Exciting news: we’ve been successful in gaining a scholarship for the CBCA Shadow Judging program!
Shadow Judging is a nationwide initiative where students read the titles shortlisted for Book of the Year, discuss them, and ultimately select their own winner, mirroring the official judging process. It’s a fantastic way to build critical reading skills, deepen literary discussion, and give our students a genuine voice in evaluating contemporary Australian literature.
It was a bit nervewracking waiting to see if any kids would sign up. After all, it would be terribly embarrassing for me to have to go back to the CBCA, hat in hands, and explain that we didn’t have any interest! Luckily we have a few voracious readers who put their name down – 11 in total. It was also nerve-wracking to see how long it would take for the books to come in and be processed, but the stars aligned and we had them ready for borrowing this week; we also were fortunate to get the ebooks added to our virtual library courtesy of Wheelers ePlatform.
Next week I’ll have a meeting with the students to finalise our meetings throughout the term, and ensure that they are familiar with the judging criteria and creative response requirements. We’ve got 6 books to read before making our Book of the Year choice by August 6. I’m also planning on hosting a rewards afternoon with the participants during Book Week to thank them for their efforts in taking part in this program.
The shortlisted titles are:
Darkest Night Brightest Star by Barry Jonsberg: A moving story of friendship, grief, and resilience as two teens confront loss and search for hope.
Goldenby Jade Timms: A powerful coming-of-age novel exploring identity, ambition, and the pressures young people face in defining their futures.
Of Flame and Fury by Mikayla Bridge: A gripping fantasy filled with rebellion, secrets, and strong character dynamics set in a vividly imagined world.
This Stays Between Us by Margot McGovern: A tense and emotional story about friendship, loyalty, and the consequences of hidden truths.
We Saw What You Started by Carla Salmon: A compelling, fast-paced novel tackling justice, accountability, and the ripple effects of one pivotal moment.
Unhallowed Halls by Lili Wilkinson: A dark, atmospheric tale blending mystery and the supernatural within a haunting school setting.
This year I’ve been working with another staff member to reinvigorate our school’s Staff Book Club. In addition to the four books we’re offering as the term’s reading choices, we’ve also invited staff to read the shortlisted books alongside the students this term. When staff engage with the same texts as our students, it opens up richer conversations across classrooms and year levels, models thoughtful reading practices, and helps foster a shared reading culture within the school.
The scholarship also includes access to a 4 week professional development course, Illuminating Australian Children’s Literature, so I’m looking forward to seeing what gems I can take away from this to implement into my professional practice.
I’m incredibly fortunate to have been given this opportunity and, while I’m nervous since it’s my first time participating in the Shadow Judging program, I’m super excited to see how it helps build a culture of reading in my school community!
This week I had the opportunity to showcase the Wide Reading Program at a whole school staff meeting. It’s always nerve-wracking presenting to a group of tired staff who’d rather be using the time to complete their impending reports or mark their pile of exam papers! My first instinct was to cry a firm “hell no!” at my Head Teacher when he asked, but after a moment’s thought I realised what a huge advocacy opportunity I’d be throwing away if I did.
So, heart thumping, I accepted.
I kept it short and sweet, choosing to highlight the aims of the program and the ‘positive primer’ Book Talk I use with each class.
This simple starter activity aims to help normalise and model reading behaviours, encourage a social element to what is often perceived as an isolated activity, and build motivation through peer recommendations. It’s super easy to run, requiring only the teacher asking “what are you reading at the moment?” and prompting further discussion from student and staff responses. Some classes with fewer readers might only take 5 minutes to complete a Book Talk, but others with more students wanting to participate can take up to 15 to 20 minutes! I love seeing the variety of things the kids are interested in reading, and encourage their classroom teachers to participate in the discussion too. It’s always interesting seeing what different things people are reading!
As far as I could tell, my presentation seemed to go well. I feared that when I asked the golden question “what are you reading at the moment?” I’d be met with a room full of crickets, but luckily several staff jumped on board with the chance to share their most recent reads with the group. I didn’t want to take up a huge amount of time with this discussion so I ended it after three volunteers shared their experiences, but I reckon we could have easily spent the rest of the staff meeting talking about books if we’d had the time!
And speaking in front of my colleagues, as terrifying as it was, not only allowed me to increase the visibility of the work I do to support our students’ developing literacy skills and reader identities, but let me showcase my professionalism and the research behind my work. The rewards were immediate: straight after my presentation, the Deputy of Inclusion and Support emailed me to request that the Support Unit classes are involved in the program next year. From humble beginnings supporting only two classes in 2022 and three classes in 2023, the Wide Reading Program will soon benefit all eleven Stage 4 classes as well as the seven (or more) Support Unit classes.
Methinks 2026 is going to be a very busy year in the library!
The end of Term 3 is always a hectic time, with assessments, exams, reports, year 12 graduation, and other end of term extra-curricular happenings, so it’s no surprise that my post for our 2025 Book Week celebrations has been sitting in my drafts for over a month!
