Planning your Summer Reading Challenge

This section gives you a brief summary of the main things to cover in your planning for the Challenge.

Outcomes

Start off with a clear idea of the outcomes and targets which your library service wants to achieve with this year's summer reading challenge.

Your outcomes might include:

Through the challenge...

Your targets will include:

• A target number of children joining the challenge
• A target number of children completing the challenge

To help you with your planning download the Planning and Evaluation table (Word, 37.6kb) from the Resource section on this site.

Activities and Partnerships

Plan the procedures, activities and partnerships which you need to put in place to achieve your outcomes and targets.

For example, to help achieve the outcome 'Children are reading more widely', you could:

• Provide a good range of books by different authors and in different authors for children to choose from
• Arrange activities and discussions where children can recommend their favourite reading to each other
• Provide training for library staff to build their skills in knowing about the books and talking with young people. This TRF website has lots of resources to support that training: see TRF Learning Package 1, and the sections on Knowing about the Books and Helping Young Readers Develop.

Collecting Evidence

At the same time as your activity planning, work out how you will collect evidence which will show if your outcomes and targets are being met.

For example, to see if you are meeting the outcome 'Children are reading more widely' you could:

• Collect any feedback coming in from children, parents and carers about their reading during the summer
• Ask children what they like to read at the start of the challenge, and when they have finished, to see what differences there are
• Note down at each activity/discussion what books children are recommending
• Ask children and parents at the end of the summer whether they are reading more kinds of books and different authors and ask them for some examples of this.

You will find much more about planning in the Planning and Evaluation section of this TRF website.

Now move on to the next section which looks at ways to promote the Summer Reading Challenge