O verview Make Summer Count (MSC) is a summer reading initiative sponsored by Public Education Partners (PEP) for Greenville County Elementary Schools (GCS) in Greenville, South Carolina. PEP provides students and families with resources and opportunities to encourage reading through the summer. Scholastic, the global children’s publishing, education and media company, partnered with PEP to learn more about how summer reading activities contribute to reducing or stemming summer reading loss, the increasing gap between lower- and higher-income students that can occur when literacy resources are not equally available to all students during the summer. PEP provides the resources needed for children to be able to read all summer long by addressing the challenge of equal access to books and literacy activities during the summer by providing two targeted, research-based opportunities to engage students with literacy: • MSC Book Selection : students build home libraries by selecting 11 books within their reading levels to take home and read over the summer; and • Family Reading Nights : families learn techniques and strategies to support their children’s reading over the summer, and children select an additional five books to take home. The program aims to serve children and families in higher-needs elementary schools, defined in this research as schools with 50% or more of students qualifying for Free and Reduced Price Meals. PEP, GCS, and Scholastic approached addressing summer reading loss and conducting related research by: • Providing 11 free books per student to over 18,000 1st–6th grade 1 students across 29 higher-needs elementary schools via the MSC Book Selection; more than 209,000 total books distributed • Hosting 23 Family Reading Night events to foster family engagement, reaching more than 1,200 participants
• Distributing surveys to over 9,000 3rd–5th grade students
• Distributing over 18,000 book logs to track summer reading in 1st–6th grade students 2
• Analyzing assessment data on over 8,000 3rd–5th grade students
1 Throughout this document, grade refers to the grade students were in during the fall of 2016 2 Students in 5th grade rising into 6th grade were given logs to record their books over the summer; however, only students in 1st–5th grade in the fall of 2016 were included in analyses
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