Hi, and welcome to the smarter literacy podcast from a send smarter intervention, where our mission is to simplify effective literacy and to make teaching literacy easier and more accessible for everyone.
For your hosts, Lindsey? And Corey, and in today's quick tip episode, we're gonna be sharing a quick tip on how to run summer groups that get results.
We recently ran a poll asking what you all wanted to hear about, and far and away people were interested in hearing about how to start a literacy based business.
So in our last episode, we talked all about that.
In that poll, many of you also wanted to hear about how to run summer groups that get results.
So today, we wanted to share a suggestion that we have found really effective for summer.
So, Lindsey, I know we've discussed this a lot, but I'd love to hear your experience with effective summer lesson programming.
Absolutely.
Funny enough summer is actually one of my favorite times of year when it comes to actually working with kids.
I just find it so rewarding.
So when I was an educator in the public school system, I worked a lot with kids over the summer.
And what I mainly focused on were book clubs to work with my students.
And the reason for that is because I have found that book clubs are actually a great way to keep kids engaged throughout the summer.
When you can work through an interesting story with a student rather than making them feel like they're back in the classroom, you just tend to have a lot more buy in from the kids.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And, I mean, you know, honestly, on, I kind of on top of that, a lot of students are required to read a book over the summer anyway, so you can just use this to your advantage.
Right? Absolutely.
Get a couple of goals hit at one time.
Yeah.
And, of course, the parents are always really happy about that too because then they don't have to struggle to try and make their child read.
Over the summer.
So it's just great.
The first step that I always started with was, of course, you need to know your students' needs.
Right? So sometimes I had already known the student that I was working with because I had been their or previously or I had worked with them, you know, the previous summer.
So I already knew if they were, like, maybe struggling in word recognition or comprehension or both.
Right? Like, I kinda knew what I need to hit with them.
But if I was getting a new student, someone who was parents who had reached out to me and said, you know, we got recommendation from you from so and so.
And they asked if I could work with their child.
The very first thing I would do with them is do some kind of assessment.
It does not have to be a giant formal assessment.
In fact, I found a lot of parents did not want to kind of pay you to to do a big formal assessment that might take two or three sessions when they just really kinda wanna get started on summer tutoring.
So I would do something like a a placements greener of some sort to really figure out, okay, what does this student need? Are they word recognition? Are they comprehension? Where are those needs? And that just really helps you so that when you kind of dive into the book club, you know what you need to target.
You know what you need to hit.
And what was even really nice too was honestly I was able to get a lot of information from the child's previous teacher or the parent themselves.
They would be bringing in data from the previous school year.
And just kinda even telling me here is what we really notice our child struggles with.
So use that information to really help you and save time.
Absolutely.
Those spring conferences that families will have just had prior to this summer can be really great.
And a lot of times teachers are providing data at that point, and they are also so often willing to say, Hey, these are the things we're concerned about before they go into their next grade level.
So we've seen for sure as well.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And of course, always, like, if the child does have an IEP or five zero four, and if the parent is comfortable sharing that with you, you know, ask for that because that's just gonna give you the information you need as well.
And, again, anything you can have to save time and to be able to jump in really kind of makes all parties happy.
Yeah.
We've seen that too that families, they just want to make sure that their kids have what they need.
They don't necessarily need all of the data.
They're happy to just know just wanna make sure that we're covering all of our bases for the summer.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So next step would be, again, we're focusing on book clubs here.
So focusing and determining which book are you going to read.
And as I mentioned before, a lot of students have to do a summer read book.
And so sometimes they're assigned a book or sometimes they're given a list and they come to you already they've already chose the book.
Whether it's because it was assigned to them or they chose it off a specific list or just because they know what book they wanna read, that's great.
So my suggestion there would be if the child does know what book they're gonna be reading previous to you starting as the parents for the title so you can get your hands on the book beforehand so you can kinda start going through the book yourself, especially if it's one you're not familiar with, and start thinking about, okay, what am I going to be doing with this book? How do I kinda wanna break this up.
But if they come to you, they don't have a book picked, there isn't a list, there isn't a signed book.
Really, then your first session should be one getting to know your student, especially if you don't know them.
And part of that's gonna be sitting down with them and figuring out what book do you wanna read? You do wanna take into consideration obviously their age and their reading levels.
Like, what are what might they be struggling with? But most importantly, I think it really is that this book is going to appeal to your student because, again, that's just gonna help you buy in so much more.
