Book-it!

Supporting out-of-school-hours learning Book-it! How to set up your own reading club and keep it going Contents Introduction Page 2 About the Book-it! resource What is a Book-it! club? Page 4 What happens at reading clubs Opening the doors Page 8 How to make sure your reading club is inclusive Asking around Page 10 Who to consult and what to ask them Making the case Page 14 Showing how reading clubs can help with school improvement Take your partner Page 20 Guidance on building partnerships Who’s going to run your club? Page 22 Who can help and what they need to do Hear all about it! Page 24 Ideas for promoting your club Show me the money! Page 26 Help with funding What do we do now? Page 32 Planning the club’s activities How are we doing? Page 36 Advice on monitoring and evaluation Finding out more Page 38 Sources of further information and advice Copyright © ContinYou 2007 Introduction ‘One of the triggers of a desire for lifelong learning comes from the pure enjoyment of reading…’ Framework for the future, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2003 Welcome to Book-it!, the Extra Time resource pack to help schools set up reading clubs and keep them going. The pack is aimed at anyone who is starting up a reading club or who wants to develop the work they are already doing. Whatever your role is – whether you are a headteacher, teacher, learning support assistant, parent, governor or community volunteer – you will find here plenty of good, workable ideas for setting up reading groups for pupils of different ages. Each section of this booklet deals with a different issue that you need to think about when you are planning your club. It answers many of the practical questions facing you, and offers case studies, top tips and hints on keeping your club going. The pack also includes a set of activity sheets with ideas for making the club fun for your pupils. We know how busy you will be – it’s not practical to expect you to read through the whole pack at one sitting, and then to search the internet to find what you need. So we have designed this pack for you to dip into as and when you need to. Even with all the information you will find here, you may want some additional advice as you try to get your new club under way. ContinYou can offer you further support through training to accompany this pack, which will bring the written word to life. Our training has been designed to be fun as well as informative. You will hear from people who are already running successful reading clubs about how they made things work. You will pick up tips on funding, as well as lots of other practical suggestions. Book-it! Online provides you with a range of online links and resources, as well as information on the training programme and how to develop and sustain your reading club. There is also a members’ section to which subscribers to Schools ETC have access. Visit the Study Support ETC section of our website to find out more about: • our Extra Time brand • study support/out-of-school-hours learning and how it links to the ‘core offer’ of extended services in and around schools • details of the events that we provide to raise the profile of study support. The comprehensive guidance in this pack, together with the option of further support through training and the information and support available online, means that you will have at your fingertips everything you need to help you create a successful reading club. Find out more: www.readingclub.org.uk 3 How do we know what works? ContinYou, a leading national learning charity, has pioneered the growth of imaginative and popular study support (also known as out-of-school-hours learning) activities. It has achieved this through developing and supporting a wide range of projects and initiatives. It has also developed a substantial network of schools and providers through its subscription and member services. We have been helping schools to run Book-it! reading clubs since 1998. We know that many of you have achieved amazing success in making reading for pleasure a key part of your school’s agenda. Since the start of its reading club programme, ContinYou has: • designed an effective, economical and accessible reading club scheme for use in secondary schools • established our model as the recognised, successful way of increasing the reading of Key Stage 3 pupils • created strong partnerships with public, voluntary and commercial bodies in the field. Our evaluation of over 100 reading clubs, undertaken in 2001–02 with funding from Camelot and the Daily Mail, found substantial evidence that participation in Book-it! clubs results in improvements in: • the reading age of pupils • their commitment to school • their self-esteem • their behaviour at school. Now you know that we have the right credentials to offer this support and advice, have a look through this pack and see how we can help you to realise your vision of building a reading culture in your school. ‘This is the first book I’ve read for two years!’ Boy, Year 8 Copyright © ContinYou 2007 ‘I think if I have any merit as a writer, it is that I can tell a tale very directly, and leave the reader, child or adult, to do the exciting bit, which is to interpret the words.’ Michael Morpurgo, Children’s Laureate 2003–05 What is a Book-it! club? Young people need to be able to read in order to learn. Reading is not just about deciphering words – it is our interpretation of these words that enables us to make sense of the world around us. By establishing a Book-it! club and encouraging young people to read for pleasure and to share the experience, you will be helping to equip them with the skills they need for the formal curriculum and enabling them to become more active and informed citizens. The emphasis on literacy in both primary and secondary schools has raised standards for pupils across the UK. But there is concern that literacy targets and programmes may have a limited impact on students if they are not also convinced that reading skills matter. It’s probably not enough to tell a 13 year old that, if they have fast and sophisticated reading and writing abilities, this will help them to get a job. But introduce that student to an exciting book, a magazine on a subject that they are passionate about, or a marvellous picture book, and the value of being able to read, and read well, suddenly becomes clear. Who is Book-it! for? ContinYou has concentrated on developing reading clubs for pupils in their first year at secondary school. This works really well because children have not yet acquired the anti-reading attitude which sometimes appears as they get older. Research – and teachers’ own perceptions – show that between the ages of 11 and 14 reading skills can deteriorate as students read less, and have their reading monitored less, than they do at primary school. Our research shows clearly that membership of a popular and well-run reading club can reverse this trend. Although everything in this guidance applies to clubs for the top year of primary school and the first two years of secondary school, much of the material can be used for any year group. You will need to decide which pupils to target for your club. You might want to concentrate on more able readers, or less confident pupils, or boys, or you might be aiming for a mix of older and younger pupils so that you can set up a paired reading scheme in your club. There is evidence to show that taking part in study support activities provides disaffected pupils or those at risk of exclusion with an opportunity to re-engage with learning and a way back into succeeding at school. Whoever you want to attract, you can encourage them to come by issuing personal invitations. But don’t worry if other pupils come along as well – everyone can benefit. Find out more: www.readingclub.org.uk 5 What can Book-it! achieve? Schools that have run successful reading clubs have found that there are a number of broad objectives that you can address through a Book-it! club, including: • widening the reading range of pupils taking part • improving their reading skills • enabling them to see themselves as readers • building up the stock of books in the school and among members • creating a number of enthusiastic, committed and lifelong readers • making all club members more confident about books, more willing to talk about ideas, and more likely to ’have a book on the go’ • creating or strengthening a reading culture within the school. In addition, a Book-it! club can help a school to fulfil the ‘core offer’ for extended services, and can contribute to the achievement of the desired outcomes for children set out in Every Child Matters. Have a look at the section ‘Making the case’ for some ideas about how your activities can support specific areas of the curriculum as well as broader social and educational initiatives. ‘We can’t promise that reading books will always “work”. Not every child has a natural bent or will want to read. But what we can promise is that it will often work and that we have to be sure that every child who wants to read is given that opportunity.’ Nick Tucker, The rough guide to children’s books 6 Copyright © ContinYou 2007 What happens at a reading club? Reading is mostly seen as a private activity. That is both its strength and its weakness. But Book-it! clubs make reading sociable. They encourage readers to talk about the books they love and hate – they become literary swap shops. They build up a reading culture, where reading a book becomes part of the fabric of everyday life rather than an occasional, solitary activity. For pupils who may be finding the transition to secondary school daunting, Book-it! clubs can also provide a psychological and physical place of quiet and safety. There is a wide range of activities that you can introduce in your reading club. Some will work better or be more popular than others, so be prepared to try new approaches to give variety and keep members’ interest. The following ideas have all worked for different clubs: • play reading – multiple copies of plays are popular and will occupy four to six readers • word searches and word games such as Boggle, Scrabble and Pictionary • paired reading, with older children enlisted to help younger ones • story tapes • guest appearances – members of staff talking about their favourite books • computer corner – looking up websites about authors, special interests and hobbies (see the list on page 40) • a book raffle – charge 10p or 20p a ticket and raffle a book every session – this is amazingly popular • a riddle corner – there are good websites devoted to riddles, and children love them. Keeping it going If the format seems tired, attendance is dropping or you don’t feel the club is achieving all it could do, then change it! Don’t be afraid to have a rethink and find a new formula. Top tips! Promote your club to potential members by: • sending printed invitations to your target group • visiting feeder primary schools during the summer term to talk to next year’s new members • getting last year’s members to spread the word. Here’s how • The ‘Read All About It’ club at Shelfield Sports and Community College in Walsall has such a successful formula that students from Years 8 and 9 now join the Year 7 students, for whom the club was originally intended. Each week members take part in a variety of activities, including reviewing books, doing quizzes, crosswords and competitions, and making bookmarks to sell for charity. Linking club activities to the college’s literacy policy has enabled the school to use its budget to supplement set-up