As summer kicks into full gear, parents work overtime to make sure their children are engaged in meaningful and productive activities during their time off from school.

Now is the time many young people are enjoying camps, playing on summer sports teams, traveling and even working. While this flurry of activity offers students a welcome break from textbooks, tests and homework, summer vacation should not be a break from reading.

Research has suggested that one reason that children do not read enough over the summer is because they have difficulty finding books at their reading level that really interest them. Studies have also shown that students’ reading abilities can actually grow over the summer when they read high-interest books that are also well matched with their Lexile measure.

Lexile measures, which are a part of The Lexile Framework® for Reading, can assess both a student’s reading ability and the text difficulty in books, magazines and even newspapers. In our state, students in grades 3-8, as well as high school students taking the English I assessment, receive a Lexile measure on their end-of-grade or end-of-course test reports. Because both students and texts can be assigned Lexile measures, we can use these numbers to connect readers with books at their reading level.

To help everyone better understand how to use Lexile measures to find books that will help improve students’ reading skills, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction has launched the “READ NC” campaign. As part of this campaign, we have designed a Web page (www.ncpublicschools.org/accountability/lexiles) that features some outstanding new resources to help students search for and select books that will provide fun and challenging reading while they spend time away from the classroom.

The first of these resources is the North Carolina version of the Lexile map.

This map features a variety of fiction and nonfiction book titles organized by Lexile level, including some titles with North Carolina connections. Parents can print a copy of this reading map from the “READ NC” Web page and take it, along with a student’s Lexile measure from the EOC or EOG test score report, when they visit any book store or public library this summer.

Another valuable resource on the site is the “Find a Book” search. This tool allows you to search online tens of thousands of book titles by Lexile measure and topic to find books that will tap into personal interests and complement a student’s reading comprehension level. The book search is free and it allows users to build customized reading lists and then check to see if the selected book titles are currently available in nearby public libraries.

Please visit the “READ NC” Web page so you can learn how to use students’ Lexile measures to help your children read, learn and have fun all summer long.