Avi Silberstein
The summer slide. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? It conjures up images of a long line snaking up to a water slide at an amusement park—or maybe an ad hoc slip-and-slide in your own backyard. To a teacher, it means something else entirely: it’s education-speak for the tendency for students’ achievement levels to drop off over the summer break.
What can we do about it? Well, here’s what we do: every year, the Nelson Public Library runs a free, drop-in summer program for school aged children. The intent of this Summer Reading Club is to keep kids’ literacy levels from fading away in July and August, but the program itself is a smorgasbord of crafts and stories, music and movement, field trips and costumes. We are working to help kids develop the habit of regular reading, and to remind them (and their parents!) that the library is a community resource for life-long learning.
The Summer Reading Club is a province-wide initiative — and it’s not our only one. During the school year, we partner with our school district’s Grade 4/5 teachers to run the annual Reading Link Challenge which consists of a series of quiz/trivia challenges, with winning teams advancing to higher levels of competition.
In the fall, I visit each classroom to deliver a set of six books that have been carefully selected by a team of librarians from several Lower Mainland libraries. They choose titles that reflect a range of interests, reading levels, and multicultural themes.
In the winter, I visit each class again, and this time I bring with me a set of trivia questions on the books. Divided up into groups, the students compete to answer the most questions correctly. The winning team competes in the finals against the winning teams from the other schools in our district.
Last year, the winner was the wonderfully-named team “We Can’t Agree,” from Lindsay Mackay’s class at Blewett Elementary. The year before that, it was “The Unicorns” from Kelly Anast’s class at Hume Elementary.
The students themselves show an astounding level of recall and retention—the questions are often obscure and specific (“What colour car did Mr. Roberts drive?” or “What flowers were planted in Sylvia’s front yard?”), but somehow the kids get them right. I myself diligently read all the books every year, but would be able to contribute little to any of the teams in the competition!
At the library, we’re always looking to give the kids in our community the gift of reading. One way to do that is by celebrating it any chance we get. On August 15, at the wrap-up party for this year’s Summer Reading Club, participants will receive prizes and a certificate of completion — and Mayor Deb Kozak will here to drape the medals around their necks.
Next spring, from the frenzy of excitement that is the finals of the Reading Link Challenge, a winning team will be announced. There will be applause and celebration, a plaque proudly displayed in a classroom and then in the library. But above all, there will be a child who goes home that night and picks up a book. Not because they’re trying to get a medal or win a competition—but for the sheer love of it.
Avi Silberstein is the Children’s Services Librarian at the Nelson Public Library. Check This Out runs every other week. Go to www.nelsonlibrary.ca for information on all things library.