According to Oxford Learning, on average, students lose two months of literacy skills over the summer. However, it only takes 2-3 hour a week to prevent learning loss. This summer I will be tutoring several children who struggle with reading. While their friends are outside riding bikes or jumping into the neighbor's pool, these learners will be stuck with me, inside. Therefore, I know I need to to get creative with disguising the "work" we need to do together. Here are a few ideas I am going to be implementing. My hope is that they will be excited to engage in these activities. Whether you are a teacher teaching summer school, an educator who will be tutoring, a parent who homeschools or a parent just looking for ways to help your child over the summer, you might find some of these ideas helpful! If you end up trying any of them, let me know how it goes.
Novel Effect App
A few weeks ago I wrote THIS blog post about my experience using the Novel Effect app with a third grader I tutor who has always been reluctant to read aloud. I was absolutely shocked how this tool helped pull him out of his shell to read for me! The app contains music and sounds for over 200+ children's books and poems and the company adds to it weekly. This technology follows along as the user reads a story aloud. It plays music and sounds throughout the story turning the reader into a master storyteller. Smart voice recognition stays in sync with your reading style even if you skip ahead or reread a certain part. Not only does this tool have the potential to help struggling readers, I also believe it can help overconfident readers slow down and work on their expression. Click HERE to read more about Novel Effect. Also, check out their summer reading program HERE.
Digital Journal or Diary
Keep students writing over the summer with a DIGITAL journal or DIGITAL diary. I create my digital writing journals in Google Slides™ because it makes it easy for the teacher to check in at any time and leave students special messages. Students LOVE receiving messages from their teacher over the summer. If the journal is shared with parents, they can hop on from anywhere and check in on their child's progress! If you need a ready to go template, click one of the images below:
My plan is to share a journal or diary (they get to choose!) with the students I tutor for them to add to at least 3x a week. They will get to select the days they type their entries. I will hop on from my end to check-in and leave them special messages in the comments as well as digital stickers.
Fairy Tale STEM Stories
Fairy Tale STEM Stories are fantastic! These retellings of the classic fairy tales have the reader stop throughout the story to help problem-solve a given predicament. The STEM activities make learning interactive and provide a creative outlet for students to engineer new ideas.
There are four different fairy tales in the series. Click on my Amazon affiliate links below to learn more about these books.
Wouldn't these be a fantastic, interactive resource for summer reading?
If you are looking for some DIGITAL activities to go along with fairy tales, check out my Fairy Tale Elements Resource for Google Slides™.
AR Quiver Masks
I first saw AR Quiver Masks on Heidi Samuelson's @swampfrogs InstaStories and was very intrigued! Soon after I started seeing people post videos on Twitter using Quiver Masks for read aloud videos. I believe these videos were inspired by Sean Forde's tweet about #TheMaskedReader in which he shared the idea of using Quiver Masks and Flipgrid to post videos of adults reading books and the students guess who the mystery reader might beš¤Æ.
As soon as I saw these videos I immediately knew the kids I tutor would looooove using this. What a great way to jazz up fluency practice!
Basically, this free app combines physical coloring pages with face-tracking to provide an augmented reality experience.
First, visit THIS website to select a mask to print. You can design your mask using markers, crayons or colored pencils.
Next, launch the Quiver Masks app (available for iOS & Google Play) and aim the camera at your paper. Once it is scanned, you will see a red overlay. Wait a second for it to turn blue. Shortly after the mask will pop out of the page and you can aim the camera at someone's face or turn the camera around in selfie mode. The mask will appear!
To snap a picture, quickly tap the button. To video record, simply hold down the button. ☝Heads up, the app only allows you to record for 10 seconds. What I ended up doing was use the screen record feature built into iOS and then used the VideoCrop app to crop out the recording tools.
Summer Themed Resources from my TpT Store
- Digital Summer Themed Activities in Google Slides™
- June, July & August Would You Rather Digital Journals
- Summer Time Digital Collaborative Book in Google Slides™
