When "The Hunger Games" became the hottest ticket in town, nigh 350 middle school students in Fresno already knew how the flick would end.

They had spent the previous summer reading the post-apocalyptic book by Suzanne Collins that the movie was based on every bit part of Fresno County Role of Instruction's efforts to keep kids reading afterwards school is out.

"Nosotros want to be the leaders and not the followers in what we're delivering to kids," said Lori Carr, a consultant with the Safe and Good for you Kids Section at the Fresno County Office of Education. "We look for freshness, something new."

Carr's program is 1 of several across the land that are focusing on turning struggling readers into lifelong bookworms. With the demise of district–supported summertime schoolhouse during the past few years, these programs are trying to make full the gap, though they serve a minor fraction of the country's half dozen.ii meg students. More than half of those students live in low-income families, making them especially vulnerable to falling behind in school without actress support during the summer.

"Research has established that low-income students are disproportionately at risk to lose bookish skills during the summer," said the National Summer Learning Clan, a nonprofit based in Baltimore that works to make summer programs bachelor to needy students. "While most children lose up to two months of math skills during summer breaks, lower-income children also lose two to three months of reading skills."

That is why "Fun in the Sun," a summer program run by United Way in Santa Barbara Canton, makes reading its highest priority, said Courtney Tarnow, coordinator of the program, which was one of iii summer programs across the nation to receive an Excellence in Summertime Learning award from the National Summer Learning Association.

"We know that scientific discipline, technology, and math are extremely important," Tarnow said. "Simply yous can't do your word problems if you're non able to read."

Three programs, described beneath, showcase the multifariousness of approaches communities have taken to improve student literacy during the summer.

Fresno County Office of Education

Student Stephanie Dunn reads a passage in a class of the Fresno County Office of Education's summer reading program. Photo by Gary MaGill.

Teacher Stephanie Dunn reads a passage in a course of the Fresno Canton Part of Education's summer reading program. Photograph by Gary Magill. (Click to enlarge.)

Fresno'southward plan for center school students aims to plough the video-game generation on to reading for pleasure. This year, Carr and her assembly picked The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan, a fantasy adventure based on Egyptian mythology. Like The Hunger Games, the book is one of a series past the same author, which is a way of encouraging students to find authors they similar and go on to read on their own.

The Fresno customs – including the county office of didactics – was recognized in June 2022 as a "pacesetter for its exemplary work to improve reading skills amid young readers" by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a private charitable organization that is dedicated to helping disadvantaged children.

The Fresno County Function of Education'due south program for heart schoolhouse students is one of 12 statewide demonstration communities chosen past the David & Lucile Packard Foundation to serve as incubators for innovative summer learning practices throughout the state. In addition, the foundation chose this plan to participate in a summer research project and case report, which is scheduled to be published in the fall.

In the plan, the class reads pages of the book out loud together for part of the fourth dimension. At a specified point in the volume, the teacher stops and asks students what they are thinking, do whatever of them have a prediction, and does the book remind them of something in their past or something they have learned. When students are reading independently, they are asked to write down their thoughts and after share them with a minor group.

"We want them to fantasize and make pictures in their mind," Carr said. "That'south when the fun begins. We tin aid these kids really enjoy literature if we introduce information technology in a fun and interactive mode."

The programme besides includes arts and crafts projects associated with the story. Students this summertime made small mummies, catapults, and papyrus. The cost of the programme is well-nigh $400 per student, and nigh 350 students participated this summer, she said. Grant funding covered most of the expenses. The plan lasted for 5 weeks from 7:30 a.yard. to 1:30 p.m. and included breakfast and dejeuner.

Carr looks for books that are non taught during the regular schoolhouse year and are not regularly checked out of the school library, partly possibly considering of their length. The Red Pyramid is 528 pages.

"About kids, especially those who struggle with reading, won't pick up a book of that size," she said.

Eric Hernandez, 11, who will be entering sixth grade in the fall, agreed he would have been unlikely to pick up a book the size of The Red Pyramid. The biggest book he had read before, he said, was 300-some pages long.

The Blood-red Pyramid "was a very good book," he said. "It taught me more well-nigh Egypt. I feel fix to tackle other books that big. The program fabricated me like reading more than."

United Way of Santa Barbara County

Kids in Santa Barbara

Students in United Way's Fun in the Lord's day plan in Santa Barbara play at a fountain during a field trip.