And the kid's actually gonna be excited to work with you.
Absolutely.
And I think one of the things that you can do there too is you can even give up So you don't have to say, oh, of any book in the world, what do you wanna read? You can have some preselected of, hey, this book is about this, this book is about this, this one's about this.
Yep.
Which one would be most interesting to you? And even that creates that buy in that you're talking about of, oh, I have some autonomy over my summer and what I'm gonna be reading.
Yeah.
And honestly, so what would happen in those scenarios for me would be I kinda I'm usually was in a library setting, and I was sitting down with my student I'm just asking them, tell me about yourself, like, what are your interests? And, you know, I would then kinda ask them, like, what kind of books do you have to read? Do you like to read fantasy? Do you like to read historical fiction? Do you like to read mystery? And once they kinda gave me some of those answers, I already had several books kind of in my mind just from knowing books that kids read and that I know kids have enjoyed in the past.
And I would bring them to the library to those different sections.
I pull them out and I'd almost do like a little book talk to them.
It kind of was really cool for them because it also seems they were like, oh, wow.
She was listening to me.
She's pulling these books out just for me.
And they almost felt like, wow.
She cares.
You know, Um, so that was always a fun way to, you know, just kinda get started with those kids, especially if you don't know them.
So, yeah, so and then once you kinda picture the books, also I do just wanna say, like, yes, you wanna keep in mind their their reading level and, obviously, their age level don't be picking anything that's, you know, obviously inappropriate for that particular age.
Keeping in mind that we we want kids to really be interested in the book, If you think the book might be really hard for them to read on their own, remember audiobooks are always an option.
Read alouds with you, with their parents.
So you don't necessarily have to say no to a book if a child's chosen it just because you know it's gonna be harder for them to get through.
Because we do we do have options out there for the kids, and you can always always help them through, and they'll feel better for it.
That's such a great point.
And it's a great opportunity to make them feel confident in their reading too without feeling like, oh, no.
I have to choose what they might see as a baby book or a book that feels too young for them.
So that makes perfect sense.
I love that.
Yeah.
So once you know the book, you've chosen the book, what you're gonna be working through, is again, you're really gonna wanna go through it beforehand and design those lessons around your goals.
And sometimes you already have those book clubs kinda built out because you've done them previously.
That's a win.
That's always a win.
Yes.
So you save time.
If it's a new book and you kinda have to go through it, this will probably be where you're spending the most amount of your time, but it's gonna be worth it in the end.
And what I really found is that if I could find a way to break the book up into chapters, to fit into about eight to 10 lessons.
Right? Generally, I would meet my students once or twice per week, right, throughout the summer.
And I just found that if we could chunk it into bite sized chapters, it wasn't as overwhelming for the student and myself.
Right? Because we have there's certain things I wanna hit per lesson.
And if we're covering a whole bunch of information, a whole bunch of stuff that's happening in the story at once, it we kind of would, you know, you get confused a little.
Right? So you wanna keep it manageable.
And then I would think about, you know, what strategies do I need to use and to implement to meet my students' needs.
So again, let's say my student was a phonics.
Kid.
I would maybe look through the, um, chapters.
We were gonna be reading for that week, and I'd be pulling out words that I wanted him or her to decode and to break into syllables.
And especially if we were practicing a certain syllable type VCE or clothes or rabbit, let's say I would go through and I would find those words and almost create like a word list.
For my students.
And we'd be practicing, reading through them, chunking them, talking about the different syllable types.
So there was a lot a lot to work with there.
You can find there's so many patterns throughout the book.
And then anything that would be more difficult for your student, you can show them.
This is how I break it down.
This is how I pronounce it right depending on where they are.
For fluency, let's say, I would maybe pick a page or two from the chapter, and I would ask them, okay, we're gonna do a cold read.
I'm gonna time you for one minute.
Let's see how many words we can get in one minute.
Then, you know, also do a hot read.
Just so you you're, again, you're not doing these big formal assessments, but you're keeping data going throughout the sessions and you're really tracking, like, okay, how is my student doing per session? Are how are they doing with the skills that they're practicing? Are they practicing what I've previously taught them? So that would be the fluency comprehension would be more of by new comprehension was an issue.
I would know, okay, we're gonna practice the annotating.
Right? We're gonna be practicing looking for the important information in this chapter or these chapters.
And I would have comprehension questions ready to go.
