Summer Literacy & Math Project
All ETSD students were asked to participate in a district-wide summer literacy and math project to not only practice reading and math skills, but more importantly encourage lifelong readers and mathematicians.
A highlight of the literacy project continues to be modeled off of the One School, One Book national campaign, which includes a shared reading experience for all. In ETSD, the initiative began with the summer One District, One Theme announcement of Embrace Empathy, where students were asked to connect one of their summer reads to the 2025-2026 theme of empathy. An empathy title was also selected for each elementary grade and written into the September protocol in shared reading to start the school year. Students will read in class their designated empathy book and the theme of empathy will be explicitly taught, along with other connections to building a community of readers and celebrating the work completed over the summer months. Students are challenged to then think about how empathy can be carried forward throughout the school year. The following questions are posed and set the stage for a positive classroom climate from the very first day of school.
- What does empathy look like in our classroom? ...In our school? ...In our community?
- How will you show empathy? Why is it important to work together with others?
- How does empathy connect to kindness?
Students also completed other authentic literacy and math tasks such as writing letters to authors, sharing books on Padlet, creating fraction problems, making videos, and more. This past summer’s math focus was on geometry. Over 1,000 students posted over the summer months. Great job!
Schools/classrooms are encouraged to integrate the theme of Embrace Empathy throughout the school year. While the initial theme discussion in the protocols focuses on the theme of empathy, students are also introduced to the other social and emotional competencies in September that make up the district’s CARES program, which is part of the Responsive Classroom approach.
Each elementary school held two summer literacy & math events. The library-media centers were utilized and each event was facilitated by one or more staff members. All sessions reinforced the goal of promoting summer reading and math tasks connected to the theme, while celebrating choice and building school community. These were great opportunities for students to visit the library media center, see some of our staff, return and check out books, interact with district therapy dogs, and much more. Click here to go to our Summer Literacy and Math Project page.