funding from the New Opportunities Fund – for example, to pay for visits from storytellers. The school has also used Key Stage 3 Intervention funding to help sustain the club. The club is run by the school library manager, with the help of a volunteer teacher. Together they keep the club fresh by reviewing and changing the activities and encouraging students to give feedback. For them, the main benefits of the club are that students have discovered that the library can be an exciting place to visit and they don’t have to be ‘geeks’ to go in; and that students are now reading a much wider variety of books. Copyright © ContinYou 2007 Having decided that you want to set up a Book-it! club, how will you attract members, and keep them wanting to come back for more? How will you make sure that it’s truly open to everyone – that there’s nothing that would put some children off attending? Consistent reading among children and young people is a fragile habit. One of the best ways of encouraging it is by involving members in the running of your club. The report of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) on children’s reading habits, Start with the child, found that: • children want to be listened to and to be able to exercise choice • they want a space that belongs to them and to their friends • they need to have access to a wide range of books, to be read to, and to receive help and guidance in choosing books • children need opportunities to talk to other children about reading • a child who receives support from an interested adult and sees the adult enjoying reading is more likely to become enthusiastic about it. Opening the doors There are all kinds of reasons why those you would most like to have as members may not be able to come to your club. However, thinking about these less obvious factors during planning can help you make your club as accessible as possible and may make all the difference between success and failure. Here’s a checklist: • Involve pupils – help them to feel the club belongs to them by asking them what they want from the club (see the section ‘Asking around’). Find out what they expect to achieve from joining the club. • Target particular pupils – design your activities with a certain group in mind, or give extra encouragement to those that you wouldn’t normally expect to attend. Top tip! Get club members to help choose the book stock. Ask each member to choose a book for the club – get them to talk about their choices, about getting a good balance, and about why it’s important to provide different kinds of books to cater for different people. • Offer a menu of activities – try to offer a good mixture of activities so that there is something for everyone. Reading and books encompass all kinds of activities – reading aloud, • listening to tapes, drawing book covers • and watching films based on books. • Be relevant – try to design activities that members will find relevant to their culture or interests. • Get the timing right – this is a critical factor. You need to think about how long you need in order to provide high-quality activities, and when it’s best to schedule them – for example, before school as a breakfast club, during the lunch hour, after school or on Saturdays. Here are some pointers for factors you will need to consider: • Time is very limited before school. If you are too ambitious, you may find there’s not enough time to finish the activities and clear up before school starts. • Lunch times can work well, unless you have a very short lunch period. Sometimes schools offer reading club members vouchers for early lunch so that they can attend the club. • Study support activities usually take place after the main school day. Find out more: www.readingclub.org.uk 9 • Think about transport – this can be a big issue, particularly in rural areas. You will need to consider how you can schedule the club so that everyone has the chance to attend. Some schools have set the times of their clubs to fit in with the bus timetables, while others have managed to negotiate with the local authority transport service. • Get the place right – where you hold your club can make a difference to the number of members who attend. You should aim to keep your Book-it! club distinct from what happens during the school day. • Try not to hold the club in a classroom. The library is an obvious choice – but see whether you can close the library to other pupils while the club is taking place so that there is a calm atmosphere and a sense that the club is special. • If you do have to hold the club in a classroom, see if you can move the furniture round a bit to create more of a ‘club’ atmosphere. • If you are running a small club in a big hall, mark out the club space with posters or markers. • Try to set aside an area for the club to display some of its work or photos of its activities – this gives a sense of pride and ownership and is an excellent way to attract new members. • Listen to what pupils say – give participants ongoing opportunities to comment on what they do or do not enjoy about the activities. Make sure that you tell them what you intend to do with the information, otherwise they may not bother again. • Recognise children’s achievements – there are lots of ways that you can do this, depending on whether you have any money available. A certificate, or a letter home or to their class tutor recognising what they have achieved or praising their behaviour can have the same effect as an end-of-term party, or a CD or book token or other gift. You could also ask members to vote for who should receive prizes. • Encourage parents/carers to support the club – try to make sure that you keep parents well informed about the club. Reassure them about who’s running it, why it’s happening, what activities will be on offer and what arrangements will be made when the club is not running. Getting parents on board can have a big influence on the number of young people who join the club. Top tips! • If you hold your club over lunchtime, make the most of the time by allowing members to eat their lunch during the session. You can offer activities that they can do while eating, such as listening to an audio book. • Make club members feel special by giving them special responsibilities, such as helping with book fairs or choosing new books. Keeping it going After a while, speak to children who don’t come to the club or those who have left it. Find out what stopped them from coming – whether there were logistical, practical, emotional, financial or other reasons. You may be surprised by what makes a difference to how busy each session is. Here’s how • Offering a variety of activities and reading material for all abilities has been the key to the success of the reading club at Cleeve Park School in Kent. Pupils in Years 7 and 8 who don’t like to be in the playground at break-time are particularly encouraged to join the reading group, where they get the chance to make new friends as well as to read new books. One pupil was worried that her dyslexia would prevent her from joining in the activities. Once she knew that the club would be using lots of different kinds of materials – including comics, picture books and audio books – she decided to give it a go and joined the club. She now plays a full part in all the club’s activities. She tries out different books and has lots of new friends. She has become a pupil librarian and is altogether far more confident. Copyright © ContinYou 2007 When you are planning your Book-it! club, it’s worth asking yourself and others the following questions: • What will members enjoy? • When’s the best time to run the club? • Who should run it? • What are we trying to achieve? • Who else might be interested or want to get involved? • What else could we offer? There will be lots of other things you need to decide. But to shape a programme that appeals to potential members and achieves its goals, you shouldn’t just be asking yourself these questions, you should also be consulting your pupils and partners. A programme based on information gathered from these wider groups has a much better chance of surviving than one that is based on guesswork because: • by involving pupils in planning the activities, you will give them a greater sense of ownership of the club • this will give you some insight into their interests, perspectives and expectations Asking around • it will help you to identify a suitable target group • it will help you to identify what support members need and to set learning objectives for the programme • it will enable you to establish support networks that may be able to help you with information, resources and, possibly, funding • it can provide you with essential information about what else is going on and how your ideas will work alongside existing provision • it will enable you to identify interests and skills that you can use in the club. Who should you consult? You will need to consult your pupils, your colleagues and some outside groups – don’t forget your local library, the school library service and local bookshops. You could also ask for the views of the people and organisations associated with the different activities you might be running at the club, such as sports development officers, artists, science teachers (science fiction) and local wildlife/veterinary organisations (animal stories). How should you consult people? How you consult depends on who you consult. Consultation is not just about questionnaires and surveys. The best way of finding out what parents think might be to hold an information evening, but, if you want to discuss your plans with prospective partners, it might be better to approach them individually with a phone call or visit. To get pupils’ views, you could ask a small number of those who are interested to construct a simple set of questions that they can use with their year group to find out what they think of the idea of a Book-it! club. Make it easy Whatever kind of consultation you decide to use, try to make it easy for everyone to take part, especially reluctant readers, who may be the group you most want to attract to your Book-it! club. Try to make sure that the timing, format, length and language of the consultation does not put anyone off contributing. Find out more: www.readingclub.org.uk 11 What should you ask? Again, this depends on who you are asking. The main thing is to think as widely as possible and to make the most of the opportunity to get the views of others, without overloading them! The aim of these consultations is to get practical help and support for your club, to promote reading as a popular, sociable activity within your school, and to embed the idea of the club as central to the extra-curricular provision of your school. Have a look at the section ‘Opening the doors’ for ideas on some of the issues you might want to find out about. Top tips! • Ask pupils for their views about the timing, format and staffing of the club. Find out about their interests and what other activities they take part in and why. • Talk to your local library about what help and advice they can give you. Can they provide books on loan? Can they offer storytellers or games? • Ask parents and families whether they have any interests, hobbies or skills that they could contribute to the club. • It will be useful to draw on the audit of existing provision which should have taken place recently in your area as part of the development of extended services in and around schools. Find out who conducted the consultation/audit and try to obtain a copy of the results. Your senior management team should be able to help you find out more. Top tip! There are lots of ways that you can make it fun for young people – and others – to give you their views about setting up a Book-it! club. You could use: • focus groups • graffiti walls suggestion boxes • on-line surveys • face-to-face meetings • playground questionnaires • school gate questionnaires. ‘The club has been very successful. We are also planning to run a similar initiative for Years 8 and 9. For them we are planning a “Fiction Café” – they’ve been banging on the door of the Year 7 club demanding to be let in, as it looks such a lot of fun.’ Brownhills High School, Stoke on Trent 12 Copyright © ContinYou 2007 When should you consult people? Consultation should be an ongoing, two-way process that you start during the planning stage of your club. Don’t worry that you won’t be able to take on board all the ideas that come from a consultation. You will be able to incorporate at least some of the ideas and adapt others. Or they may stimulate your own ideas. But, providing you give feedback on how you will use the information that is given to you, partners will usually be happy to respond again. For example, on the first day of your Book-it! club, you could ask the members what they expect to happen at the club. After a term or so, review your activities by looking at whether or not the club has fulfilled those expectations. For more information on this, see the section ‘How are we doing?’ on page 36. Doing an audit As part of your research, it can be valuable to undertake an audit of existing resources which might help you to run a successful club. For example, do you have a Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme in the school? If so, pupils taking part in this can gain an award in the community service section by helping you with your club. What about the school’s English department? Do pupils or staff have skills or interests you could use in the club? Keeping it going Don’t be frightened to ask whether you are getting it right! You might be surprised – and, as long as you don’t make rash promises to change the whole club overnight, members will continue to feel included throughout the club’s life. Top tips! • Book-it! online members can download examples of ‘needs analysis’ questionnaires to use with pupils, families, staff and partners from the member’s pages of www.readingclub.org.uk. • Have a look at ‘Engaging young people in evaluation and consultation’, found at www.nof.org.uk, for more help on consulting pupils. Here’s how • Pupil involvement is a key feature of the ‘Bookmania’ club at Queen Mary’s High School in Walsall. When the club was set up, pupils voted to choose the name of the club. Now members are regularly asked to give feedback on what they think of the club and suggestions for what they would like to do in the future. Last year club members were particularly interested in poetry. The theme of a recent National Poetry Day was food, so club members made up poems about their favourite food and wrote them on a ‘poetry plate’ which was on display in the library. The club has been well attended ever since it started in 2003 – members appreciate the informal atmosphere and the feeling that they have a say in what goes on at the club. Copyright © ContinYou 2007 Why are reading clubs important? What will make people want to support them, whether financially or in kind? Why should other people – the school’s senior management team, pupils, parents and members of the local community – be supportive? There are lots of good reasons. To start with, a successful and popular reading club can help a school in its work towards achieving the five outcomes of Every Child Matters, and in its provision of a varied menu of activities as part of its extended services. In addition, a reading club can have very beneficial effects on the children who take part in it. ContinYou has carried out research on the impact of reading clubs on pupils’ reading skills, on their behaviour and on how happy they are at school. We found that reading clubs had very positive effects in the hundred schools funded during the academic year 2001–2002 by Camelot and the Daily Mail. We have substantial evidence that the clubs led to improvements in: • pupils’ reading ages • their commitment to school • their self-esteem • their behaviour at school. Making the case The report found that: • membership of a reading club resulted in an average increase of eleven months in reading age over the school year, with some members achieving an increase of four years • in the control group of eight schools which tested the reading ages of • non-members, 79 per cent of club members increased their reading age, compared to only 39 per cent of • non-members • 80 per cent of all pupils taking part in the project increased their reading age scores. A further 13 per cent maintained the same standard over the year • members felt better about themselves as a result of joining the club (61 per cent) • members said that they had behaved better as a result of joining the club (49 per cent) • members wanted to carry on attending a reading club (77 per cent) • members read frequently at home • (42 per cent) • club organisers said that members read more widely and more adventurously as a result of being in the club. The findings from these reading clubs show that, where children are given access to a range of good, contemporary literature, including poetry, drama and non-fiction, they love to read. Where they are encouraged to see reading as a sociable and not a solitary activity, and are allowed to exercise free choice about the books they read, they will embrace reading and the intellectual and personal changes which follow from becoming a reader. These are vital components of education and can be initiated, supported and sustained through reading clubs in secondary schools. Find out more: www.readingclub.org.uk 15 Here’s how • Staff at Mereway Community College in Northampton recognise the potential value of their Chapter and Chatter reading group for their ‘gifted and talented’ pupils. Club sessions include a range of activities – for example, students have debated the commercial impact of the Harry Potter phenomenon, discussed movie adaptations of their favourite books, talked about their favourite characters and prepared questions for visits by authors. The club has also taken part in activities surrounding the CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Children’s Book Awards. This involves club members reading the books on the shortlist and deciding on their own ‘winners’. They then compare their own choices with the actual award winners. As a result of the reading club, more pupils from Years 7 and 8 now visit the library. 16 Copyright © ContinYou 2007 Curriculum links The potential links between your reading club and the curriculum are endless. Remember, however, that the aim of the reading club must always be to inspire reading for pleasure – through this aim other targets can also be met. A child who is not afraid of books will clearly be keen to use them in class and will see reading as part of their natural set of activities. The table on this page and the next shows how the activities and ideas in this pack link to the literacy curriculum for Years 7 and 8. You will find the activities on separate sheets within the pack, and the suggestions for ‘Reading clubs with a difference’ on page 33. Reading Understanding the author’s craft Character, setting and mood (7R12) Language choices (7R14) Endings (7R15) Author attitudes (7R16) Development of key ideas (8R10) Compare treatments of same theme (8R11) Study of literary texts Independent reading (7R17) Interpret a text (8R13) Speaking and listening Speaking Clarify through talk (7SL1) Shape a presentation (7SL3) Put a point of view (7SL5) Evaluate own speaking (8SL1) Formal presentation (8SL3) Questions to clarify or refine (8SL5) Listening Recall main points (7SL6) Listen for a specific purpose (8SL7) Group discussion and interaction Report main points (7SL10) Exploratory talk (7SL12) Modify views (7SL14) Response to a play (7R18) Literary heritage (7R20) Independent reading (8R12) Reading clubs with a difference: Reading buddies Challenges Appreciation societies Graffix Boyzone/Girlzone Crafts club Mystery launch Book-it! activities Brown paper bag game Jackanory story Desert Island Books Review it! Poetic lunches Book trailers Listening books Book trees Find out more: www.readingclub.org.uk 17 Hypothesis and speculation (8SL10) Building on others (8SL11) Varied roles in discussion (8SL12) Drama Explore in role (7SL15) Collaborate on scripts (7SL16) Extend spoken repertoire (7SL17) Work in role (8SL15) Collaborative presentation (8SL16) Writing Narrative devices (7W7) Visual and sound effects (7W8) Link writing and reading (7W9) Narrative commentary (8W5) Figurative language (8W6) Experiment with conventions (8W8) Rework in different forms (8W9) Write to analyse, review, comment Present findings (7W18) Reflective writing (7W19) Integrate evidence (8W17) Critical review (8W18) Word and sentencen Vocabulary Unfamiliar words (7Wo16) Figurative vocabulary (8Wo11) Write to imagine, explore, entertain Story structure (7W5) Characterisation (7W6) Reading clubs with a difference: Reading buddies Challenges Appreciation societies Graffix Boyzone/Girlzone Crafts club Mystery launch Book-it! activities Brown paper bag game Jackanory story Desert Island Books Review it! Poetic lunches Book trailers Listening books Book trees Copyright © ContinYou 2007 Literacy Support Schemes and Springboard www.dfes.gov.uk These are targeted at children whose level of attainment is lower than ideal in maths and literacy. . • targeting pupils whose levels of attainment need raising 18 National initiatives Book-it! reading clubs link with a wide range of school, community and education based initiatives. The table on this page and the next clearly shows how the clubs can be tailored to contribute to the objectives of a number of these initiatives. Initiative Reading clubs could complement this by: Overview of relevant aspects of this initiative Booster classes Years 5 and 6 www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/literacy/publications/ intervention/63485/ These classes provide extra help to enable pupils to reach Level 4 in literacy and numeracy at the end of Key Stage 2. • theming the sessions • providing a quiet working area and supplying copies of text books and subject-help guides • encouraging internet research to aid study Children Act (Every child matters) www.everychildmatters.gov.uk This aims to protect children at risk of harm and neglect and to support all children to enable them to develop their full potential. Priorities include safety, inclusion, play, green spaces, health and choice. • offering a safe place for all pupils Extended Schools www.teachernet.gov.uk/wholeschool/extendedschools/ An extended school is one that provides a range of services and activities, often beyond the school day, to help meet the needs of its pupils, their families and the wider community. Five Year Strategy www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/5yearstrategy/ This puts a clear focus on children, learners, parents and employers, not just in setting out what schools will offer, but in designing ways of doing it that promote personalisation and choice. • providing a well-staffed, well-run club • taking a whole-school approach • encouraging members to feel that the club belongs to them • helping them in target areas of education Key Stage 3 National Strategy