To help encourage our students to participate, whether reluctant or strong readers, we set up a Page Turner Prize where the student who raises the most sponsorship gets a free book of their choice from our Library suppliers Browns Books for Students.

We also created Reading Prompt posters to help give students ideas as those we talked to were unsure whether there was a set limit on the amount of reads or types of reads. Although Readathon is good because it allows the reader to pick what they want to read, some students still needed some guidance. So our Prompt Posters were used to give them ideas and starting points to get involved. We created six different prompts that hopefully students could connect with at least one:

1. Reading the whole Harry Potter Series – it’s a universal favourite no matter the age range and with 7 books it’s a good challenging amount.
2. Reading as many of the Discworld series as possible – honouring the late Terry Pratchett and his amazing 41 strong series.
3. Reading your To-Read shelf or pile – most bookworms will have a pile or shelf of books waiting to be read.
4. Reading non-fiction on hobbies or interests – challenging for fiction readers
5. Reading biographies on inspirational people – introducing a new genre to readers
6. Reading Comics & Graphic Novels – discovering this visual artistic genre.

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We tweet regularly about Readathon promoting its work with children, how easy it is, using pictures of the posters for the scheme and the prompts, as well as links to the videos we found useful. One of our volunteers who is participating, Alicia, helped put up all the posters in on our display board to try and gain interest from students who pass the Library every day.

 

Rebecca Wilson, College Librarian, Huddersfield New College Library

http://huddnewcoll.ac.uk/