United Way'southward Fun in the Lord's day summer plan for second grade through centre school students takes advantage of kids' natural involvement in video games. After doing extensive research into reading programs, the organization selected Reading Plus by Taylor Assembly, an interactive program that "well-nigh feels like a video game for the kids," Tarnow said. They become immediate feedback and rewards. Unlike video games, all the same, the plan adjusts to the students' reading level, moving them to the next level and avoiding the frustration many students feel when they are assigned books they tin can't encompass. Many schools in Santa Barbara County use the programme every bit well.

"Information technology's an online reading improvement tool that meets the kids at their individual level and challenges them to amend and increase their reading level," she said. The program also has the power to spot physical challenges that children might face, such as the inability of their eyes to easily runway words from left to correct. Another program called Lexia Reading helps younger students put letters and sounds together.

Based on feedback from the computer program, students who have completed all parts of the program (most 80 percentage of all students) have grown, on boilerplate, more than than two grade levels in reading, Tarnow said.

In addition, she said, throughout the solar day the children are reading books, writing in their journals, and doing research on the estimator for a service project they develop and implement. This yr, students organized beach litter pickups and created brochures educating the community about the impact of litter on the beach and what the public tin do about it.

The plan serves about 200 students recommended past family unit service agencies equally well-nigh in need of bookish support. It costs about $1,200 per student and is supported by a number of private companies in the area.

Sara Templeton, community touch coordinator for United Way of Santa Barbara County, said the program's goal is to improve reading skills and then that children can savour reading rather than see it every bit an unpleasant job. At the finish of each summer, students and instructors have a party on the beach. At that party, she recalls seeing a immature girl lying on a towel by herself, a Popsicle in one hand and a book in the other.

"And information technology wasn't a motion-picture show book," Templeton said.

Oakland Public Libraries

Paula Marie Parker from Stagebridge Performing Arts tells a story to children during lunch at Cesar E. Chavez branch library in Oakland. Photo by Isela Anaya. (Click to enlarge.)

Paula Marie Parker from Stagebridge Performing Arts tells a story to children during tiffin at Cesar E. Chavez co-operative library in Oakland. Photo by Isela Anaya. (Click to enlarge.)

By noon on Tuesday in the start week in August, families were already in line waiting for the Cesar E. Chavez public library in the Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland to open at 12:thirty p.1000. When the doors opened, children and their mothers rushed in, heading up the stairs to the area where all kids 18 or younger were given a tasty luncheon that included a chicken-pasta salad, a nectarine, and milk.

The families lingered in the huge, vivid library with warm xanthous and adobe-colored walls and multicolored cut-outs of the faces of Mexican historical figures strung across the ceiling. That solar day, Paula Marie Parker, a storyteller from Stagebridge Performing Arts in Oakland, shared an East African tale that explains why the sun stays in the sky for and then long on summer days. Every Thursday afternoon, the library hosts fine art workshops with Oakland's Museum of Children'southward Art (MOCHA).

This endeavour to put children and books together over the summer essentially costs the community zero. Federal funding supports the lunches provided through the urban center. The Alameda Canton Community Food Bank recruited and organized most 150 volunteers to oversee the distribution of the food and fill out the required paperwork for the federal lunch program, which occurs in nine branch libraries throughout the metropolis Tuesday through Fri, and in the Children'southward Room and Teen Room in the primary library Mon through Friday. The volunteers serve about 250 to 300 lunches a 24-hour interval.

Cat Burton, advocacy and didactics associate with the food bank, recruited the volunteers, who agreed to work for at least four lunches.

"I know kids get hungry, and I hate to call back about information technology," said Gloria Meads of Oakland, who is retired and volunteered that Tuesday at Cesar Chavez. "There's non a lot I tin can do, but I can do this."

The plan appears to be working, said Pete Villasenor, branch managing director at Cesar Chavez. "Once the kids have eaten, they tend to browse longer," he said. "Apportionment of books has gone up this summer," he added, pointing to hundreds of books on carts waiting to be reshelved.

Miralda Buenrostro said the program is important for her family, which includes Leslie, 13, Josaline, 10, Jesus, 7, and Gizelle, 5. Her married man, she said, works whatsoever job he can go, including construction and cleaning rugs. But he doesn't detect piece of work every day.

"People don't accept jobs and non much coin," she said. "Gratuitous food really helps."

The children said they enjoy the take a chance to option out books as well, and have discovered authors that appeal to them.

"I like the Junie B. Jones books," Josaline said every bit she eagerly waited for the library to open.

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