EVERETT — School’s out, but the students in the Everett School District are continuing to learn.
Summer reading programs are nothing new, but this summer, every school in Everett Public Schools — and every student, it is hoped — is participating in a district-wide reading program.
“Our community has been saying for years that we need to do this,” said Joyce Stewart, the district’s Associate Superintendent of Teaching and Learning.
The primary goal for the program is to prevent students from falling back on their literacy skills during the summer, which has been shown to be a major factor in the achievement gap between rich and poor students.
That’s a significant consideration in a district where 43 percent of the students receive free or reduced-price lunch, Stewart said.
“If you don’t read over the summer, you actually slide back and lose the reading growth you’ve gained,” Everett High School librarian Deb Payne said.
The Summer Reading Challenge provides reading lists for all grades, log books for students to fill out as they read books and incentives for those who achieve certain milestones.
For example, if 50 percent of the students in a school read at least two books and complete a suggested activity for each, they’ll receive wristbands, Stewart said. If 75 percent complete the summer program, the school will receive a banner.
At some elementary schools, students who finish a book are given a ribbon to pin or tie to a fence or message board outside the schools, Stewart said.
“We didn’t want to make it punitive,” Stewart said. There are no tests, and students who don’t take part in the challenge won’t start off the next year with a negative mark.
Students have free choice of which books from their grade list they’ll read over the summer.
Andrea Wells-Edwards’ four kids — two daughters in Everett High, a son at North Middle and a son at Whittier Elementary — are all reading this summer, both works on the district reading list and others they’ve taken to.
“Anything that gets kids reading more is fantastic,” Wells-Edwards said.
Her youngest, Silas, in the third grade is reading Dan Greenburg’s series “The Zack Files,” while her 8th-grade son, Rhys, has been reading Richard Paul Evans’ “Michael Vey” series.
“When you have something that works, you have them read the whole series,” Wells-Edwards said.
Her daughters, junior Rowan and senior Bryn, have a lot of summer reading for their AP classes, but they also are into James Patterson thrillers, she said.
The one mandatory read is the novel “Wonder,” by R.J. Palacio, which will be required for incoming sixth-graders. The book is about an 11-year-old boy adjusting to a new school and touches on issues like bullying and acceptance.
“All students going to middle school will have group discussion about it,” Stewart said.
The district is opening all its school libraries for limited hours during the summer as part of the reading program, Stewart said, with some elementary libraries open as often as one day a week.
In addition, the school district’s challenge runs in parallel to the summer reading programs offered by the Everett Public Library and the Sno-Isle Library System, so books read count toward both programs, Stewart said.
Most if not all the books on the lists are available at school libraries or the public libraries in the district, and the district has a list of other possible sources.
The reading lists are divided by grade and come from a variety of sources.
At the elementary school levels, the master list of books comes from the Developmental Reading Assessment, a widely used system for measuring student reading. Reading lists were then customized for individual students based on their reading level.
At the high school level, school librarians had a more prominent role in selecting materials.
They considered reading suggestions from the SpringBoard curriculum, the American Library Association and lists compiled by various libraries and input from the school faculty, Payne said.
“Every school got at least one or two titles that they asked for,” Payne said.
Reading lists for high schools were also drawn from themes established for each grade, such as “American Dream” for 11th-graders.
Suggested books under that theme include Daniel James Brown’s “Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Quest for Gold at the 1936 Olympics,” Amy Tan’s “Joy Luck Club” and Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed.”
Other themes include “Coming of Age” for 9th-graders, “Exploring Culture” for 10th-graders and “Multiple Perspectives” for 12th-graders.
“I love ‘The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian’ for 9th-graders,” Payne said, referring to local author Sherman Alexie’s best-selling young adult novel.
“I’d recommend it for everyone,” she said.
After the summer, the district plans to review the program to see what can be improved.
“Our goal is always to make it better,” Stewart said. “The best gift we can give our students is a love of reading.”
Chris Winters: 425-374-4165; cwinters@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @Chris_At_Herald.
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