This meta-analysis reviewed research on summer reading interventions conducted in the United States and Canada from 1998 to 2011. The synthesis included 41 classroom-and homebased summer reading interventions, involving children from kindergarten to Grade 8.Compared to control group children, children who participated in classroom interventions, involving teacher-directed literacy lessons, or home interventions, involving child-initiated book reading activities, enjoyed significant improvement on multiple reading outcomes. The magnitude of the treatment effect was positive for summer reading interventions that employed research-based reading instruction and included a majority of low-income children. Sensitivity analyses based on within-study comparisons indicated that summer reading interventions had significantly larger benefits for children from low-income backgrounds than for children from a mix of income backgrounds. The findings highlight the potentially positive impact of classroomand home-based summer reading interventions on the reading comprehension ability of lowincome children.Keywords: meta-analysis, reading comprehension, low-income children, summer learning loss Effective summer interventions may be critical to improving children's reading achievement from kindergarten to Grade 8, particularly for low-income children. Policymakers have adopted two primary intervention strategies for improving children's reading achievement during the summer months: classroom-and home-based summer reading interventions.Classroom-based summer reading interventions are designed to remediate children's academic weaknesses through instructional activities led by schoolteachers, college and graduate students, and university researchers. A meta-analysis of experimental studies (Cooper, Charlton, Valentine, & Muhlenbruck, 2000) indicated that classroom-based summer reading programs improved student achievement by .14 standard deviations. More recently, home-based summer reading interventions have been implemented as a potentially cost-effective strategy for preventing reading loss among low-income children (McCombs et al., 2011). Snow, & Martin-Glenn, 2006; National Reading Panel, 2000). As a result, policymakers and practitioners have sought to implement summer reading interventions that show strong evidence of efficacy and use research-based instructional practices. Given the national imperative to close income-based disparities in student achievement, there is a growing need to understand the programmatic characteristics of effective summer reading interventions and their potential benefits for low-income children (McCombs et al., 2011). This updated metaanalytic review synthesizes results from 41 summer reading interventions, involving children from kindergarten to Grade 8. Defining Summer Reading InterventionsSummer reading interventions are usually implemented inside or outside classrooms (McCombs et al., 2011). Although context is only one characteristic of a summer reading intervention, theorists (Bronfen...

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A randomized trial involving 19 elementary schools (K-5) was conducted to replicate and extend two previous experimental studies of the effects of a voluntary summer reading program that provided (a) books matched to students' reading levels and interests and (b) teacher scaffolding in the form of end-of year comprehension lessons. Matched schools were randomly assigned to implement one of two lesson types. Within schools, students were randomly assigned to a control condition or one of two treatment conditions: a basic treatment condition replicating procedures used in the previous studies or an enhanced treatment condition that added teacher calls in the summer. During summer vacation, children in the treatment conditions received two lesson books and eight books matched to their reading level and interests. Overall, there were no significant treatment effects, and treatment effects did not differ across lesson type. However, there was a significant interaction between the treatment conditions and poverty measured at the school level. The effects of the treatments were positive for high poverty schools (d = + .08 and + .11), defined as schools where 75% to 100% of the students were receiving free or reducedprice lunches (FRL). For moderate poverty schools (45%-74% FRL), the effects of the treatments were negative (d = -.11 and -.12). The results underscore the importance of looking at patterns of treatment effects across different contexts, settings, and populations. Keywords: comprehension, socioeconomic factors, research methodology, childhood Running head: EFFECTS OF A VOLUNTARY SUMMER READING PROGRAM 3Replicating the Effects of a Teacher-Scaffolded Voluntary Summer Reading Program:The Role of Poverty During the summer months, low-income elementary students lose ground in reading relative to their middle-and high-income counterparts (Alexander, Entwisle, & Olson, 2001;Burkam, Ready, Lee, & LoGerfo, 2004;Cooper, Nye, Charlton, Lindsay, & Greathouse, 1996;Heyns, 1978;Kim, 2004;Phillips & Chin, 2004). On average, summer vacation creates a 3-month gap in reading achievement between low-and middle-income children (Cooper et al., 1996). Even The key features of READS are (a) providing summer books that are matched to students' reading levels and interests, and (b) providing teacher "scaffolding" and parent support for summer reading in the form of teacher lessons at the end of the school year and materials sent to students and parents in the summer .The purpose of this study was to replicate and extend previous studies of READS. Our specific goals were to: (a) replicate, with a larger sample of schools, the positive effects of READS that were observed in two studies conducted previously in another state; and (b) extend previous studies by studying the effects of an enhanced version of READS that added teacher calls in the summer. In addition, we conducted exploratory analyses of the effects of poverty at the school level and student level and the effects of modified end-of-year lessons focusing on content...

The effects of a voluntary summer reading intervention with and without a parent training component were evaluated with a sample of low-income Latino children from language minority families. During the last month of 4th grade, 370 children were pretested on a measure of reading comprehension and vocabulary and were randomly assigned to (a) a treatment group in which children received 10 self-selected books during summer vacation, (b) a family literacy group in which children received 10 self-selected books and were invited with their parents to attend 3 summer literacy events (2 hr in length), and (c) a control group. Although children in the treatment group and the family literacy group reported reading more books than the control group, there was no significant effect on reading comprehension and vocabulary. Recommendations for improving the efficacy of the intervention are discussed, including efforts to improve the match between reader ability and the readability of texts and the instructional goals of the family literacy events.

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