Why I Ditched Summer Reading

This post has been a long time coming, but it’s finally time to air the truth: I don’t assign summer reading. Despite teaching both AP and Honors programs, I abandoned the practice two years ago.

And it has been a great choice.

I want to begin by acknowledging that what worked for me does not necessarily work for everyone. I also know that some teachers are required to assign summer reading, so obviously that choice is out of your hands. But if you’re on the fence about it, here is why I stopped and what I do instead.

Summer Reading Drawbacks

Before I explain my history of summer reading programs, I want to highlight three big problems I encountered no matter what I tried. Here are three glaring issues with summer reading:

1. Summer reading pairs reading with work, making it a chore. Many students tell me that they stopped reading for pleasure after elementary school, when English classes stopped making it “fun” and instead made it “work.” Summer reading models often help perpetuate this feeling.
2. There will always be students who don’t do it. What do we do with them? Fail them on day one? Ignore it and set a tone of complacency? I never really figured out what to do with this.
3. I always ran into an issue of having new students who just enrolled, thus knowing nothing about the summer reading program in place. I would excuse the assignment for them, but I think they still felt left out and unprepared.

Attempt 1: The Required Books Model

From 2011-2021, my school and our English department attempted several different forms of summer reading programs. In my first year at my school, I learned that the previous department head gave students a list of 3 books to choose from for each grade level. We were asked to devise an assignment (a paper, project, or both) and spend the first few days of school working on it.

I wasn’t a fan of this option for many reasons. First, it required me to read all those books in one summer (and I taught three grades, so it was 9 books in total). It also required the teachers to create some kind of assignment or project to give students in their first days back, which felt a bit like busywork.

Aside from the huge amount of summer work I had to do, there were several other drawbacks with the multi-book method:

• Because of the variety of books that students read, we couldn’t have whole class discussions or group projects to help break the ice on the first days of school.
• Students had one week to work on a project and then submit it. This meant that on the first weekend of the new school year, the English teachers were already bogged down with many summative grading assignments.
• Plus, the three issues I mentioned earlier (See Summer Reading Drawbacks 1-3).

Attempt 2: The Suggested Books Model

After a few years, the school dropped mandatory summer reading. I continued it with my AP Lit group but scaled down the expectations. I gave a list of 9-12 suggested AP-level books to choose from and gave them one task: read the book.

This new, lower-stakes method worked better. I was able to do some first day lessons with my students to get to know them and introduce the course better, then we transitioned to analyzing our summer books. With AP, I used that summer book as the topic of their first timed writing. This became a diagnostic tool to show me what students’ writing abilities.

While I liked how this diagnostic assignment informed my decisions as a teacher, I still ran into a lot of the same problems as before (see Summer Reading Drawbacks 1-3 above). And, since there were 9-12 books to choose from, it still required 9-12 different writing prompts to create.

Attempt 3: How to Read Literature Like a Professor

If you’ve read my blog post on how to misuse HTRLLAP, one of the things I caution against is assigning it just for summer reading. I say this from experience because I tried it for a few years.

With this assignment, I asked students to read the book in the summer and take notes in one of three ways:

• Cornell Notes
• Flow Notes
• Sketch Notes

Their notes were due on the second day of school (I used the first day to remind them). We talked about HTRLLAP for a few days, then began our first unit.

Once again, I was dissatisfied with this model. Here’s why:

• I missed teaching HTRLLAP. I don’t think this book hits very well with teenagers unless paired with more movie examples and media clips (which my instructional materials do). When they read on their own, their engagement with it was at an all-time low.
• I didn’t love grading notes. I could tell that many were done the night before, which made me wonder if there was any point to assigning them.
• See recurring problems 1-3 above.

Attempt 4: Encourage Reading

After the 2020 shutdown, I didn’t have a chance to roll out summer reading with my incoming seniors. For the first time since 2011, I didn’t assign anything.

Guess what? No one died.

Since my students don’t do summer reading, I focus my efforts more on building strong independent reading with my Honors and AP students. AP Lit reads HTRLLAP as their first unit and engagement is back up.

Tips for Making the Change

If you are considering changing the culture of summer reading, here are some suggestions I have for making the change:

Encourage reading.

Dropping summer reading doesn’t mean we don’t endorse reading, but instead endorse reading for pleasure. My school sends out an email once summer hits with some suggested books for students who want to read, which I helped create. I also encourage incoming AP Lit students to borrow books from my room before the summer.

Establish strong reading expectations in the fall.

One of my biggest frustrations with summer reading is how often students didn’t do it, and nothing really happened. But if you assign your first book firm expectations, hopefully it communicates the importance of finishing the assignment.

Build a strong reading program.

This has been my biggest game changer. My students get time to read independently or with groups in each of my courses. Here’s what I do in each level:

English 10: I need instructional time the most with this group, so I don’t use an independent reading program. However, we do book clubs in May, where students work as a group to read, discuss, and analyze one of 6-8 nonfiction books as their last unit of the year.

Honors English 10: My Honors students get 30-45 minutes of independent reading time each week. They are expected to read one nonfiction book each semester. It is this book they analyze in an on-demand essay for their final exam. I chose nonfiction because most of our in-class reads are fictional, so it helps us meet the CCSS standards for informational texts.

AP Lit: My AP Lit students get 30-45 minute so independent reading time each week and must complete one book per quarter. At the end of each quarter, they write a Q3 style on-demand essay on their book of choice. For the last quarter, I usually switch it up and use that time to read in book clubs.

Once again, just because this method works best for me doesn’t mean it works for everyone. However, I have found that ditching the summer reading requirement encourages students to read for pleasure and opens up English teachers’ summers to do what we really want to do: read for ourselves!

What does the pro say?

As many of you know, Susan Barber is a guru of AP Lit. She and I both tackled the summer reading question and posted joint blog posts about it. Read what she does (and how it’s evolved) in her blog post on Much Ado About Teaching here!