Skip Ribbon Commands
Skip to main content


 Georgia’s Summer Reading Challenge


​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Help Every Child Find Great Books to Read This Summer!

 

Challenge: Read every day for at least 15 to 30 minutes.

Suggested Goals:

Grades K-2 Students: read 10 books
Grades 3-5 Students: read 8 chapter books
Grades 6-HS Students: read 5 fiction books & 5 non-fiction books

Georgia is proud to be part of a nationwide summer reading initiative and challenge Georgia students to read every day during the summer break.

  • The Council of Chief State School Officers, in partnership with MetaMetrics®, are coordinating a national, state-led summer learning challenge to bolster student achievement during summer break.     
  • Georgia's challenge is focusing on reading to:
 

• raise national awareness of the summer loss epidemic,
• share compelling research on the importance of personalized reading activities, and
• provide access to a variety of free resources to support targeted reading and the initiative as a whole. 

Research studies show that --

 
  • reading loss occurs for most children when they are not in a formal learning environment or not engaged in any form of educational activities during the summer. ​

  • students can have up to a 2-3 month loss in reading ability over summer.

  • lower income students may suffer most due to lack of books in the home and transportation access to public libraries.

  • rural area students also lack easy access.

  • innovative partnering of schools, publishers, and public libraries has great promise for solving the summer reading loss dilemma.

 

Summer reading loss can be minimized.  

Research shows that children who read during the summer do not have to suffer this reading loss and may even show some growth in their reading ability.  

 

• Harvard University Professor Dr. James S. Kim has demonstrated that when students read a minimum of eight high-interest, ability-appropriate books over the summer, their reading skills grow as much as students who attend summer school.

 

Citation: Kim, J.S. (2005). Project READS (Reading Enhances Achievement During Summer): Results from a Randomized Field Trial of a Voluntary Summer Reading Intervention. Paper presented at Princeton University, Education Research Section, November 7, 2005.

 

Using Lexiles for Summer Reading:  

 

Lexiles can be used to target  reading materials for the student in order to maximize learning and growth.

 

One way to select appropriate summer reading materials is to find out the student’s reading level.  There are two ways to approximate a Lexile measure of a student. 

 
  1. Students can determine their own Lexile measure by looking at the Lexiles associated with the last 4 or 5 books they read during the school year. Choose books around the Lexiles of the book(s) they felt most comfortable reading.
  2. Visit the Find a Book site and enter the grade level of the student and check the statement that best describes the student’s comfort with reading, and a Lexile range will be generated. 
 

Another way to target summer reading materials is to have students read materials that fall within the demand of text ranges by grade level.  These ranges represent the demand of text that students should be reading to be college and career ready by the end of Grade 12.   Using these ranges may help identify challenging reading material for students. 

 

Text Demand by Grade

 
 

Lexile​

Text Measures

1

190L to 530L

2

420L to 650L

3

520L to 820L

4

740L to 940L

5

830L to 1010L

6

925L to 1070L

7

970L to 1120L

8

1010L to 1185L

9

1050L to 1260L

10

1080L to 1335L

11 and 12

1185L to 1385L

 
 

Find a Book is a great way to generate personalized reading lists using a student’s Lexile score.  Using a student’s Lexile measure is a great way to get started identifying books at a student’s appropriate reading level for summer reading.

 

Remember, a Lexile measure is a measure of text complexity only.  It does not address the subject matter, text quality, or age-appropriateness of the content of a reader’s interests.  The Lexile measure is one piece of information that you can use when selecting books.  Help students choose books around their interests as well as a variety of books that might expand their interests.

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​