As the end of the school year approaches, we all become concerned with the “summer slide”.  The summer slide is an alarming trend in which students who do not read on a regular basis during the break fall behind in reading achievement.  The Georgia Department of Education has launched READ GA to help prevent this ‘summer slide’ and to keep our students reading and learning.

According to a recent Harvard research study, if students are encouraged to utilize summer hours to read between five and eight books that interest them and that are on their Lexile level, the effects will be the same as going to summer school.  Let’s make sure our students have a good book in their hands when they are not in the classroom.

The Lexile “Find a Book GA” website can help identify books that students are interested in and are able to read.  This tool can be found at: http://georgia.lexile.com  or  http://www.lexile.com/fab/ga. The Georgia Department of Education’s Lexile initiative information can be found at: http://www.gadoe.org/lexile.aspx .  

More Lexile information can be found on the Georgia Standards.org site at: https://www.georgiastandards.org/Resources/Pages/Tools/LexileFrameworkforReading.aspx