www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/keystage3/ This strategy aims to make education for 11 to 14 year olds challenging, demanding, vigorous and inspiring across the whole curriculum. • bringing elements of the curriculum alive through the combination of the curriculum and creativity Find out more: www.readingclub.org.uk 19 Initiative Reading clubs could complement this by: Overview of relevant aspects of this initiative Pupil Support www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/guidanceonthelaw/ 11-99/11-99.htm This aims to promote social inclusion, and to reduce truancy and exclusion. • increasing pupils’ confidence, concentration and interest in school • encouraging pupils to support each other Specialist schools www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/specialistschools/ Specialist schools develop a particular character and ethos and aim to raise standards in their specialism, and more generally across the school. They share expertise and resources with partner schools and with the community. National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal www.neighbourhood.gov.uk/page.asp?id=908 Study Support www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/studysupport/ This aims to reduce social exclusion and tackle the underlying causes of poverty. Education strands aim to raise achievement in schools and encourage young people to continue in education and training. The Study Support initiative aims to raise achievement and tackle social exclusion by supporting a range of opportunities for study support/enrichment activities. • targeting those most in need and inviting whole families to attend • making sessions enjoyable and appealing, to bring in the pupils who would benefit most • capitalising on specialist status through offering themed and/or guest sessions run by professionals in the field • providing an ideal introduction to study support Teaching Assistants www.teachernet.gov.uk/wholeschool/teachingassistants/ This initiative aims to support the recruitment and training of teaching assistants. • encouraging parents, community members and teaching assistants to attend in order to develop their skills Copyright © ContinYou 2007 ‘The quality of study support will, in the final analysis, be directly related to the partnerships it creates and encourages. Active partnerships are the key to the long term sustainability of study support.’ Study support code of practice, 2004 Do you need partners? Establishing effective partnerships is a vital part of a successful Book-it! club. The extra help and support you get from a good partnership will help your reading club to: • become a permanent and • well-embedded resource provided by your school • be well supported with funding, books, outside contacts and local links • achieve publicity within and beyond the school. Why bother? Good partnerships don’t just happen; they need to be managed and worked at. By working with partners, you will introduce a new dimension to your Book-it! club, widening the opportunities available to your school and community and developing lasting relationships that will help your school in the future. Good partnerships will benefit everyone involved. The following summary gives an idea of what you might expect. The benefits for pupils can include: • a wider variety of learning techniques and opportunities • the chance to work with role models from a variety of backgrounds • access to equipment or resources, such as ICT, that would not normally be available to them • opportunities to increase their knowledge and understanding of the community, and develop citizenship skills. The benefits for schools can include: • the opportunity for staff to acquire new skills • the chance to make the most of community resources • the opportunity to use new equipment or resources that they can adapt for use within the school • the building of new and innovative networks of support • the raising of the school’s profile within the community • access to new resources and funding opportunities • new partnerships with other schools in the area. The benefits for partners can include: • the opportunity to gain new skills and knowledge by working alongside school staff • the chance to tackle shared agendas • gaining a higher profile in the local community • a better take-up of local services • better links with a range of other agencies • a greater appreciation in the community of the services that they provide. Take your partner Find out more: www.readingclub.org.uk 21 When planning your Book-it! club, you should consider which partners can add value and variety to your activities. These might include: • other schools • parents and grandparents • extended services/school cluster • co-ordinators • local community and voluntary groups, and charities • libraries, museums and galleries • local performing arts organisations • local businesses and Education Business Partnerships • local FE colleges and universities • local religious and cultural groups. A recent evaluation of study support partnerships between schools and the community found that the most successful partnerships were characterised by: • well-led multi-agency teams • joint planning and shared objectives • a clear rationale of why each partner was involved • clear communication • regular review and reporting • sensitivity to staffing and management demands • awareness of the welfare of young people and the concerns of parents. Other sources of information on partnerships can be found in the following documents: • Partners for Study Support Grant Programme: good practice guide (visit www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/ studysupport/docs) • The study support toolkit: making it work in schools (as above) • Building the future of learning (visit www.biglotteryfund.org.uk). Keeping it going Send your partners letters from club members and copies of your newsletters. Invite them to attend events. These are ways of celebrating their involvement and reminding them that you are there. Top tips! • When approaching partners, make it clear how children will benefit from their involvement. Understandably, they like to know what direct impact their support will have on the lives of the young people involved. • When asking for support, stress how your aims link with partners’ own objectives. Here’s how • Presfield Special School in Southport works in partnership with the Children’s University to run its twice-weekly lunchtime reading club. Each session is carefully planned to develop pupils’ reading abilities. During the first few sessions, club members explore literature using IT and other media sources. Eventually participants choose books from the club’s selection for individual reading. The club has introduced a credit system, based on the Children’s University model. The club targets all pupils who have a statement of special educational needs, as well as children who are at risk. Members gain a credit for every two sessions they attend. Accumulation of credits allows them to ‘graduate’ from the Children’s University. This • has helped generate an enthusiasm • for reading among pupils. • Members of the Ysgol Bryhyfryd Reading Club in Denbighshire get access to an exclusive set of reading materials, thanks to an innovative partnership between the school, the local bookshop and the local library. The bookshop provides proof copies of books for pupils to review, and the library service helps the school to contact authors, to arrange for them to visit the club. Students’ book reviews are emailed to the bookshop, which uses them for ‘point of sale’ publicity, with the name of the school and the reviewer being credited. The reviews have also been used as part of large displays during book launches. The success of the club means that between 25 and 30 pupils regularly join the lunchtime session. Copyright © ContinYou 2007 Once you have decided to establish a reading club, and how you want to organise it, you will need to think about the best people to run it. This doesn’t always have to be teachers. Don’t try to run the club on your own. Running a club is enjoyable and valuable – but also hard work. There are a number of distinct roles in setting up and sustaining any study support club. The most important thing is that everyone involved is clear about their individual responsibilities and that they communicate well with each other. Co-ordinating the club You will need to have one person who is responsible for ensuring that the club is developed to meet its objectives and to enrich and extend pupils’ learning. This person is often, though not always, the same person who organises the activities. A typical co-ordinator might be responsible for: • planning activities • identifying the target group • staffing • premises • marketing and promotion • reporting to funders Who’s going to run your club? • monitoring and evaluation • forging appropriate links with the community. Running the activities Because your Book-it! club is about learning, rather than teaching, you may not always need a teacher to run the activities. Be creative about who this should be. Consider all the resources available within the school and the wider community. The club could be run and staffed by teachers, teaching assistants, lunchtime supervisors, other school staff, older students, parents, youth workers, local employers, professional guest tutors (actors, writers) or other members of the community. Perhaps you could recruit a reliable group of volunteers to run the club or to contribute something (such as books, their time, the venue or resources of some kind) to help it keep running. Top tip! Ask the members who they would like to help run the club. If it’s not the co-ordinator who runs the activities, those who do so will normally be responsible for: • organising the club space • setting up and putting away furniture, resources and other equipment • attendance and monitoring records • delivering an agreed programme of activities • health and safety • liaising with guest speakers and others from outside the school. Rremember to talk to the person who co-ordinates the delivery of extended services in your area. They may have information about who other clubs in the area are linking with and how they’ve overcome any challenges they’ve faced along the way. Top tip! Avoid crises when staff are away ill. Keep details of parents who have volunteered to help at short notice. Find out more: www.readingclub.org.uk 23 Make sure that you ask colleagues and governors for any help they can give you. Perhaps they could help with one session a term – or make a guest appearance for ten minutes, talking about their favourite childhood book or the one they’re enjoying most at the moment. By involving staff from a variety of backgrounds to run the activities, you can add value to the experiences of both pupils and staff, as: • this provides a more varied mix of ideas, skills and talents to draw on • pupils gain a broader insight into life outside the school • staff have an opportunity to develop new skills and to try new teaching methods • pupils have the chance to work alongside adult role models from a variety of backgrounds in a • non-threatening environment • older pupils have the opportunity to develop mentoring and leadership skills • this promotes stronger links between parents and other members of the community and the school • it reduces the pressure on teaching staff • pupils gain a better understanding of cultural differences • pupils have the chance to see parents and staff working in different environments. Support from senior