Reading promotion
Reading promotion raises the profile of reading in your school. It celebrates and strengthens a reading culture and allows you to share your passion for reading, favourite titles and authors. Here are some tips and ideas for promoting reading for pleasure.
Plan your reading promotion
Firstly, make a plan. Creating a strategic reading promotion plan will help you build a strong school-wide reading culture. The more you coordinate, collaborate and communicate across the school, the more successful and effective you'll be.
Things to consider as you make your plan include:
purpose
goals and priorities
type of activity
coordination, resources and time.
Purpose
Why are you having the event?
What need is being addressed?
How will your promotion fit with the school’s and the library’s wider literacy and reading goals?
Goals and priorities
What do you hope to see happening? Are your promotions creating readers or building a reading community?
How can you make the most difference? Tracking and documenting what you do will allow you to share, advocate and improve.
Type of activity
What will you do?
Is it easy? Is it fun? Is it low stakes?
Coordination, resources and time
When will you do it? How much time do you have? What do you need and when do you need it?
How will you coordinate with teachers’ and/or library's plans, school and community events, national and international literacy and reading events?
Who can you call on to help? Only commit to what you have time and support for. It is better, in the long run, to focus on quality and consistency rather than quantity.
It's a good idea to create a planning template, which you can share with staff and students to get ideas and input.
Try our planning template, with spaces for each term to enter ideas for:
a teaching and learning focus (classroom programme or staff PD)
events, initiatives and celebrations
connecting with parents and whānau
connecting with the wider community.
Reading for pleasure: School-wide plan — celebrations, initiatives and programmes (pdf, 326 KB).
Build a strong school-wide reading culture
School-wide promotions
School-wide promotions are a fantastic way to get the entire community excited about reading. Create opportunities for students to get involved in reading promotion too. Here are some ideas.
Set school-wide challenges
Ideas include:
which class can read the most pages or for the most hours in a week
creating a class tower of books students have read
best class book display
reading around the world
a genre challenge
creating and participating in reading games and competitions such as Kahoot quizzes
‘Get caught reading’ raffle — every time a teacher ‘catches’ a student reading, the student gets a ticket and goes into the draw for a weekly prize.
create book trailers — challenge students to make their own book trailers and reviews:
have them running on a loop in your school library, or on your school library or English curriculum web page.
put on an awards show — whole-school, syndicate, buddy class or class — created by students for students.
Take part in national or international events
Share the ReadWriteThink calendar of literary events and activities with your students and colleagues — ReadWriteThink calendar. Plan a few school-wide events together.
Shadow the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Or try setting up your own Battle of the Books or Mock Newbery awards.
Join in the LIANZA NZCYA Books Alive — Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa-organised events that run alongside the annual New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.
Take part in the Kids’ Lit Quiz.
Take part in the #NZreadaloud or World Read Aloud Day.
Organisations, events and awards celebrating reading
Unleash the power of shadowing book awards
Mock YMA election results — annual Youth Media Awards, including Mock Newberry, Mock Caldecott, and Mock Printz awards.
Set up or join in family, whānau and community initiatives
Create family book clubs:
Encourage students and parents to start to share books at home.
Invite parents to attend reading groups — send out lists of recommended titles or ask parents to come speak to students about their reading lives.
Organise a community-wide read. Get ideas from the American Library Association's
Planning a community-wide read guide. You could also host discussions in your library and classrooms.
Encourage students to take part in public library holiday reading challenges.
Create a school-wide or community-wide summer reading initiative.
Take a community approach to summer reading
One book, one community — American Library Association (ALA) Public Programs Office resources for librarians building community-wide reading programs.
Organise author and illustrator visits
Author visits are a great way to bring the school together:
Read NZ Te Pou Muramura has information about New Zealand authors and takes writers and illustrators to schools, either in person or virtually.
Storylines offers author and illustrator visits to schools as part of their Storylines National Story Tours.
Author Kate Messner keeps an updated list of authors and illustrators who do virtual read-aloud visits with classrooms around the world.
Read NZ Te Pou Muramura Writers in Schools
Ideas for school leaders and teachers
School leaders and teachers are vital in supporting reading promotion. The more we normalise and celebrate the enjoyment of reading as a school culture, the more engagement and buy-in we are likely to have.
In a school with a strong reading culture, you might see:
school leaders and teachers promoting books at assembly, online and through other channels — briefly, regularly and enthusiastically
librarians and staff promoting books to each other and classes
classes regularly visiting the library and teachers collaborating with library staff for recommendations and information about upcoming events and opportunities
teachers as readers messaging on classroom and office doors, windows and walls
staff promoting and encouraging school-wide, community, national and international reading activities or challenges
staff reading aloud to their classes and encouraging book chat
independent reading for pleasure time allocated — especially effective in secondary schools if it takes place in all classes, not just in English classes.
Teachers Creating Readers Framework and examples of practice
Ideas for library staff
The school library is at the heart of reading promotion and developing a reading culture in your school. Library staff's role in creating readers is one of the most exciting and satisfying parts of the job.
There are many ways you can promote reading in the library and throughout the school. This gives you an opportunity to collaborate with other staff and get a team together to share the tasks.
Librarian's role in creating readers
Create dynamic displays
One way to promote reading in your library is by creating dynamic displays.
They could connect to events either in the school or the wider reading world. For example:
school events — outdoor adventure stories in the weeks before camp.
wider reading world — news about books or related movies, award winners and author birthdays.
Other ideas include:
photos of readers and their recommended books, award-winning titles or top reads from the library
interactive, voting displays (for example, of favourite book, author, genre, best villain).
Check out Pinterest for creative and inspiring book display ideas.
Encouraging reading with book displays
Other ideas to promote reading
Have a contest and ask for photos of students dressed as their favourite fictional characters or reading in unusual places. Display snapshots of entries with their favourite books on screen savers, digital photo frames and the library website.
Run a library week with quizzes, scavenger hunts, contests, such as a book-holding contest or a dress as your favourite character day. Be creative and have fun.
Start a book club to bring readers together and get them talking about favourite titles.
Online opportunities
Join online reading groups or activities
Join or participate in:
a class Goodreads or Storygraph group
student writing or book review sites
connect to a virtual book club or book chats on social media.
Promote online
Bringing your promotion online is a wonderful way to reach the wider school community as well as your students. Here are some ideas.
Write a regular column in the school newsletter. Showcase new releases, ask students to write reviews and suggest family read-alouds.
Create your own newsletter. Include sections allocated to classes or syndicates to share recommendations, reading quizzes, anything that promotes a culture of reading.
Post about new books in your collections, reviews, 'What should I read next' lists and other promotional material on your school's digital channels.
Curate visual booklists using online visual tools like Pinterest or Padlet.
Books and Reads – for kids and teens — a tool to help you find and share children’s and young adult (YA) books, reviews and reading communities.
