Written by the Kurzweil Blog Team

Here we are, approaching another end of a school year. With the high stakes testing behind us, our focus shifts to getting many tasks accomplished before the last day of school. As we get our students ready for an exciting summer, we want to make sure they are aware of and avoid something that is dangerous. It’s the “Summer Slide" and it’s not the slide you find at the park.

Research from the Center for Summer Learning at The Johns Hopkins University shows that students, especially low-income children, can fall behind in reading as much as two months during the summer, which can be very harmful. Scholastic relates research that shows reading only six books during the summer may keep a struggling reader from backsliding. The books need to be just right, not too hard and not too easy. Making sure students have access to multitudes of text and titles they are interested in is important.

Tips to Fight the "Summer Slide"

With the help of parents, we can ensure our students avoid the Summer Slide. Simple low cost actions like making sure they know the location of their local library and being made aware of reading programs or camps offered in communities is one way of giving them support. Making literacy support technology, such as Kurzweil 3000, available to students provides access to reading materials for those who struggle with decoding or reading large amounts of text. Kurzweil 3000 provides access to over 1,800 free titles in the Kurzweil Classic Literature library. These include a large variety of books that can engage younger and older readers during the summer.

Here are a list of summer classics you can find in the Kurzweil 3000 library:

Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain		The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett		The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll		The Light Princess by George MacDonald
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Many free resources for electronic text on the web can be read with Kurzweil 3000, giving individuals a multitude of materials to choose from. Any book in the Kurzweil Universal Library can be accessed through the web on any computer or on their iPads. In addition, Kurzweil 3000 provides easy access to Bookshare files for students who have a Bookshare account. Setting your students up so they can use Kurzweil 3000 to access digital reading materials during the summer would be a huge support in avoiding that Summer Slide.

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