management Getting the support of the headteacher or other member of the senior management team will make a difference to the success of your programme. Experience shows that activities are more likely to be sustained when the headteacher or other senior manager is involved and supports the project. Top tip! Ask your headteacher or senior management team to help with: • finding funding • incorporating the club into the whole-school ethos • finding solutions to staffing problems • promoting the club and giving it credibility. Recognising commitment Don’t forget to spend some time acknowledging the contribution of everyone involved in running your Book-it! club. Staff will feel much happier about putting in extra time if they feel that their effort is genuinely valued. If school staff help with the club, you may need to consider how you reimburse them for their time. Some will be happy to help on a voluntary basis, but you may need to offer payment to others, or to recognise their contribution in some other way. Discuss possible options with your headteacher. You might want to see whether there is scope for using directed time, or for giving time off in lieu. For further detailed information on paying and rewarding school staff, look at www.teachernet.gov.uk/ management/Payandperformance/pay/ 2004/Pay_Publication_2004. Involvement in planning and running reading club activities can also count towards the accreditation of professional development, such as National Vocational Qualifications. Keeping it going If you have a quick turnover of staff, this can lead to sustainability problems. Reward staff for their commitment and value their input at all times. Make strong links with parents and teachers so that, if you do hit a sticky patch, you will have lots of helpful hands to call on in an emergency. Here’s how • Partnership with the Harrogate Children’s Book Group has provided volunteers who help to run the ‘STAR’ group at St Aidan’s C of E High School in Harrogate. The club, which is led by the school librarian, is also supported by teaching staff. Volunteers include a part-time primary school teacher and a representative from the Federation of Children’s Book Groups in York and Harrogate. Older pupils from Year 9 up to the sixth form help younger pupils at the club. All English teaching staff are enthusiastic about reading and enjoy sharing their enthusiasm with the group. Copyright © ContinYou 2007 ‘Sustained growth and access to resources will depend on good communication with multiple audiences.’ Study support code of practice, 2004 Hear all about it! There will be various times during the life of your Book-it! club when you will want to tell others about what’s been happening. Promoting your club effectively will help to attract members. By publicising the club’s achievements, you can also help to raise the profile of the club and of the school within the community, and to establish confidence with funders, your senior management team, the school governors and the local authority. Before deciding how you will promote your Book-it! club, ask yourself the following questions to help you work out the most effective way of reaching the right people: • Why do you want to tell people about the club? • Who needs to know? • What do they need to know? • What else can be gained from publicising the club? • How can you involve the club members? • What are the best ways of publicising the club? Depending on who you want to reach and why, you could try a number of different ways of promoting the club. You will need to bear in mind how much money you have and what support you can expect from your partners. For example, you could: • devise a catchy name and a logo for the club • produce club badges, caps or t-shirts • produce membership cards promoting the ethos/aims of the club • provide attendance certificates • produce flyers and posters to put up round the school • publicise the club in the local media • produce flyers or newsletters, or run information events, for parents, families and the wider community • put on performances, presentations and displays • contribute articles to local authority or governors’ newsletters – the extended services team in your local authority will know what publications are circulated in your area. Top tips! • Your most effective marketing tool is your club members. Their enthusiasm will be the most convincing way of telling others what you are achieving and of gaining support for the club. • Publishers usually have lots of freebies such as pens, posters, stickers and bags. They also love book clubs, as word of mouth is still the biggest seller of books, so they will want to hear about your work and may also help you to get in touch with authors. • You can bring great benefits to your funders. Offer to promote them to parents, to make posters about them, to mention them in press releases and to have their logo on display. This will save the company money from their promotional budget and therefore release more for them to pass on to you. • When you are trying to build up numbers, try putting reminders about the club in class registers, so that staff can tell pupils what activities will be taking place that week. Find out more: www.readingclub.org.uk 25 Here are some golden rules for writing a good press release: • Newspaper editors cut copy from the bottom up – get your message across in the first paragraph, followed by supporting information and quotes. • Make sure that the first paragraph covers all the basic information: who, why, when, where and how. • Keep it punchy and factual. Don’t use flowery language. Present only information that is correct and that cannot be misinterpreted. • Avoid self-praise. • Remember to date your press release and to send it on headed paper with a large ‘Press release’ heading at the top. A sample press release is given alongside. For further advice and information on writing an effective press release, look at the website www.press-release-writing.com. Remember, you don’t always need to have a big news story to get a mention in the local paper. A photo opportunity such as an end-of-term party, a special visitor or a trip can be all you need to attract interest. Keeping it going • Don’t be modest about what you have achieved. Shout it from the roof tops! What you are doing is remarkable, even if it just seems like everyday routine to you. Reading for success Littlebrook Secondary School opened the doors of its BookWorms club this week to parents and other guests, including local MP Charles Chance. Club members entertained their visitors with sketches, poetry recital and ‘news’ reports of club activities. Guests were also invited to join in a quiz about classic children’s books. Josie Jones, who runs the club, said: ‘There is a general trend that students read less for pleasure as they get older. We wanted to try to buck this trend by working with our youngest pupils to show them what fun they can have through reading, whether it is a comic, a novel or a cereal packet! We are delighted with the progress that our members have made over the year.’ BookWorms is a weekly lunchtime club for pupils in Year 7. Students take part in a range of activities, including CD and film reviews, writing comedy sketches, doing word searches and puzzles, and reviewing books on the internet. Josie added: ‘We seem to have got the mix of activities about right, as we regularly have a full house. The support of our partners has been invaluable. Browns Bookshop in the High Street shares its proof copies with us, and the local library gives us lots of ideas for activities. The relaxed club environment means that students of all abilities feel comfortable here and we have seen their confidence grow during the year. Members who may have struggled with reading aloud in class at the start of the year now feel able to stand up in front of the whole school at assembly and act out a sketch that they and their friends have written.’ The club has been such a success that the school is hoping to find funding to open its doors to members from other year groups from September. • Send press releases regularly and put up posters in community venues. This will help you keep the club going, as people will already be aware of the good work you have done. Remember to mention current funders and partners in your publicity. Top tip! Get to know the ‘schools’ correspondent at your local paper. Here’s how • The Reading Club at Bishop Walsh School in Sutton Coldfield was set up in 2002 to help promote reading as an enjoyable activity. The school promotes the club at open evenings for new parents and in school assemblies, which the club leads once a year. Other publicity includes posters and articles in the school newsletter. The librarian runs the club, with help from two pupils from Year 9. She aims to dispel the assumption that ‘reading is for geeks’ by organising enjoyable book-based activities, such as scavenger hunts. The club is now oversubscribed, with over 30 pupils from Year 7 attending every week, and 47 on the register. Copyright © ContinYou 2007 Getting funding together can seem daunting, but it needn’t be. You won’t need a lot of money for your Book-it! club, but you will need to think how the club can be sustained and become part of the fabric of the school over the years. A few hundred pounds can be as difficult to raise as thousands, so this section will provide you with some hints on writing a successful funding application, as well as with ideas about who to approach for support and some top tips on managing the funds once you’ve got them. The information here is detailed and covers a variety of activities for which you may be trying to raise money. But don’t forget other possible ways of getting support: you could approach a local business (perhaps with the help of a school governor) for start-up funding or for help in kind (things such as drawing materials, magazines or refreshments for the year) so that your reading club can get off the ground. It’s essential that, as well as making contact with the person responsible for study support in your local authority, you speak to the extended services co-ordinator for schools in your area/ cluster. They will know what funds, if any, are available centrally and how these can be used. They will also be able to share information about how others have been successful in raising money in your area. Where do I start? If this is your first attempt at applying for funding, remember the golden rule: keep your proposal as simple as possible. You can always add to a successful base in the future. When looking for funding, you need to match the needs of the beneficiaries with the aims of the donors. Try to find out what the motivation and priorities of the donor you are approaching might be. To obtain in-house/statutory funding, you will need to identify current school or local authority initiatives and show how the club will contribute to these. Other donors, such as local businesses, may want to have opportunities for good PR, or may be keen to build links with schools or to offer their employees opportunities for volunteering. A good bid will tell the donor how what you are doing will help them to meet their aims. Once you’ve found out more about the donor, prepare answers to the questions listed below. They will provide you with the basis for any funding application form, letter or interview. You will feel Show me the money! more confident, and will be more likely to be successful, if you have thought your ideas through really thoroughly. Who? • Who wants the club? • Who is it for? (Is there