This year was only my second year running Book Week activities and, similar to last year, I ran a couple of competitions aiming to boost the visibility of reading for fun alongside some activities in my Wide Reading Program. The 2025 theme was Book an Adventure, which provided a lot of fodder for creativity amongst my students and colleagues!
Wide Reading Program
Last year I did a word cloud activity, but this year I planned ahead and bought a couple of book packs for the CBCA’s shortlisted titles in the Picture Books and Older Readers categories. Using these books, I was able to send my students on a Blind Date with a Book.
This activity was supported by the PowerPoint above along with the worksheet below to help students organise their thoughts about each book. Students rotated through a few books in the course of the lesson and at the end we discussed what they thought about each text and which were their favourites. Our Book Week was held a week after the official event, so the winners for each category had already been announced. I therefore asked each class which book they thought was the winner in each category; interestingly, while a few successfully identified The Truck Cat as the winner for the Picture Book category, no class picked the winner from the Older Readers books!
Overall, I feel like this was a fairly successful activity, though it did require a few tweaks to work for different classes. A number of the Older Readers books ended up being borrowed and having a few reservations placed for them, indicating that there was a bit of interest in these titles from our students.
Door Decorating Competition
Our most visible Book Week activity is our Door Decorating Competition. Last year our Office Staff had a controversial win, and this year the competition was intense between a number of different faculties who were intent on taking on the top honours.
Our Office Staff this year did a fully interactive, multi-day spectacular where they dressed as flight attendants and made in-flight announcements at the start of each period. The English staff were inspired by The Wizard of Oz and decorated every door in their block to take students on an adventure through the story. However, the HSIE faculty were the winners at the end of the day with their immersive Jurassic Park experience, complete with printed book chapters, dino-paws, music and lollies for our student judges. They even let the dinosaurs loose on the playground! Such chaos!
Cosplay Competition
Without a doubt, the highlight of our Book Week celebrations for the students is our Cosplay Competition. I was once again able to organise it as a mufti day, with all funds raised going towards the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. This year our winning cosplayers were a group of mischief-making Gryffindors whose magical performance involved a floating feather and wowed the crowd.
It was wonderful throughout the week to see such enthusiastic discussion around books and reading. Our various activities also give me an opportunity to showcase the library’s value to our school community. Book Week tends to be viewed as a more primary activity, but I highly recommend High School TLs give it a go too! There’s so much potential value that it can add to our work and gives our students and colleagues a chance to celebrate the wonder of picking up a book.
Recently several researchers from Australia Reads released their Understanding Australian Readersreport. This report aimed to identify what influences when and how people read, to map out thier reading journey and to uncover drivers and barriers for these reading behaviours across different demographics. While it focused on people aged 16 and over rather than children or teenagers, this was invaluable research which provided some key insights that can apply to my own work in a high school setting.
The researchers also launched the report with an accompanying webinar:
I really liked how the report broke down the different behaviours that make up a reading journey, and how these behaviours aren’t necessarily linear. The report also notes that different groups will exhibit different behaviours in each of these steps of the reading journey and face different barriers; therefore, there’s no one size fits all approach to increasingly Australia’s lagging recreational reading rates.
The report also explores the different types of readers, presenting these identities on a spectrum that includes both readers and non-readers. It was interesting to see that reader identity isn’t fixed and that people move between these different stages at different points in their lives. For instance, I would have once identified as an Avid Reader (I was the kind of kid who used to take books with me everywhere!) but now, due to time constraints and work overload, I’d probably fit the Lapsed or Aspirational Reader categories.
Interestingly, the report also notes that readers on each extreme of this spectrum are less likely to change their reading behaviours and are therefore less effective targets for behavioural interventions. This is a key insight for me as a teacher-librarian, as it helps me understand where my energy is best directed in my lessons. The report concludes that Aspirational Readers are the most impactful group to target, followed by Engaged, Ambivalent, and Lapsed readers.
The report has a number of other crucial implications for my work as a teacher-librarian. Firstly, the fact that Uninterested Non-Readers don’t remember a single positive reading experience emphasises the importance of having qualified, well-supported teacher-librarians in schools who can support these formative reading identities in a positive way. Secondly, the report highlights the need to validate everyone’s reading experiences and identities, and the need to avoid judgements around different reading behaviours.
The webinar also gave three quick takeaways to help us moving forward:
Focus on the behaviour we want to see, not the behaviour we don’t want – sell the benefits of the product rather than the product itself.
Social norms are powerful but we need to make sure that our messages are coming from sources of authority that our audience finds relevent, valuable, and trustworthy.
Reduce choice overload to make it easier to connect people with relevent reading materials.
Based on the interventions recommended in the report, I’ve created a table of possible strategies to incorporate into my Wide Reading Program linked to the various stages of the reading journey. This year I’ve chosen 3-4 students from each class to focus on helping them achieve their self-nominated reading goal. These interventions will hopefully provide me something tangible to action in our lessons, and will help me shape my ongoing reworking on my Wide Reading Program scope and sequence.
