Make Summer Count Overview Make Summer Count (MSC) is a summer reading initiative that since its 2014 launch has been led, managed, and sponsored by Public Education Partners (PEP) in Greenville County Schools (GCS) in Greenville, SC. PEP, in collaboration with Scholastic, the global children’s publishing, education and media company, provides students and families with resources and opportunities to encourage reading throughout the summer. The goal of MSC is to help eliminate summer reading loss for Greenville’s elementary students. MSC consists of two targeted research-based opportunities for literacy engagement. The first is the MSC Book Celebrations, which help students build home libraries by allowing them to self-select books to take home and read over the summer. The second opportunity is Family Reading Nights, where families are invited to learn strategies to support their children’s reading over the summer, and where children receive additional books to take home. The initiative aims to provide children and families in higher-needs elementary schools—defined in this research as schools with a student population of 50% or greater qualifying for Free and Reduced Meals (FARMs)— the resources they need to be able to read all summer long. In 2017, MSC was awarded the Dick and Tunky Riley WhatWorksSC Award for Excellence for demonstrating successful strategies to help prevent summer reading loss. In early 2018, PEP received the South Carolina International Reading Association’s 2017–2018 Literacy Award for its advancement of literacy in local communities or at the state level. Research Overview For the second consecutive year, Scholastic collaborated with PEP to determine the impact of MSC on students’ and families’ attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors about summer reading. Findings from our 2016 study of MSC can be found in the executive summary and white paper titled “Addressing Summer Reading Loss: A Public Education Partners and Greenville County Schools Initiative.” 1
1 Please visit the blog edu@scholastic for the Make Summer Count 2016 findings http://bit.ly/MakeSummerCount16.
South Carolina
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