a specific target group? Will there be open access? Can families attend?) • Who will be responsible for planning, staffing, running and updating the club? • Who else can help? What about sixth form students? Why? • Why are you doing it? To improve pupils’ reading ages, or just to have fun with books (though it’s likely that these aims will reinforce each other)? • Why will it be different from ‘normal’ lessons? Where? • Where will it take place? In more than one room? • Where will you find staff, emergency cover and volunteers? • Where will you find out about recruitment, police checks, health and safety and other requirements? Find out more: www.readingclub.org.uk 27 • Where can you get resources at low cost or at no cost at all – for example, gifts in kind, time from volunteers? When? • When will you start and end the club? (times and dates) • When do you need to approach funders? They may have application deadlines. • When will you hear back from the funders you have approached? (This can be up to three months after the application deadline.) • When will you tell people about the club? What? • What activities are you going to run to achieve the club’s aims? • What paperwork do you need to get copies of or to complete? (Think about health and safety, questionnaires, photo consent forms, codes of conduct, and so on.) • What are you going to do if too many or too few children want to attend? • What is your club going to be called? How? • How will you know whether the club has been a success? • How will you report your progress to funders? • How much is it going to cost? (Research this fully and break down your costs in all paperwork – but it’s most important to do this in your funding applications.) • How are you going to establish the rules for the club? • How are you going to promote and reward good attendance? By using certificates, badges or stickers? – and how will you budget for these? Once you have the answers to all these questions, you can decide on the best way to gain financial and material support for your club. Broadly speaking, there are four main types of funding available: • corporate sponsorship/donations • statutory funding streams • grants from charitable trusts • donated resources/funding in kind. You can find out more about funding in the Study Support ETC section of ContinYou’s website. Top tips! Corporate sponsorship • Approach local businesses or local branches of bigger organisations before you approach the ‘parent’ company – they are more likely to appreciate the local benefit of supporting your club. • Consider what advertising benefits your club could offer to local sponsoring organisations, such as posters, press coverage and events. • Address your letters to a particular person – not just ‘Dear Sir’, or ‘To whom it may concern’. In your letter you could offer to meet the person to discuss the project and its potential impact. • Business in the Community has links with companies throughout the country and can put schools in contact with local businesses. Further details can be obtained from their website at www.bitc.org.uk. • Approach your local Education Business Partnership to see what support it can provide – see www.nebpn.org. • For large organisations, get copies of annual reports and investigate their corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy, which will tell you how much money they donate to charities and community groups every year. Charitable trusts • It can often take up to three months for trust fund applications to be approved – think ahead and build in enough time for this in your planning. • If the guidance says ‘call before application’, do so. If it says ‘written requests only’, then don’t ring them up! • The remits and aims of trust funds are usually quite specific, so make sure that you read all accompanying literature before you complete a bid. • Be creative! If a funder only funds new projects, don’t think you have to start again from scratch. Changing one aspect of the club design, such as the target group or its theme, may be enough for it to qualify. 28 Copyright © ContinYou 2007 Who’s got the money? There are many organisations from which you can obtain money if you have the time to devote to this. Listed below are some of the main sources that may help. • School Development Grant (SDG) (in England) – schools are free to spend their SDG on any activity to support improvement in teaching and learning, including reading clubs and other enrichment programmes. • Extended Schools – the provision of study support activities (including reading clubs) is one of the key elements of extending services in and around schools. • Awards for All – this funds projects that enable people to take part in art, sport, heritage and community activities, as well as projects that promote education, the environment and health in the local community. Applications need to be made by community groups with a constitution, so a PTA, for example, could apply. Visit the website www.awardsforall.org.uk or telephone 0845 600 20 40 for a grant application pack. Donations • If you need computer hardware, visit www.donateapc.org.uk. General • Find out whether school governors or members of the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) can obtain donations or resources to support the club from their employers. • If the PTA is a registered charity, piggyback on this status to gain access to funding. • Speak to local authority advisers to link your plans with other local authority or school initiatives. • Make your reading club members feel special by keeping a separate stock of books just for them to borrow. You could approach your Key Stage 3 co-ordinator for funding for this. • Look at the government website www.governmentfunding.org.uk. This provides information on grants available from four government departments – the Home Office, the Department for Education and Skills, the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions and the Department of Health. • If you are interested in becoming a voluntary organisation or would like to register for charitable status, log on to www.navca.org.uk/liodir and click on ‘NACVS directory’. This will give you the contact details for your local Council for Voluntary Service. • Young People’s Fund – this fund finances projects involving young people, aged from 11 to 18, with the following outcomes: being healthy; staying safe; enjoying and achieving; making a positive contribution; economic well-being. Telephone 0845 4 10 20 30 for more details or visit www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/ programmes. • Children’s Fund (England only – all regions) – grants of between £250 and £7,000 are available to locally managed voluntary, community or self-help groups (including PTAs) to run activities for disadvantaged children or young people. Telephone: 0845 113 0161 or visit the website www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/ strategy/childrensfund/. • The Community Foundation Network – in addition to administering £70m of the Children’s Fund, community foundations administer a wide range of regionspecific charitable funds across the UK. Many of these funds will support study support learning activities. • Visit the website www.communityfoundations.org.uk. Find out more: www.readingclub.org.uk 29 Book-it! club funding In addition to these general funding sources, there are a number of more specific routes you could try in order to gain funding for your Book-it! club. Local sources of support • Major supermarkets or the larger bookstores might provide some funding or resources. Approach a local store for financial support and/or support in kind. • Local Network Fund (part of the Children and Young Person’s Unit) is a possible source of funding for activities to develop pupils’ reading. This might come under the funding priority: ‘Aspirations and experiences – activities that give children experiences, or help them achieve goals, that other children take for granted’. See www.everychildmatters. gov.uk/strategy/voluntaryand community/localnetworkfund or contact 0845 1130 161. • Each Learning and Skills Council (LSC) has a Learning Initiative Fund to support local projects. Contact your local LSC and request their funding prospectus. The telephone numbers for all local LSCs are on the LSC website. If your school has links with your local further education college, money can be drawn down from local LSC funds. Ring 08450 19 41 70 to find out more. • You could approach local organisations such as Round Tables, Rotary Clubs, Women’s Institutes or Townswomen’s Guilds. Their community focus enables them to support local initiatives. • Study support clubs can help to reduce truancy, bullying and other anti-social behaviour. If you are setting up a club in an area where crime or anti-social behaviour is a problem, it would be worth talking to your local community police officer or town centre manager. They may be able to support your funding application or might have access to funds that the club would be eligible for. • The Parent Teacher Association or Friends of the School Association may have funding to support the development of your reading club. Copyright © ContinYou 2007 National/community focus • Funds from the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund are available within 88 designated authorities to support learning opportunities. Look at the website www.neighbourhood.gov.uk. • The Basic Skills Agency Family Literacy money can be used to fund work with the families of pupils. • eLearning Credits consist of money set aside for schools in England. The amount your school has will depend on its size. It is about £1,000 per school plus about £10 per pupil. Credits can be spent on a range of multimedia resources from approved suppliers – the full list can be found at www.curriculumonline.gov.uk. Each school will have an appointed eLC budget holder, who will be the headteacher, a head of department, the bursar or the ICT co-ordinator. Some useful funding resources The publication Building the future of learning, available from the Big Lottery Fund (BLF) (www.biglotteryfund. org.uk) reports on study support projects that were funded by the BLF (previously known as the New Opportunities Fund). It provides advice on sustaining activities and funding. The following publications are available by mail order from the Directory of Social Change (Tel: 020 7209 5151 Website: www.dsc.org.uk/acatalog/): • Schools funding guide – this includes 200 possible sources of funding/ support, covering companies, regional and central government, the National Lottery, grant-making trusts and foundations and European bodies. Price: £19.95 • Guide to UK company giving – a reference guide profiling more than 500 companies’ community support, including cash donations and gifts in kind, to voluntary and community organisations. Price £34.95 • Directory of grant-making trusts – this comprehensive reference work covers 2,500 grant-making trusts, each with the potential to give at least £20,000 a year. ISBN: 1 903991 58 7, Price: £95.00 Taking care of the pennies Wherever your funding comes from, you will need to account for how it is spent. Even with the fairly small sums required for a reading club, you will need to make sure you keep proper records of your finances. 