20+ Amazing Beach Activities to Inspire Your Readers

Summer reading slide is a big concern for many teachers. You've worked hard all year, and then summer hits! How can you keep students learning? In this post, I share our beach activities we implemented as part of our summer reading camp. This post includes the resources and ideas used to work on reading skills WHILE students experienced summer camp.

Summer reading slide is a big concern for many teachers. You’ve worked hard all year, and then summer hits! How can you keep students learning? In this post, I share our beach activities we implemented as part of our summer reading camp. This post includes the resources and ideas used to work on reading skills WHILE students experienced summer camp.

For years, we’ve had students attend summer school. In some cases, we observed gains, but in some cases, not so much. A local college that partners with us worked with us on developing an alternative plan. Our summer reading camp served approximately 40 students. We focused on reading and math and organized our program into themed weeks. We selected small groups of students who might not have camp opportunities or who needed a reading boost. Summer reading camp was very well received by parents and kids.

BEACH ACTIVITIES FOR READING AND WRITING

We started the week off with an adorable get to know you activity and introduction to our ocean theme.  This was so fun because it included a written response and glyph which helped me get to know the kids preferences.  

Summer reading slide is a big concern for many teachers. You've worked hard all year, and then summer hits! How can you keep students learning? In this post, I share our beach activities we implemented as part of our summer reading camp. This post includes the resources and ideas used to work on reading skills WHILE students experienced summer camp.

Glyphs are wonderful get to know you activities for the start of the year and are more interactive than a simple inventory. Yellow handle…reading a lot this summer, blue shovel…love fall, winter, and spring, purple pail…loves vanilla ice cream, green loves strawberry, swim goggles on the pail…loves to swim at the beach, shells…loves to collect shells.  

BEACH ACTIVITIES FOR BUILDING FLUENCY

Summer reading slide is a big concern for many teachers. You've worked hard all year, and then summer hits! How can you keep students learning? In this post, I share our beach activities we implemented as part of our summer reading camp. This post includes the resources and ideas used to work on reading skills WHILE students experienced summer camp.

Fluency was a big focus with these 2nd and 3rd graders. We talked about what fluency meant, and they had fantastic responses.  As they colored, we discussed further what they should do when they run into problems. We brainstormed how to observe punctuation, how to add expression, and how to know when you need to reread.  We practiced with poetry all week and with a reader’s theatre about whales.  Aren’t their ideas great??

Summer reading slide is a big concern for many teachers. You've worked hard all year, and then summer hits! How can you keep students learning? In this post, I share our beach activities we implemented as part of our summer reading camp. This post includes the resources and ideas used to work on reading skills WHILE students experienced summer camp.

We continued to read, research, and write about whales and crabs. We talked about the importance of questioning during our reading and identifying the important information we learn and want to remember with close reading practices. I loved the word splash of vocabulary they remembered from the books. We used the word bank for writing we did about crabs later in the week.

Summer reading slide is a big concern for many teachers. You've worked hard all year, and then summer hits! How can you keep students learning? In this post, I share our beach activities we implemented as part of our summer reading camp. This post includes the resources and ideas used to work on reading skills WHILE students experienced summer camp.

SO MANY BEACH activities and BOOKs, SO LITTLE TIME

Summer reading slide is a big concern for many teachers. You've worked hard all year, and then summer hits! How can you keep students learning? In this post, I share our beach activities we implemented as part of our summer reading camp. This post includes the resources and ideas used to work on reading skills WHILE students experienced summer camp.

The children read a variety of books including Magic Schoolbus Gets Crabby and The Journey of the Humpback Whale.  Of course, we enjoyed A House for Hermit Crab too.  They had a fantastic time working on comprehension activities without realizing they were working on comprehension activities. I was able to read one-on-one with each child since our group was small, and they wrote about the themes in each book too. 

Building vocabulary is always a good thing. We loved collecting new words using a word splash. It’s amazing how this technique leads to great discussion and connections to other related words.

Summer reading slide is a big concern for many teachers. You've worked hard all year, and then summer hits! How can you keep students learning? In this post, I share our beach activities we implemented as part of our summer reading camp. This post includes the resources and ideas used to work on reading skills WHILE students experienced summer camp.

To view the other posts about our summer reading camp, click the links below:
Preventing Summer Slide with Wild Readers Camp
How to Inspire Young Readers with Weather Week
How to Teach Similarities and Differences with Bats and Birds

In case you’d be interested in the Bucket List activity, you can access it {here}. Sadly, it’s no longer free.

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Carla

Carla is a licensed reading specialist with 27 years of experience in the regular classroom (grades 1, 4, and 5), in Title 1 reading, as a tech specialists, and a literacy coach. She has a passion for literacy instruction and meeting the needs of the individual learner.

This Post Has 3 Comments

  2. Jennifer Reynolds

    Love the bucket glyphs, as well as all of the ocean brainstorming charts! Owl and bird week sound delightful! My class used Owl Babies as a Reader's Theater last year and loved it!

    ~Jennifer

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