So when we finish those chapters and we're going back through and I'm kinda checking the comprehension, I already have written this comprehension questions out.
And the questions range from direct recall sequencing, main idea inferencing and predicting.
Right? So you're you're really having and helping the student to dive deep into that book.
Absolutely.
I love that flow.
So I also really just feel like the beauty of book clubs is that you can really make it your own and just expand where you need to to help your student.
You can really use that book as as the framework to drive that instruction, and it just it becomes a really fun experience for you and for your student.
You can also think of as you're working with your student and the writing.
Right? Even if it's writing sentences or or a whole paragraph, they can build off what they've what they've already learned, what they already know, and what what are their thoughts? Like, what are they thinking's gonna happen next? And it just makes it part of this experience of the the student is really seeing, like, Oh, I'm really interacting with the book.
Again, that book, ideally, appeals to your student, so they're making those connections with the characters, they're thinking more deeply about the students, or about the story.
Excuse me.
We've talked about this before, Corey, that sometimes when we teach our kids literacy strategies, they don't always apply it to real reading, or they don't always think of it as real reading, by using these literacy strategies in a real book, in summertime when there's not tests and homework, you know, abound for them, they're kind of being like, oh, so this is how I apply these things that my teachers been teaching me to quote unquote real reading.
Right? So It's it's just I've always found it to be meaningful work, fun work, and I've always had kids feel and parents too have have commented back that they felt like that their child was engaged this summer that they didn't experience, like the summer slip, the summer slide.
Right? And then they kinda go into that next year feeling like, okay.
You know, I'm ready.
I'm ready.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I love that so much.
And I think, again, it just builds so much confidence.
One of the things that we've done here over the summer too is sometimes we will, um, if we've got a group of students, we do have books that we've chosen ahead of time and so they know and they're excited for the book, and we can also give them the book as part of their summer group.
And that's also like a gift that they're getting in addition to the work that they're doing.
And so that can just be a nice reminder too of all of the effort that they've put in.
So I just love that so much.
I think it really digs into that real reading and really feeling confident as a reader as a whole.
Yeah.
Even a student that I was working with last night, she's been doing such great work and we're getting closer and closer to summer.
And I told her, you know, I think you're I think you're ready for something a little different.
I think you're ready for even something longer I kinda told her.
And then I said, you know, what do you think about doing a book club? I told her what we'd be doing and the book that, you know, I was thinking about before I gave her two choices between two books.
And she she chose the one that I was ultimately gonna choose to she was so excited because she saw it as a reward.
She saw it as like, oh, we get to do this new fun thing.
It was just a great feeling to see that.
So as she and I are getting ready to kinda transition to summer work, and she's gonna be out of school here soon, She sounds really excited to do this, and I'm excited to do it with her too.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I think they're just so fun.
So to summarize, if you are looking at summer groups, just quick strategy here, we wanna keep this actionable.
And so what we would say based off of your thoughts there is that the first step is to have a quick assessment so that you know what your student needs just to get an idea for.
Is it word recognition? Is it comprehension? Is it a little bit of both? And then the next step would be to determine student interest or make that book selection based again off of what they're excited for, where they're at, what skills potentially you want to make sure that you're hitting on And then the last piece would be putting together those summer lessons using the book as the framework.
So, again, you're still hitting all five core components.
You wanna make sure that you are using that book to be thinking about, like you said, words, you can think about, alright, how many syllables? How many sounds? What's a word that rhymes? Just using words from the book so that they can see directly how it applies right off the bat.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
We hope that this quick tip strategy helps you, and let us know if you decide to run a summer group.
And if you do, what you decide to use? If you're looking to build your own book clubs, we have blogs and YouTube videos where where we've walked through our own book club process that will drop in the show notes.
So make sure to check those out too.
And if you're looking for done for you ready to use book clubs, we have a number of books to choose from in our shop, which we will also link in the show notes.
In our upcoming episodes, we'll be further diving into research based some planning strategies and incorporating the science of reading into your instruction.
So make sure to stay tuned.
Thanks for listening to this episode of a smarter literacy podcast.
Make sure to subscribe for more strategies and insights to make delivering effective literacy instruction easy, or at least easier.
And if you found this episode helpful, share it with a friend or leave a rating and review wherever you get your podcast.
It really does help others find the show, and we are beyond grateful for your support.
Thanks for listening.
Until next time.
Happy teaching
