we all know how much joy comes from families reading together.

Create a Summer Reading Challenge with Lexile Insights

Finally, we have arrived at the fun part!

You (or your families) can create a tailored summer reading challenge that involves setting goals, book tracking, and engaging fluency and comprehension activities. Once we are done, you can send this challenge home to keep your families reading all summer long.

Download this Summer Reading Challenge template to create a summer challenge or send it home for families to use.

Want to see what a finished challenge looks like? Check out this sample Summer Reading Challenge created by a 6th-grade teacher in Georgia.

Step #1: Families Create a Summer Reading List

Encourage children and families to set a goal of reading a certain number of books from a variety of genres before the summer ends. Either they can use Lexile Find a Book to make a book list together or a teacher can use Find a Book to create and share a list of recommendations based on the student’s Lexile measure. You can also link or send home copies of Lexile Decodable Passages and add these texts as summer reading options.

Here are some tips for creating a booklist to dive into during this summer reading challenge. 

• Log into Hub.Lexile.com and visit the tools menu to find Lexile Find a Book. Once inside the tool, you will be given the option to search by measure and interest. This makes finding on-level and engaging books a breeze. Book interests include: Animal, Bugs, & Pets, Art, Creativity, & Music, General Literature, Hobbies, Sports,& Outdoors, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Real Life, and more! 
• It is important to keep in mind that incorporating a diverse range of genres and interests is a great way to promote reading growth and exposure in emergent readers. 
• Once you have found books that are both of interest to your reader and within their Lexile reading range, you can then build your personal library by selecting the heart icon to the left of the selected book’s title. This will move your book title to “My Bookshelf”. This virtual bookshelf gives parents the ability to save selected books along with links to purchase the book via Amazon or find them in a local library.

Step #2: Track Summer Challenge Progress

Families can use a tally mark or sticker system to help children earn rewards for completing a book.

Step #3: Celebrate and Reward Summer Reading

A great culminating activity is an in-home book fair where the child chooses their top five books to present an engaging overview or recap of the book to family and friends using poster boards, cereal boxes, shoe boxes etc! You can incorporate rewards such as coupons for screen time, tasty treats, or a new book.

Ready, Set, READ!

As we approach both the summer months and the end of the blog, I hope the only thing that has regressed is the fear that students will lose key foundational reading skills during their summer break. By actively engaging parents and students in using Lexile Find A Book and Lexile Decodable passages, you will be amazed at how much young readers continue to grow throughout their summer break. Invite your families to visit the Lexile & Quantile Hub to begin building their child’s summer reading plan today!