30 Find out more: www.readingclub.org.uk 31 Keeping it going • Keep your current funders informed and invite them to events, so that they will see they are getting a return on their investment and be more likely to continue funding you in the future. • Start looking for alternative funding streams at least four months before you need new funding, even if your current funder says they intend to maintain your grant. Sadly, these things are not guaranteed. Top tips! • Make friends with your bursar/ financial manager, who will be able to help you to plan your budget and set up simple systems for recording income and expenditure. • Make sure that your budget includes everything you may need, and that your costings are realistic. • Consider the funder’s requirements when setting up financial systems – this will make it easier to submit monitoring and financial information on time and will avoid delays in funding being released. • Keep expenditure headings as simple as possible, as this will give you plenty of flexibility. • Keep a cash book at the club to record cash expenditure. Keep copies of all receipts and invoices. They may be needed to validate your spending. • Review planned and actual expenditure against your budget on a regular basis. • Make sure you involve the right • people at the right time if you are • making changes to your budget. Here’s how • Linking the activities of the reading group to other initiatives means that the librarian at Don Valley High School in Doncaster has always had funds available to support the club. Funding from the Gifted and Talented strand, the Key Stage 3 literacy fund and the school library budget has enabled her to organise a variety of activities for the thriving group, including drama workshops and ghost story sessions. A TV and video purchased using the ‘Aim Higher’ fund is also used by the reading club. The club’s reputation has spread beyond the school, generating interest and partnership work in other schools, as well as plenty of positive local publicity. Copyright © ContinYou 2007 You will need to plan the activities that you are going to offer as part of your Book-it! club. You will probably want to include a range of activities: some for the whole group to do together, some (including games of various kinds) that children can do in pairs or small groups, and some activities for pupils to do on their own. You will also need to consider what computer facilities you have available, as there are lots of websites where pupils could play games, submit reviews and try puzzles online. The activities you run must reflect the needs and wishes of the members. As long as you offer plenty of accessible activities, the members of your club will have fun and want to be there. Remember to ask them what they want (see the section ‘Asking around’) and be prepared to change what you are doing every now and then to keep them interested. Offering a good range of activities is comparatively easy once you get going. What do we do now? The activity sheets The activity sheets provided in this pack will give you some suggestions that you could put together to make up an activity programme for your Book-it! club for a term. The sheets cover a range of activities, from writing reviews to recording stories. This means that the students can try something different each week, and also that you can find out what particular children enjoy. Top tips on planning activities! • To enable you to create a sense of continuity, and to tie all the sessions together, make a rough plan, in advance of the first session, of what you are going to do for the whole term. You can use the planners on pages 34–35 to help you with this. • Consider whether the activities you are planning are inclusive – can they be adapted to suit all the children in the group? • If members know that the activities are planned ahead, this will encourage them to come back to ‘see what happens’ or to ‘make the next bit’. • To avoid disappointment, make sure that you know, as far in advance as possible, where you are going to get all the equipment and materials you need. • Look at the school calendar – are other activities such as residential or other trips taking place that will lower attendance at any key points? • Although the activities may be linked together, would a newcomer still be able to join in at any point during the term? This resource pack gives you ideas that have been tried out in successful reading clubs in other schools. The ideas are simple and popular – you and your pupils can adapt them as you want. If you find that some are much more popular than others, don’t be afraid to use them often. If children know they are going to enjoy their club, they will come back. There’s no need to strive for novelty and innovation all the time! Find out more: www.readingclub.org.uk 33 The activities are suitable for children in Years 7 and 8. However, you may be able to adapt them to suit children in other age groups or with different needs. Subscribers to Schools ETC will have access to further links to other organisations and resources in the members’ pages of the Book-it! website. Similarly, remember to keep looking at the Study Support ETC pages, as they are regularly updated and contain a lot of additional information and support as well as over 200 case studies of how other people are delivering and sustaining successful and popular study support provision. Reading clubs with a difference To encourage pupils to join a reading club, you can try promoting them in different ways, or focusing on topics that will attract students who might not otherwise see a reading club as something for them. Here are some ideas you could use. Mystery launch Decide on a name for your reading club – for example, Teenage Reading Group (TRG). Put up posters around the school with the initial letters on, as a ‘teaser’ to get students guessing what they mean. Then invite them along to the library for a launch event where they will find out. Be mysterious about it – don’t explain what the letters mean until they attend the event, and advertise the fact that there will be food and drink. Try to get a local celebrity to attend if you can. Contact your local public library for help. Crafts club Build on the success of multi-part craft magazines by setting up a craft or art activity group, based on the children’s interests, using books and magazines from the library. Boyzone/Girlzone Close the library to girls one lunchtime a week and have a boys club. Do the same another day for the girls. Graffix Set up a graphic novels group. Enlist the art department (and the drama department) to help create a new graphic novel. Make copies (with help from the IT department) and put them in the library. Appreciation societies Find out from students what book or author is the current ‘hot favourite’ – Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, perhaps – and set up an appreciation society. Theme activities round the book, but try to widen things out by including a ‘Loved Harry? Try this!’ slot. Challenges Set up an able readers group. Staff book group Create a good role model for the pupils’ reading club – set up a staff book group. Offer wine or other inducements and get staff talking about books. There’s a good chance that their enthusiasm will rub off on to pupils! Reading buddies You could involve older students, such as sixth formers, in your club. They could act as ‘reading buddies’ to younger pupils. Start by identifying some older students who are enthusiastic readers and spend some time training them to support younger readers. When they first attend the club, introduce them and ask them to say something to the group about the books that got them reading. Match each student up with a younger pupil with whom they will get along. Creating a reading culture There are lots of things you can do to promote reading and books in and around the school – for example, you could: • put books, or posters about books, on display around the school • set up a school reading challenge – how many books can pupils read in a term? • ask club members to find out what is the most popular book each year • have your own ‘Man Booker Prize’ awards and get the book club panel to be the judges • organise a school raffle for a copy of the award-winning book – this could be a money spinner, or you could use it as an incentive for reading and give each pupil a free raffle ticket • publish a regular club newsletter to keep the rest of the school up to date with what’s happening in the reading club. Copyright © ContinYou 2007 Club session planner Date Activities Special arrangements 34 Find out more: www.readingclub.org.uk 35 Club session planner Session objectives Warm up/introductory activity Description Date: Links to other subjects Main activity/activities Description Links to other subjects Summing-up activity Description Links to other subjects Staff Special arrangements (equipment, venue, insurance, permission slips, monetary contributions, etc) Copyright © ContinYou 2007 By now you are hopefully feeling confident about getting started. But you’re not quite there yet. Before you open your doors, you need know how you will be able to tell whether your club is a success or not. Monitoring what happens and evaluating what this means is often left until the last minute, but this is as much an essential part of planning as deciding where to hold your club. Monitoring and evaluation are essential to ensure the long-term sustainability of your activities. Here are ten good reasons to monitor what’s going on: • You can tell whether you are making progress towards achieving your aims. • You can tell whether you are reaching your target group. • It is usually a funding requirement. • You can make sure you are meeting the needs of the target group. • You can identify whether you need to make changes to how the club is run, such as its timing or location. • You can tell whether you are meeting members’ expectations. How are we doing? • You can find out whether club members enjoy what they do at the club. • You can identify individual members’ achievements and celebrate them. • You can celebrate the success of your club within the school and the community. • You will have evidence to support future funding applications. What do I need to know? You may feel unsure about what information you will be able to collect and what it tells you, but don’t be. If you have set yourself realistic and measurable goals at the outset, you are half way there. Things you can measure include changes in: • the reading age scores of pupils • their attitudes towards reading • their reading behaviour, such as the length of time they spend reading or the kinds of books they read • their behaviour in the classroom, school or playground • their attendance or punctuality rates • their self-esteem and confidence • their level of participation in the classroom • their enthusiasm for learning. What members can gain individually from taking part in a Book-it! club can vary enormously and is not always predictable. As a guide, outcomes may fall into one of four types: • personal outcomes: the impact on pupils’ attitudes and how they feel about themselves, such as their confidence, self-esteem, creativity and aspirations • learning outcomes: the impact on pupils’ knowledge, on their levels of basic, thinking and learning skills and on their academic attainment • practical outcomes: the impact on barriers such as access to resources or social barriers such as those associated with transition, and with the integration of pupils with special needs • life skills: the impact on the broader range of social skills that are important in adulthood such as those relating to communication, team working, citizenship and leadership. Find out more: www.readingclub.org.uk 37 Collecting monitoring information does not have to be difficult. There are lots of different