Intervention Type
Finding Books
Choosing Books
Starting to Read
Continuing to Read
Education: Provide information to increase knowledge of understanding about a behaviour or issue
Encourage engagement with social media or other book related content Target browsing shelves as a worthwhile activity
Highlight value of graphic novels, short stories, novellas, middle grade and picture books
Have influencers or relatable individuals promote the benefits of reading in short, engaging video clips or interviews Emphasise that reading can be a social activity, not just isolating Emphasise reading is a restorative activity, not another chore
Highlight that reading habits evolve over time Model reading habits Reframe what it means to be a ‘good’ reader Emphasise that reading confidence emerges from personal engagement and enjoyment, not proficiency
Training: Develop skills required for people to perform a behaviour effectively
Provide training on how to find books
Create tutorial videos or provide live demonstrations showing how to select books Provide explicit training on how to select books
Use apps to block device notifications
Create tutorial videos or provide live demonstrations showing how to incorporate reading into your daily routine
Persuasion: Use communication to induce positive feelings and change peoples’ attitudes or beliefs
Connect reading to other activities and content they enjoy Reframe away from the act of reading to engagement with other enjoyable content e.g. becoming a better footy player
Remind students about the enjoyment and benefits of reading Reinforce message that there’s a book for every mood, and that any mood is a reading mood
Reinforce it’s ok to put down a book that isn’t meeting expectations Reframe that it’s ok to skip parts or not finish books
Incentivisation: Offer rewards or benefits to motivate people to engage in a desired behaviour
Encourage people to log and track their reading habits via apps, providing occasional rewards for continued progress
Modelling: Demonstrate or provide examples of desired behaviours for others to observe and imitate
Show role models or peers who can demonstrate that spending a little time finding books can lead to greater reading enjoyment
Connect readers with trusted reviews Use peer-driven content and reviews
Share stories of relatable readers who have made time for reading Show people they admire who enjoy reading
Enablement: Remove barriers and provide support to help people adopt new behaviours
Promote audiobooks, quick reads, visual texts Encourage people to use platforms like Goodreads to see what’s popular, get personalised recommendations Encourage expansion of preferences to include digital and audio to increase accessibility
Use curated book lists to reduce effort in choosing books Provide personalised recommendations Encourage use of platforms that give one-click recommendations based on past reading preferences
Encourage placing phones on silent, in other rooms Pair individuals with reading buddies
Set reading goals If-then implementation intentions Create personalised reading schedules
Environmental restructuring: Change the physical or social environment to make desired behaviours more likely
Keeping books in visible spots Connect readers with relevant books Use AI reader advisory Genrefy the collection
Read sample chapters or summaries
Setting phone reminders to and timers to read Encourage readers to keep a book in their bag to read on public transport, in doctor’s surgeries etc. Encourage book clubs and reading groups to enhance social accountability
As any teacher can tell you, teenagers are inherently social beings. They’ll also tell you that, for so many reasons, for the most part teens also don’t want to read for pleasure.
Last year I attended ALIA’s online webinar Fostering A Passion For Reading, and Karen Eyre’s brilliant session focused on how reading needs to be more social to overcome the reasons behind adolescent aliteracy. She discussed her ‘read with a mate’ program, where she often pairs students with their friends so they can take turns reading to one another.
This week I decided to adapt her activity and tested out my newly formed ‘buddy reads’ activity. I changed the activity slightly, so that instead of working in pairs students on novels could work in larger groups with picture books. They could either take it in turns to read to one another or designate one ‘teacher’ who would read to the rest. By doing this I was hoping to hook some of our more social and performative students while tapping into their nostalgia for being read to as children in their primary classes.
I had some doubts about how focused the groups would be, but to my surprise and delight they did a fantastic job of staying on task and really engaged with their reading! Many of the usually disengaged boys combined into one big group, which initially drew my attention and concern, but I needn’t have worried. Two boys took it in turns to read to the others and did wonderful work displaying prosody and discussing the visual elements of the books. Their listeners were rapt, and another less condfident boy even picked up a book and wanted to have a go reading to the others because he saw it modeled by his mates!
Some of our more shy students elected to read independently, but for the students who chose to engage with the buddy reads activity I found it a remarkable testament to the power of social reading. The feedback from the class was positive, with an overwhelming majority wanting to do something similar again in future. I think in future lessons I’ll gradually increase the length and complexity of the text types, and gradually reduce the number of people in the groups to allow for deeper examination of their reading materials.
Added bonus: it gives me a chance to advocate for our library on social media!
A few weeks ago I held a belated Book Week in my high school. It was my first time running a week-long celebration of reading and I’m pleased to report that it was a huge success!
I had a variety of activities planned throughout the week, but the two big highlights were the Door Decorating Competition and the Staff vs Students Cosplay Competition. Our faculties went all out to decorate their doors with their favourite books and it was a great way to spark conversations with our students about reading. I took a team of student volunteers with me to judge the winners based on three criteria: 1) creativity; 2) adherence to the theme ‘Reading is Magic’; and 3) overall visual impact. The level of detail on some of these doors was astounding!
