By Daniele Berman, Community Partnerships Manager
That’s the goal of National Summer Learning Day: to highlight all the ways parents and communities can work together to keep kids learning all summer long.
Without access to resources, students can lose so many of their hard-won gains from the school year during the long summer break. This phenomenon is often referred to as “summer slide” or “summer melt,” and for children from low-income families, the losses are particularly staggering: two months’ worth of math and two to three months’ worth of reading on average. These summer losses account for two-thirds of the achievement gap in reading between students from low-income families and their peers from middle income families by ninth grade.*
That’s why we teamed up with Durham County Library, Durham Housing Authority, Durham’s Partnership for Children, and Durham County Department of Social Services–and Wool E. Bull and Ranger Baldy, too!–to help kids build and grow their own home libraries this summer. They selected 1,027 books, many of which were provided by the national Book Rich Environments Initiative! We also made sure parents had access to lots of information about how to register for pre-k and get ready for kindergarten, how to get signed up for our free summer learning texting program, and how to keep kids excited about learning all summer. And about 45 lucky kids had the chance to share lunch with Wool E. Bull and Ranger Baldy!
One thing we learned on National Summer Learning Day: Wool E. Bull prefers chocolate milk over fruit!
To sign up for our free summer learning texts, text @letsread17 to 81010 for texts in English or @leyendo17 para español.