measurement tools that you can use. The most important thing is to keep it relevant, as brief as possible and easy for your group to complete. If you are an online member, on the website you will have access to model questionnaires and other examples of ways of measuring progress. Finally, here are a few pointers for making your monitoring and evaluation meaningful: • Know what you want to measure, why you want to measure it and what you are going to do with the information. • Decide on how you are going to collect the information before you start. • Make sure that what you ask is relevant, and don’t ask too many questions! • Make the way you collect the information clear, quick and simple – it can even be fun! • Collect ‘baseline’ information when you start the club and as new members join – this gives you something to measure progress against. Top tips! • Remember to ask whether what you are providing and how you are providing it is enjoyable and beneficial for both club members and staff. Compare these results with what people said they wanted or were expecting during the original consultation. • Ask your local authority study support, oshl or extended schools co-ordinator for help with evaluation, or talk to colleagues running similar clubs in other schools to find out what works for them. • Qualitative data is ‘soft’ information that is difficult to measure, such as anecdotal evidence of improved behaviour or greater confidence. • Quantitative data is ‘hard’ information that can be measured with numbers, such as improvements in school achievements. • Evaluation is most effective when one person is responsible for the whole process of collecting data, • analysing the results and ensuring • that they have an impact. • Think about who will have an opinion: seek the views of a range of people such as club members, teaching staff, partners and parents. • Think about how and when you will obtain the information – use a variety of methods to suit the group you are asking. • Be consistent – use the same measurement ‘tool’ (such as a survey) each time you ask the same group for information, so that you can compare like with like. • Seek information regularly but not too often – people will soon get bored with responding if they don’t see anything happening as a result of their participation. • Be aware that other factors beyond participation in the reading club may have also affected progress toward your target – this means that, although you cannot say that participation caused a particular change, it may have contributed to that change. Keeping it going • Set realistic goals. • Aim to send out and collate information on a regular basis, but don’t be too ambitious. This will only lead to frustration and annoyance, both from the people being asked to complete paperwork and from you when you find you are not getting enough responses! Here’s how • Staff at the Bookmania club at Deyes High School in Liverpool recognise that the impact of the club extends beyond how much members read, and what they read. Improvements in pupils’ reading ability, as well as in their self-confidence and motivation, are just some of the benefits that pupils have experienced. By monitoring pupils’ reading ages and asking them for feedback, staff can track changes in pupils’ ability, behaviour and attitudes, as well as checking that the club is providing what members want. Copyright © ContinYou 2007 Now you know what you have to do, but where can you find the answers to some of the detailed practical questions that you need more help with? For example, where else can you find ideas for activities? To help you on your way, we have brought together information about some of the key resources and websites for those running reading clubs. There are many more. Some contain information about good practice, while others offer promotional materials or activity packs at little or no cost. This section will enable you to: • get hold of ‘freebies’ • know who to contact for advice on organising games, visits from authors, and other activities that will add value to your club. Finding out more Remember, the more groundwork you do now, the more successful and sustainable your club will be. Funders will be more inclined to support you if they can see that you have investigated existing resources and have learnt from previously identified models of good practice. For more lists of resources, online members can, through their Schools ETC subscription, visit www.readingclubs.org.uk. Happy researching! Keeping it going Find new links and investigate new avenues, but don’t get bogged down with internet searches. Try and network with other people in a similar position to you, to find out where they have got new and exciting information from. For example, they may have had resource packs sent directly to them, or perhaps they have revisited old sources of information and found new inspiration there. Find out more: www.readingclub.org.uk 39 Useful national organisations Booktrust This national charity promotes books and reading. It gives excellent advice on all aspects of children’s literature and reading. It also provides materials to support visits from writers and school book events. It runs a ‘Looking for an author’ database which officers will check for you. Tel: 020 8516 2977 Website: www.booktrusted.co.uk Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) CILIP works to raise standards of library provision. It is a huge network, with lots of contacts. It promotes innovative work with children and organises the Carnegie and Kate Greenaway awards for children’s literature. Tel: 020 7255 0500 Website: www.cilip.org.uk Federation of Children’s Books Groups This is a voluntary group for parents, teachers, librarians, booksellers and anyone interested in books for children and young people. It offers activities and advice. Tel: 0113 258 8910 Website: fcbg.org.uk National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE) This association supports writers and writing in schools. It has a magazine, which is free to members, and provides a searchable Directory of Writers on its website. Membership costs £20 a year for individuals and £60 for institutions. Tel: 01653 618429 Website: www.nawe.co.uk Reading is Fundamental UK This organisation, part of the National Literacy Trust, helps groups, parents, schools and nurseries to establish new generations of readers. It funds reading groups and gives advice. Tel: 020 7828 2435 Website: www.rif.org.uk The Red Fox Gang Random House Children’s Books, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA This free club, set up by Random House Publishers for young readers aged 4 to 12, provides information and materials. Tel: 020 7840 8400 Website: www.randomhouse.co.uk/kids/home.htm School Library Association The SLA, which promotes school libraries, has many active regional groups, and provides training courses, advice and information. Tel: 08707 770979 Fax: 08707 770987 Website: www.sla.org.uk Scottish Book Trust The Trust produces excellent guides to helping with reading, advises on books for different age groups and has lots of material on promoting reading. Tel: 0131 524 0160 Website: www.scottishbooktrust.com Copyright © ContinYou 2007 Visits from writers Below is information about organisations that support visits from writers – mainly with advice rather than money. Booktrust and the National Association of Writers in Education (both listed on page 39) also offer support of this kind. Tel: 020 7928 6006 Website: www.cieh.org.uk The Windows Project Windows provides authors, dramatists, poets and storytellers and will give advice on all kinds of reading and writing projects. It covers a wide range of writers. Tel: 0151 709 3688 Website: www.windowsproject.demon.co.uk Writing Together The Booktrust, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, the National Literacy Strategy at the DfES and the Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, together run a campaign for creative writing and reading called Writing Together. Tel: 020 8516 2977 Website: www.booktrust.org.uk/writingtogether/ Reports The following good practice and evaluation reports are available to download from ContinYou’s website, www.continyou.org.uk: • Developing reading communities: linking secondary school reading clubs with public libraries through effective partnerships – this report summarises the results of the Reading Agency’s part of the Developing Reading Communities programme, which explored the potential of closer partnerships between schools and public libraries to give young readers seamless support • Encouraging reading for pleasure amongst Year 7 pupils – an evaluation of the impact of reading clubs in five selected schools • Reading club report – a report on the findings of the Camelot and Daily Mail reading club programme (2000–2002), which reveals persuasive information about the ways in which reading clubs help tackle the problem of children’s reading ability deteriorating following the transition to secondary school. Other useful resources and contacts • The activity kit – a new handbook for young people’s reading groups. To sample a free activity, go to www.readingclub.org.uk • National Literacy Trust is a national charity dedicated to building a literate nation – website: www.literacytrust.org.uk • The Reading Agency works through libraries to promote reading – website: www.readingagency.org.uk • Reading Connects is a national reading campaign initiative funded by the DfES – website: www.readingconnects.org.uk • Department for Education and Skills – www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/primary/literacy • The BBC offers online interactive games, activities and ideas for book clubs – website: www.bbc.co.uk/arts/books • Carnegie/Greenaway shadowing – many schools already shadow the Carnegie and Greenaway awards (www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk) run by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) – website: www.cilip.org.uk. If you don’t already do this, why not start? The Greenaway award for picture books provides an opportunity for less able readers to join in, particularly if primary and secondary schools link up, with the older readers taking the role of experts. • Chatterbooks – find out whether there is a Chatterbooks group in your local library and set up a link. Website: www.literacytrust.org.uk/campaign/ libraries.html#Chatterbooks 40 Book-it! The purpose of this Extra Time resource is to help schools set up reading clubs and keep them going. ContinYou can provide further support through offering you training to accompany this guidance. In addition, you will find updates and further information, and a members’ section, on the Book-it! pages of our website. Visit www.readingclub.org.uk for more information. Acknowledgements We are grateful to the schools which provided case studies for this guidance document. This pack was written by Jenny Evans with Jenna Hall, Lindsay Mackie, Ben Locker and Neal Hoskins. It was edited by Carolyn Sugden. Copyright © ContinYou 2007 All rights reserved. Except as allowed by law, or where indicated in this publication, no part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior permission from the publisher. Pages which may be photocopied are marked with this symbol. ContinYou acknowledges the generous support of the Department for Education and Skills in developing the Extra Time resource packs. ContinYou 17 Old Ford Road London E2 9PJ Tel: 020 8709 9900 Fax: 020 8709 9933 Email: info.london@continyou.org.uk Website: www.continyou.org.uk Registered charity no: 1097596