Before school even ended, she started arguing with me that she was absolutely not going to read over the summer! She has come so far this year and so did the rest of the kids in my class, so as I argued back that she had a very different idea of summer than I did, I was also thinking hard about how I was going to tackle this problem!
I started researching and found some astounding facts about Summer Slide, along with a cool reading challenge that The Measured Mom made. This challenge was for kids to find 100 different places to read and I loved the idea!
Click here for a link to a free download of the 100 places challenge.
Although I loved the idea, I knew that wasn't enough. I had to think of a way to make kids (and my daughter) accountable, but have fun at the same time! Enter Seesaw!
Have you heard of Seesaw yet? It's an app that can be used on any device, including a regular computer and it is a way to make a visual portfolio of students' work. What the heck does that mean? Right? Well, I had no idea either when it was first told to me and I wasn't even sure I was interested in it, until I actually tried it! In my next post, I will tell more about the awesomeness of Seesaw for first graders. For now, I will return to my Summer Reading Challenge.
Seesaw has a way to make a class blog. It is safe and ridiculously easy to use. When kids post something, it must be approved by the teacher first. I put together an optional challenge for my outgoing class. The rules were that you could only post to the blog after reading for about 15 minutes. You had to tell where you read, what you read, a give a very brief summary of what the book was about. Kids could make a video or post a picture of themselves reading and then either type a comment or speak into a microphone. Each post takes less than a minute to complete.
I'm sure there is an easier way to link her video, but I haven't figured it out yet! Anyway, as part of my challenge, I offered to give kids that showed great effort to read over the summer, an invitation to go out to ice cream with me in August.
I know what some of you might be thinking...I have to approve all of the posts first? That's a lot of work and it's summer! I was worried about that too, but having the app right on my phone makes it super easy! It pops right up, I press "approve" and it is done in seconds. So far, my plan has worked! I have about 6 or 7 kids post very regularly and one of them is my daughter! Below is the plan I sent home to parents. Click on each picture to enlarge.
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