There really should be a hashtag for Ideas I Wish I Had Before the Last Day of School, But Now We're Two Days Into Summer Break So It's Really Too Late. I bet a lot of Twitter Teachers would use it. But it just seems too unwieldy and would take up almost an entire Tweet.
The 5th graders and I made a list of our favorite books from this school year. (Actually, it was two lists, since once piece of chart paper wasn't enough.) Then, we put up a poster outside the room with our summer reading goals.
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I just wish, in the 2 class sessions we spent on this, I had thought to turn our goals into a game. Unfortunately, I've already turned in my keys for the school year, and the parents probably wouldn't appreciate dropping their kids off for one more last day of school, anyway.
Or maybe they would. I don't know.
Either way, I've decided to turn summer reading into a bingo game for my own children at home. Our kids have a 10 week summer, so the card has 9 squares. If they go for blackout, that's a book a week. Our kids are going into 6th and 9th grades, so naturally they'll be aiming for chapter books.
Hubby and I have decided to offer prizes. Yeah, I've read all that stuff about intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation. I even believe in it to a large extent. However, it's summer and we're allowed to have some fun.
Plus, I read over 30 books during the summer of 1984 just because our county library was offering bronze, silver and gold medal stickers in honor of the LA Summer Olympics. And I really wanted that gold medal sticker. It was my first memory of a library summer reading program, and it really helped spark my love of reading. In that case, an extrinsic award helped strengthen an intrinsic motivation.
If you like the idea of a Summer Reading Bingo Card, you can make up one of your own, or you can use mine. Happy reading!
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