Guest Blog: How to Keep Students Reading Over Summer

Bev Humphrey, Reading, School Libraries & Digital Media Consultant

www.bevhumphrey.com

Keeping students reading over the summer can be a challenge, but school libraries can still play an important role after term ends. In this guest blog, Bev Humphrey shares practical summer reading ideas for school librarians, from reading challenges and e/audiobook promotion to Accessit dashboard content and simple ways to keep students engaged with books over the holidays.

We’re on the home straight to the Summer holidays now (and I’m sure many of you could tell me exactly how many days you have left in school!) but how can we encourage students to keep reading over the holidays? This is always a difficult feat but hopefully some of the ideas I’m going to share will help.

Use the Summer Reading Challenge and create your own reading activities

The first thing that comes to mind is the Summer Reading Challenge run by the Reading Agency via public libraries, my own children (who are in their thirties now!) took part in this every Summer and absolutely loved it. The scheme has come a very long way since then and the website for it is just fabulous, allowing children to take part virtually if that is easier than visiting the library. This year’s theme is Read to the Beat and there are some brilliant book suggestions on the book list area, I’d add Once Upon a Rhyme by James Carter for younger readers and the verse novels In the Key of Code, Aimee Lucido and Solo, Grainne O’Brien for older readers …sorry, but librarians just can’t help ourselves suggesting books huh?! There are also videos, activities and games on the website, it really is great and well worth a peruse.

The Summer Reading Challenge can be seen as too ‘babyish’ for older readers however and I would say after year 7 kids just aren’t engaged with it. You could set up your own challenge however, that you could tailor to suit what you know about your students and what will appeal to them. I have created a template on Canva that can be easily adapted to make things a little easier hopefully. Another way you could set challenges would be if you have a library Instagram account. You could set a weekly challenge with different pictures to take or create each day, I’d only do three a week, but this might engage your older students who feel too cool for non social media challenges.

Promote eBooks, audiobooks and public library apps over the holidays

If you are lucky enough to have an e/audiobook platform subscription now is definitely the time to ramp up your promotion of this as it allows you to provide a lending service even when the library is shut. If you don’t have a subscription, and I know for many of you budget constraints make this impossible, promoting the public library service would be a good alternative, my local library uses Libby and I have been very impressed at the speed at which new titles are added to the catalogue. The only downside is that you cannot in the UK have your loans sent directly to your kindle, you would need a US library card for this, but as so many young people access books on their phones using the Libby app shouldn’t prove a problem for them.

Keep students engaged with your Accessit web app over summer

If you have remote access to your Accessit web app, preparing different dashboards now that you can easily switch in a few minutes at home would be very effective, encouraging students to keep visiting the web app whilst out of school will hopefully keep their mind on reading and books and prompt them to delve into literature, displaying new titles can build anticipation for your return in September too. Why not ask your library faithfuls to write some reviews or articles for the dashboards, after all peer recommendation is very powerful. You could give a shoutout to any new book related Netflix series that come out in the Summer or any book related films in the cinema. Featuring a different staff member interview, choosing those that have a love for a particular genre would be great, especially if it’s staff members from departments not usually associated with reading, perhaps PE or Maths.

Try simple summer reading projects students can bring back in September

I did once run a mini project where I gave out stamped book related postcards at the start of Summer, asking students to post them back to me with a book review on. I had a lovely start of term (although of course not all of them came back) and I then used these cards to create a display. This might not be possible with the high cost of postage now but perhaps it could be something you could get some funding for from the PTA, or from SLT if you don’t have a PTA.

A final thought on summer reading

I hope you find some of these suggestions useful, naturally none of them are foolproof and many students won’t pick up a book all holiday but if we only encourage a few to read …well we made a difference to them if no one else! Happy Summer everyone I hope you get plenty of time to work on your own to be read lists. If you’re looking for suggestions, I do run a six weekly book webinar, Lit Link Up where I review lots of new titles and also give away books, maybe see you there!