However, my student judges ultimately decided that the winners were our lovely office staff, who may have got the win by bribing them with fairy bread to match their ‘Fairy Magic’ display. They also wrote a fantastic poem to go along with it, and their display was a delightfuly prominent representation of our school’s positive reading culture for all students and caregivers to see. Sadly, my photography skills don’t do it justice!
I was a bit nervous running the Staff vs Students Cosplay Competition and didn’t really know what to expect. I started a conversation on one of our professional networks to see if anyone had done something similar and got some excellent advice from my colleagues, especially around the logistics of timing, prizes, and associated paperwork. The Head Teacher of the PDHPE faculty, who normally runs a mufti fundraiser for our local AECG, allowed me to piggyback off her event so that all students could dress up in either regular mufti or as a character from their favourite book. This worked brilliantly, as it allowed kids not interested in participating in the competition to still dress up while giving some of our more shy students a chance to dress up without standing out too much. It also removed the logistical difficulty of getting students to change into their costumes at the start of lunch.
I definitely underestimated how keen our school community was to dress up. I was expecting only a few students and staff to participate in the competition, but boy was I wrong! I initially printed only 15 permission notes thinking I’d have plenty of spares but quickly had to print more. In the we had 34 competitors with plenty more dressed up just for fun. I gave staff and students an opportunity to have a photo taken in the library during our first break and had a line up almost the entire length of the library! I was surprised that some of our more disruptive, reticent readers got in on the fun, which goes to show that we never can judge a book by its cover. Even our school executive got in on the fun! At lunch we held the actual competition and we only just made it through everyone in the half-hour break.
Overall I feel like this was such a wonderful experience for our school community. It took a lot of planning and paperwork on my end but it was so much fun and definitely worth the effort. I’ve learned some important lessons and will make some adjustments next year to hopefully help things run more smoothly. The feedback from both staff and students was overwhelmingly positive, and having the visuals through the costumes and door decorations was a fantastic way to promote reading for pleasure. It allowed me to showcase the library as a crucial part of the school community, promote its resources, and to advocate for my work and its continuing importance in a fun way. Most importantly, it was a great opportunity for students to connect with each other in a way that they might not otherwise been able, and it gave some of our shy students a chance to develop a bit more confidence in a safe way. For anyone trying to build a whole-school culture of reading in their own community, I’d highly recommend running similar events!
Our Book Week was delayed this year due to my extended absences and a prior calendar booking for NAIDOC Week activities in Week 5. But the time has finally come for me to run my first ever Book Week, and I’ve put together a variety of different activities to build a culture of reading and encourage my students to engage with the library and literature within our walls.
In addition to the activities open to students, I’m running a Faculty Door Decorating Competition to help increase the visibility of our reading habits across the school and hopefully spark some positive conversations with our students about their own reading identities. A number of staff members have shown interest in this as well as the Cosplay competition, with one colleague commenting that “it’s not often us high school teachers get to have fun with Book Week!” It just goes to show that despite the chaos and lack of time facing teachers, sometimes they’ll jump at the chance to do something fun which builds community spirit – we just have to give them a chance, build positive relationships with our colleagues, and not be scared to put ourselves out there. I can’t wait to see what they produce and am so incredibly grateful for their support!
As part of my Wide Reading Program, I give students in years 7 and 8 the time to read whatever they want in the library space, free from judgement. As many high school teachers and academic researchers can attest, reading for pleasure falls away in adolescence and by this point teens either see themselves as readers or (increasingly it feels) as non-readers.
Research from Open University’s Reading for Pleasure program shows that a significant barrier to teens forming a positive reading identity is a lack of positive reading experience, whether due to lack of skill, confidence, or enjoyment. So many of my students (particularly the boys) complain that they hate reading, and their experiences up to this point have reinforced that reading isn’t for them because the texts they’ve been given have been boring, too difficult, or they find no reason to focus for long enough to get into it.
This is where I’ve found magazines to be a game changer. The content is usually short, includes visuals to support the written text, caters to a variety of literacy levels, and can be found on a variety of engaging topics that are of genuine interest to my students. Each year I ask students for recommendations on what titles they’d like me to purchase for them, which I’ve found is a powerful way to get students to feel connected to the library and to take ownership of the resources. The most frequent requests are always for car and sports magazines, and loans data from the past 12 months supports my observations about their popularity. As you can see from the chart below, a whopping 68.4% of all magazine borrowed in the past year catered to this interest:
During my Wide Reading lessons so far this year I’ve witnessed whole groups of boys sitting together, reading the articles and discussing what they’re reading. During our Book Talks at the end of these reading sessions, most of the boys will also willingly share information about the articles they’ve read with the whole class, supporting the academic researchers’ claims that social reading can be a powerful motivator in getting reluctant readers on board. My students love it when a new magazine comes in since they often contain new posters, and they race to ask me if they can be the one to take the poster home. Even better, sometimes these reluctant readers even turn into borrowers!
