How are you supporting student readers this summer? If you’re searching for summer reading activities for elementary students, I have you covered! Today on the blog, we’ll take a look at a collection of resources you can use this summer and share with families.
The summertime offers opportunities and challenges for students and families. There are opportunities to engage in a variety of activities that support literacy, but it can be a challenge to know where to start. The team at Capstone has pulled together a fantastic set of resources for this time of year. It includes guided activities, holiday calendars, and more!
Summer Reading Activities for Elementary Students
If you haven’t heard of Capstone, they offer students and teachers access to high-quality reading materials. Elementary students can conduct research, explore social studies and science topics, and access text with audio support. I love how easy it is for teachers to locate and share articles with students to support their curiosity about hundreds of topics. This page gives you more information about all things PebbleGo.
I’ve shared a few posts this year featuring PebbleGo, including these three:
- 6 Tips for Using Short Reading Passages
- 7 Ways to Inject Math in Reading Classrooms
- How to Increase Informational Text Access in Your District
Today on the blog, I want to spotlight their summer reading activities for elementary students. They have a special landing page with summer-themed resources you don’t want to miss!
Letter to Families
First up is a ready-to-use letter to send home to families. With this letter template, you can add all the information families need to connect to PebbleGo in the summertime. This is perfect for student readers who have access to an Internet-enabled device over the summer. You can send this letter home with students or use it as a template for an email you send out to families.
Customizable Bookmarks
Instead of, or in addition to, sending a letter home to families, you can use the customizable bookmarks from PebbleGo. These PDF files are perfect for you to use right away, and there are English and Spanish versions. You can download the PDF files, print them out, and write students’ usernames and passwords so families can easily access the information.
You might decide to print the bookmarks on cardstock or laminate them before sharing them with students. If you are reading this and students are already home from school for the summer, sending a bookmark to them in the mail is a fun option.
Guided Activities
The downloadable summer reading activities for elementary students give you (and families) supporting resources. You might use these as part of a summer program or share them with families to guide them on bringing reading activities into their summer schedule. There are lots to choose from, including a few new options like “Inventors and Their Inventions.”
Summer Calendars
One great way to inspire student readers is to connect them with timely resources. The team at Capstone has created calendars for May, June, July, and August with summer reading activities for elementary students. You can learn about different holidays and see the article corresponding to the date. For example, July 14th is Shark Awareness Day, and you can check out an article in PebbleGo about Sharks.
This page has the links to the summer calendars, but here are a few dates (and passages) you won’t want to miss:
- July 20th – Space Exploration Day (Article: Exploring Space)
- July 29th – National Rain Day (Article: Rain)
- August 1st – World Wide Web Day (Article: What Is The Internet)
- August 10th – World Lion Day (Article: Lions)
Summer Reading Log
If you want to have children keep track of their reading accomplishments this summer, you might want to try the summer reading log from the team at Capstone. This is a PDF you can download, print and share with families. If you only share virtual resources with families during the summertime, you can share a link to the PDF for them to print and use or open up in a tool that lets them annotate PDFs.
My favorite part of the reading log is how students can rate each article they have read. This can provide teachers and families with information they can use to recommend new reading materials in the future.
Supporting Student Readers
Ready to jump into these summer reading activities for elementary students? Make sure to head to this special summer resources page from PebbleGo. It will give you instant access to all of the resources I mentioned above. You can decide what to share with families this summer or use in summer programming with students.
