When the first grade ended for my son, he was behind in reading and it had me nervous about going into second grade way behind. He needed help over the summer and as a former teacher, I knew that I could help him. His confidence in reading wasn’t great, I had been told he was possibly dyslexic, and I wanted him to love reading and he just didn’t want to read no matter how hard I tried to tell him it was fun.
So I had to get creative with how I motivated him to read. He knew that he needed to know how but there was no excitement so I decided to come up with a chart to mark every book he read. I knew that at least one book a day was a reasonable goal for a first grader so my goal for the summer was 60 books before school started. Cole had BIGGER dreams! 🙂 He made a goal to read 100 books this summer! I thought that was a crazy goal but we wrote it down.
On the night before school started, we counted it up and he read 118 books this summer. We motivated him to keep going by telling him that we would go get ice cream for small goals like 20 books and then we went to a really fun play place in El Paso when he reached 100.
He was SO proud of himself and along the way, reading became more fun. His confidence went through the roof and now he reads with expression and even gives different characters voices.
Some of my son’s favorite books we read are the Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willems. They were written to use mostly sight words that a young child should know so they build confidence and they are really funny. We actually bought the entire set and read them over and over again this summer. Cole’s favorite from that series is We Are in a Book!
My daughter’s favorite book right now is called This is Owl! 🙂 This book is so perfect for toddlers and she loves how interactive it is.
So my summer chart was just handwritten and that works but I made these Weekly Reading Charts, 8 Week Reading Chart, and Semester Reading Chart so that your kid can check off everyday if they read a book. Each printable has a different way of tracking your kid’s reading and they are all easy for the kid to record their reading themselves. Remember to make goals and reward your kid’s when they meet those goals when each chart is filled.
If you use this printable please share on Instagram and tag me so that I can see your little readers checking off those books read!
click here for all reading printables>>
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