At my school the librarians are responsible for selecting the summer reading for our students. It's a boys' school. All the research tells us the situation with boys and literacy is grim. That is not my experience. Just as with anything, one needs to have the right carrot to dangle before the reader.
That carrot that works for me and my students is the Summer Reading Challenge.It came about because I was thinking about summer reading and what we know about boys and reading. In a nutshell, boys like choice, technology, competition, and being social. I combined all of those aspects into a summer reading program. The Summer Reading Challenge consists of selecting a task, reading a book that meets the requirements of the task, and making a post about the book. There are 15 tasks to choose from. They are varied and go from being very specific (read a specific book), to very general (read a book in a tent). The boys access the Summer Reading Challenge through Moodle -- which is the learning environment they use starting in 3rd grade and progressing through 12th grade. The students get to see each others comments about books and can respond to classmates. They can also see the books others are reading and may be inspired to also read that book.
Putting this all online enables the students to access it anywhere they have Internet access, allows a level of interactivity that a paper list doesn't allow, and gives an added depth to the list because I can embed links, photos, videos and the like.
This is our second year doing summer reading for 4th and 5th graders this way and it's a hit. Here's to many more summers!!