The magazines they read during our lessons might not be counted in my quantifiable loans data which I present to my senior executive staff in my Annual Reports, but they represent something far more valuable – an opportunity for every child to find the joy in reading and to see themselves as a reader.
Reference List:
Open University Reading for Pleasure & World Book Day. Overcoming barriers to RfP – Ep 4: ‘Readers don’t always find it easy to concentrate …’. OURfP &WBD [YouTube]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kquvtflx4U
One of the difficulties I’ve found in transitioning from a classroom teacher to the teacher-librarian role is the lack of clarity around our role and what we actually teach. As an English and History teacher I always had a syllabus with specific outcomes to guide my teaching programs, and moving into the TL role felt a little bit like I was lost at sea without a map. While the Information Fluency Framework released recently by the NSW Department of Education provides some structure to our role as information specialists, there isn’t a similar local guideline for our roles promoting reading for pleasure.
To help guide my programming for the Wide Reading Program I’ve been trialling over the past few years, I created a mission statement and a series of inquiry questions. These are still very much in the draft stage but have been useful in directing my teaching and learning activities and helping me focus on specific aspects of developing a positive pleasure reading experience for my students. Ideally each term would focus on a separate concept with a different guiding question each fortnight but, due to the number of interruptions we experience each year, this has yet to be the case.
Mission Statement
This program aims to create a school-wide culture of pleasure reading. Reading for pleasure has repeatedly been shown to improve student literacies and socio-emotional development. Student reading drops off during adolescence for a number of reasons, including lack of access to quality texts, lack of positive reading role-models, lack of time, and lack of confidence in their reading ability. This program aims to address these issues by providing students access to appropriate, self-selected texts and by setting aside a 60 minute period each fortnight to allow students time to explore, share, and value their reading in a socially supported positive learning environment. Through this program we aim to create independent, lifelong readers who are set up for personal and academic success.
Guiding Concepts and Questions
Term 1 Focus Concept: Introduction to the Library and Reading Behaviours
How can the library help you achieve your personal best?
Why do we read? What are the benefits?
Who counts as a reader?
What behaviours count as reading?
What positive and negative experiences have we had as readers?
Term 2 Focus Concept: Reader Identity
What sort of reader am I?
What rights do I have as a reader?
What barriers prevent us from reading for pleasure?
How can we overcome these barriers?
How can reading shape our sense of self?
Term 3 Focus Concept: Social Reading and Building a Reading Community
How do we find the right book?
How does social media influence what we read?
How can reading be a social activity?
What benefits can reading have on our sense of connection with others?
How can we share our reading experiences with others?
Term 4 Focus Concept: Building Reading Stamina and Motivation
How can we get the most out of our reading experiences?
How can we build our stamina as readers?
What motivates us to read and keep reading?
How we achieve our personal best through reading?
Over the coming weeks I’ll try to post some activities that have worked for my classes, so stay tuned for more detail about how these guiding questions translate to actual teaching and learning activities!
Artificial Intelligence is an amazing, yet terrifying new technology that has the potential to be used for both good and evil in schools. As information specialists, Teacher-Librarians should be leaders in the space surrounding emerging technologies and how they can impact both teaching and learning – a difficult task considering that AI is evolving faster than a Pikachu with a Thunder Stone!
This year I’ve been doing a lot of research into reading for pleasure and investigating the best ways to build a reading culture in my school. As a result, I’ve got some pretty lengthy notes on the topic and it’s getting to the point where it’s all a bit overwhelming and I’m getting lost in the sheer amount of information I’ve gathered.
Enter ChatGPT. Despite it’s potential to cause harm in education, it also has great potential as a tool to maximise our efficiency. I decided to test out its capacity to summarise my notes so far and see whether it could help me make a bit more sense of the mountains of information I’ve gathered.
First Summary:
The research discusses various episodes related to overcoming barriers to reading for pleasure (RfP) as part of the Open University Reading for Pleasure (OURfP) initiative. Here are the key points summarized:
Peer Role Models: Recognize the importance of peer role models in promoting reading for pleasure, especially if students lack role models at home.
Different Reading Behaviors Count: Understand that all reading behaviors are valuable and that there’s a benefit in children seeing diverse reading role models beyond typical fiction lovers.
Creating Communities of Readers: Shared experiences of reading the same books can create powerful communities of readers.
Personalized Recommendations: Know the books students are reading, recommend similar books, relate to their reading experiences, and know the characters they love.
Normalizing Reading Choices: Avoid denigrating students’ reading choices; share the idea of readers’ rights to validate all reading behaviors.
Social Approach to Reading: Foster a culture of safety and non-judgmental reading choices through book talks, reading modeling, and promotion of different interests. Encourage student-led recommendations and involve parents in discussions and modeling.
Factors Affecting Pleasure Reading: Understand the various barriers to pleasure reading, including lack of access to books, time, will, skills, and peer pressure. Address these barriers by increasing access to books, engaging in reading aloud activities, involving parents, and promoting authentic reading experiences.
