Summer Reading? Why?

Tuscaloosa Academy, like so many other college preparatory schools, believes that summer reading is critical to the maintenance of established reading and thinking skills for our students. Our summer reading lists present recognized opportunities for enjoyment and enrichment.

Nationally recognized authors and reading consultants concur with our thinking. Jim Trealease, author of The New Read Aloud Handbook and Hey, Listen to This, says that children who read during the summer are able to sustain their present level of reading and, in many instances, actually read at a higher level when school resumes in the fall, depending on how much they read. In Effective Teaching of Reading and How to Increase Reading Ability, A. J. Harris explains:

"The child who reads extensively is improving his reading skills in the most natural way possible. By doing a large amount of easy reading, he builds speed of word and phrase recognition and becomes a fluent reader. When he tackes a book that is somewhat challenging, he aquires new ideas and concepts and is stimulated to think and reason."

In the stretched-out days of summer, reading offers a sense of freedom and mastery - a taste of independence, a ready supply of friends, a glimpse at faraway places, and ongoing adventures of the mind and imagination.