Toolkits
Summer Learning
It IS possible to turn summer into a time of literacy enrichment!
On average, students can lose up to two months’ worth of reading gains during the summer break. As an educator, a summer program provider, or a parent, you want to make sure your students don’t lose any of the progress they have worked so hard for all year — in fact, you want to make sure they keep learning and growing all summer long! Book Harvest has created a set of resources and toolkits in partnership with North Carolina Early Childhood Foundation (NCECF) to help you provide what your students need to ensure summer learning success. You can read the descriptions of each of the resources and toolkits below.
Summer Counts Guide
Target Audience: educators and school staff
Summer Counts: A Guide to Support Summer Learning Through Book Giving focuses on nine research-supported best practices in book giving. Book Harvest’s signature initiative, Books on Break, highlights these best practices in action. You’ll also learn about what supports parents want to help their children keep learning over the summer. And there are plenty of resources to help you improve, scale up, or start a book giving program. The guide was released in conjunction with a webinar, which you can listen to online when you download the toolkit.
Summer Learning Toolkit
Target Audience: summer program providers
The Summer Learning Toolkit provides everything a summer program needs to communicate with parents during drop-off and pick-ups, through text messaging, and in other ways that can be used throughout the summer. It includes communication tools to ensure program staff understand the importance of summer learning so they can communicate effectively with parents, and information and resources to relay to parents (in English and Spanish) each week of summer.
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Parent Voice Report
Target Audience: policy makers and program designers
Not About Me, Without Me: Raising Parent Voice to Guide Early Childhood Policy is a meta-analysis of 18 parent surveys, focus groups, and meetings from across North Carolina, conducted by a wide range of organizations that support children and families. It is filled with information that is helpful as you consider the role parents will play in your work.