Synergies in Promoting Reading for Pleasure: These include constructing literate identities, intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy, text access, time and space, social interaction, and role modeling and connected communities.
Overall, the research emphasizes the importance of creating a supportive and inclusive reading environment, promoting diverse reading choices, and fostering positive reader identities among children and young people.
Second Summary
The ALIA Webinar: “Fostering a Passion for Reading” highlights strategies to promote reading culture and engagement, leveraging social media and community involvement. Key points include:
Using Social Media: Social media platforms like Instagram can be powerful tools to connect with the community, promote reading, and engage learners. Schools can use existing popular templates but tailor them to focus on reading. Personal appearances and trending formats can enhance engagement.
Collection Development: Understanding the community’s interests and needs is crucial for effective collection development. This involves community connection, consultation, and gap analysis to ensure a diverse and engaging collection. Weeding, sourcing from trusted suppliers, and regular acquisitions are essential steps in this process.
Programming to Improve Reading Culture: Various programming, including reading lessons, book talks, read-alouds, and themed activities, can help foster a social reading culture. Offering a variety of activities, such as readers’ cups, staff book clubs, and themed weeks, can cater to diverse interests and preferences.
Engaging Reluctant Readers: Strategies to engage reluctant readers include creating a supportive environment through social activities, targeted individual interviews to understand barriers to reading, and promoting a growth mindset towards reading. Programs like “Read with a Mate” aim to encourage social reading and provide personalized recommendations based on individual preferences.
Overall, the webinar emphasizes the importance of leveraging social media, understanding community needs, and implementing diverse programming to foster a passion for reading among students.
Third Summary
The series “Building a School Reading Culture” by Madison Dearnaley explores various aspects of cultivating a reading culture within educational institutions. Here are the key points from each part:
Part 1: Assessing Reading Culture
Identifying a school’s reading culture involves observing factors such as library usage, collection layout, time allocated for reading, conversations about reading, and events like Book Week.
Dr. Kay Oddone suggests strategically assessing and enacting organizational culture change to foster a reading culture.
Part 2: Understanding Organizational Culture
Organizational culture influences how an institution operates and its members’ behavior.
Developing a reading culture involves leadership, shared values, and aligning behavior with the desired culture.
Part 3: Strategies for Culture Change
Culture change requires time and understanding behavioral drivers.
A five-point strategy involves matching change strategies with existing culture, focusing on small behavioral shifts, honoring strengths, integrating formal and informal interventions, and measuring and monitoring progress.
Part 4: Defining Reading Culture
A reading culture reflects how members of a school community value and engage with reading.
It involves embedding reading across all aspects of school life and promoting reading for pleasure, intrinsic motivation, and autonomy.
Strong leadership, a shared vision, and commitment to supporting the library are essential for building a reading culture.
Part 5: Measuring Reading Culture
Measurement methods include surveys, data analysis, and review of strategic plans and policies.
Key indicators of a strong reading culture include availability, opportunity, encouragement, intrinsic motivation, engagement, and choice.
Part 6: Identifying Reading Culture Characteristics
Characteristics of a strong reading culture include providing opportunities for reading, promoting and supporting reading, fostering intrinsic motivation and engagement, and offering choice and autonomy.
Measurement involves assessing resources, time allocation, visibility, staff involvement, reader motivation, engagement, and reader-driven collection development.
Part 7: Integrating Reading with School Values
Integrating reading with school values such as creativity, global citizenship, entrepreneurship, and well-being can garner support for building a reading culture.
Demonstrating the role of reading in achieving broader school goals can help prioritize reading initiatives and gain leadership support.
Each part emphasizes the importance of leadership, shared vision, community engagement, and strategic planning in cultivating a reading culture that supports student achievement and well-being.
Fourth Summary
The article “Getting Students Reading Through Social Media” by Overdrive, Nahomy Ortiz-Garcia, Melanie Wood, KC Boyd, and Amanda Hunt highlights effective strategies for using social media to engage students, staff, and parents in promoting reading. Here are the key points:
Identify Audience and Encourage Interaction:
Tailor content to engage with the audience by asking questions and encouraging interaction.
Incorporate bite-sized content and involve students in posts to showcase their reading experiences.
Celebrate Reading Milestones:
Foster a culture of reading by celebrating reading achievements and milestones.
Provide content with educational value and share additional reading resources and learning opportunities.
Strategic Content Posting:
Avoid overwhelming the audience by spacing out content and posting at optimal times when the audience is likely to be online and receptive.
Content Ideas:
Share school events, curriculum connections, holidays, student interests, and feature authors/illustrators.
Make posts interactive and visually appealing to maintain engagement.
Utilize Various Social Media Platforms:
Use different social media platforms based on community engagement.
Tell a unique story about your library reading program and keep posts concise.
Promotional Strategies:
Inform, define, and promote the reading program to parents, colleagues, and policymakers.
Use memes, newsletters, usage tutorials, and QR codes/flyers at school events to promote library programs.
Encourage Reading Through Curated Content:
Create themed and curated book lists and understand feeder elementary school programming to tailor content accordingly.
Engage in community programs and interactive scavenger hunts associated with prizes.
Personal Connection and Visual Appeal:
Show your face to build a connection with students, especially if you don’t see them daily.
Use fun filters, visuals, and short videos to create exciting and relatable content.
Consistent Content Creation:
Set reminders for regular content creation and schedule it into your workday.
Experiment with different social media platforms and content formats to find what works best for your audience.
Useful Tools and Apps:
Explore apps like CAPCUT for video editing and incorporate features like short video recommendations, trending book lists, author highlights, and new releases to keep the content fresh and engaging.
Implementing these strategies can effectively leverage social media to promote reading and foster a positive reading culture within the school community.
Overall Reflections on ChatGPT as a Research Summary Tool
As you can see, it’s done a fairly decent job of summarising the key points of my research. While ChatGPT does have great potential to save teachers time in this area, there are nonetheless a few limitations I’ve noticed:
It can’t directly access or view specific webpages or documents. We therefore can’t simply enter a URL and tell it to summarise the key points of a webpage or pdf.
It misidentified my notes as an article. There were other minor errors or parts where the AI failed to identify what I would have argued was the actual key point.
It has a word limit for your input, which meant that I had to break my research up into chunks which resulted in the four separate summaries above.
I tried to have it amalgamate these four separate summaries but it failed to synthesise the information effectively and instead created a bastardised, repetitive description rather than anything that would be of real use e.g. “Peer Role Models: Importance of peer influence in encouraging RfP.” I therefore didn’t post it here.
The input function doesn’t appear to allow for easy formatting of paragraphs. It also didn’t reflect my bullet point hierarchy and therefore my notes were all lumped together.
This is only a minor issue, but it took my Australian English spelling and spat it back out as US English e.g. ‘recognise’ became ‘recognize’. This hurt a little.
I was using the free ChatGPT version 3.5. Functionality is quite possibly improved in the upgraded GPT-4. For funsies, I also copied the summaries written by ChatGPT and asked it whether it wrote it to see whether it would potentially pick up on any plagiarism; it correctly identified this content as generated by ChatGPT: “‘Yes, I wrote the summaries you provided in your earlier message.” I’m not sure how effective it would be at picking up content generated by other AI tools, however; this might be an experiment for another day.
Overall, while it certainly saved time summarising my research, this would not be an effective way to create summary notes without having first done the initial note-taking process. We therefore need to caution our students not to rely solely on AI but to still use the old noggin to create their notes first, and always read through to fact check any content generated by these wondrous, alarming, and soon to be ubiqituous tech gremlins.
While I’m on school holidays and have a little more time, I thought it would be a good opportunity to watch the videos currently available in the Open University Reading for Pleasure and World Book Day webinar series, Overcoming Barriers to Reading for Pleasure.
The first video, ‘Readers Don’t Always See Genuine Role Models‘, featured some interesting discussion about the importance of being positive reading role models for our students, especially if they’re not seeing these role models elsewhere in their lives. One excellent point they raised was that there’s a difference between encouraging students to read and modelling reading. I think most teachers would do the former quite well, but due to time constraints and high workloads the second probably isn’t as common as it should be. They also referenced research from 2009 which suggests that for most younger children, their reading role models are their parents, but after year 6 this changes to peers and teachers holding this key place for our students. Its therefore vitally important that we offer ourselves as potential reading role models for our high school students, to show that that all reading behaviours count and to help them understand that reading is everywhere and they, too, can count as members of the diverse reading community.
The second video, ‘Overcoming Barriers to RfP’, drew more heavily on current research and professional practice in its lengthier discussion. They explored the 6 key aspects of reading for pleasure, as supported by the evidence provided on the World Book Day website:
Being read to regularly
Having books at home and school
Finding time to read
Having trusted help to find a book
Giving children a choice in what to read
Making reading fun
One key element they discussed as having an important role in overcoming barriers to our students’ reading for pleasure was to identify and discuss the barriers to our own pleasure reading. Discussing these barriers as well as the physical and mental spaces that help or hinder our reading can help normalise and destigmatise some of the feelings and behaviours our students experience, such as feeling they don’t have the time to read, like they’re too distracted to get into a book, or that they simply aren’t enjoying a book and want to put it aside.
Some of the specific barriers to reading explored in this webinar include:
lack of access to appropriate, interesting books
lack of time to read
lack of will (especially due to competing interests and activities)
lack of skill
peer pressure around what does and doesn’t count as reading
distraction
tiredness
Teresa Cremin provided a summary of her research, arguing that there are four main factors affecting reading for pleasure:
Intrinsic motivation
Cremin revealed that the research repeatedly shows that intrinsic motivation is far more important than extrinsic (external, reward based) or social motivations when it comes to getting students reading. She said that students with intrinsic motivation read because they care about the subject, relate to the characters, and want to know what happens next. She notes that extrinsic motivation, however, dominates in professional practice where we see reading challenges and certificates promoting reading for others, rather than reading for ourselves.
Choice and agency
Cremin referenced data which suggests that only 14% of students chose a text based on a teacher’s recommendations. This highlights the importance of student choice in their reading material, and we therefore need to deveop their ability to browse and select appropriate, interesting texts and to support their choices without judgement.
Informal book talks
This socially motivates readers, which in turn can develop intrinsic motivation to read and allows students to see themselves as part of a wider community of readers. Cremin noted that talking about fiction is almost as important as reading it in the first place, and that “low key, relaxed blether” about books can allow us to reframe reading as a fun social endeavour which links students to the collective, communal reading journey.
Role models
Cremin and the other presenters all emphasised that building relationships with our students is crucial to developing reading for pleasure as a habit amongst our students, and that we need to know our students and their interests in order to champion their emerging reader identities.
Overall, there was a lot of useful information in these two videos, and a number of suggestions to help us incorporate evidence-based strategies into our practice. The good news is that a lot of what I’m doing with the Wide Reading Program lessons is on the right track. Some of the new strategies I noted as possibly being suitable for my context include:
Modelling reading and giving students a break while they develop their stamina by having the teacher read aloud from a novel’s right hand page (usually the first page of a chapter) with students reading from the left hand page. I thought that I could also incorporate ICT with this strategy by using the library’s document camera to project the pages to the class.
Having a discussion around the types of barriers both students and staff experience with their own reading.
Reading blanket: lay out a selection of books on a blanket and use them as a prompt for an informal book talk and student selection of materials. Another activity that could emerge from this is that students could vote on which books they’d prefer to read, followed by a discussion about why.
Students could select a number of books they feel should be highlighted through our library’s dynamic shelving. This could help them to feel a sense of ownership within the space while showing them that staff honour and support their reading choices.
Students choose a book for staff to read aloud to the class. Due to the fact that classroom teachers support me in these lessons, we could even split the class to ensure more students are satisfied with their grouping’s choice.
Engage parents in pleasure reading and as reading role models through a parents book club, breakfasts, parent teacher night discussions, by giving recommendations and allowing parents to borrow books (one presenter said that The Midnight Library never fails her in this regard!)
This is just the tip of the iceberg regarding the research and strategies offered by the Open University’s Reading for Pleasure program. Their website features a plethora of different resources to help educators like myself develop strong pleasure reading programs in our own schools, and as I move forward with my colleagues to create a school-wide culture of reading for pleasure in our own context I have no doubt I’ll be referring to their work quite frequently!
Term 1 for 2024 has wrapped up, so it’s a good time to pause and reflect on my practice so far this year.
Supporting Teaching and Learning
Supporting teaching and learning across the school is a vital aspect of the teacher-librarian’s role and helps us showcase our value to our colleagues. During Term 1 I was able to display this in four key ways: first, through supporting the NAPLAN testing running in the library; second, through supporting the ongoing programming, implementation, and resourcing of the new 7-10 English syllabus; third, through the provision of one-on-one senior mentoring and assessment assistance; and fourth, through the expansion of the Teacher Reference collection.
However, reflecting on my practice in this area reveals that there’s more I could be doing to support teaching and learning across other curriculum areas, especially if I wish to raise the library’s profile amongst the teaching staff. I have recently conducted a significant weeding of our non-fiction resources, so could restock this collection with more relevant, updated texts to support current teaching units across the school. At the moment my information literacy and research skill lessons are one-off bookings, so I could also approach different faculties to embed these skills into their assessment tasks, or create pathfinders to support staff as they guide students through the research process.
I’ve previously put out surveys to my colleagues asking for feedback on what they teach and what resources they’d like to see from me, as well as asked staff to send me their assessment notifications so I can support their faculties with informative displays and assessment help. However, staff responses are always limited, revealing that when teachers are under the pump and feeling the pressure of heavy workloads they’re unlikely to prioritise such surveys even if they see their value. It therefore might be more effective to visit different staffrooms in person, either by attending different faculty meetings or by booking in time with each Head Teacher to see how best I can support the teaching and learning in their specific curriculum areas. I could also use this time to promote our Teacher Reference section, which isn’t getting much love from our time-poor staff.
Action moving forward: Speak with Head Teachers in person to determine how I can support teaching and learning in their faculties.
Developing a Whole-School Reading Culture
As I’ve discussed previously, some of my colleagues and I are in the early stages of planning a new whole-school reading culture initiative. We’ve made some small progress in this space over the last term and have begun putting together a strategic proposal (inspired by the work I completed during my degree) which we plan to eventually present to the Senior Executives at our school. One of the teachers has also taken the initiative to create a ‘Current Reads’ poster for the English staffroom windows which has already launched several conversations with students about reading for pleasure.
Action moving forward: Collaboratively develop the reading culture initiativeproposal.
On my end, I’ve been working on developing a culture of pleasure reading in a number of different ways. This term I’ve been working on developing the Wide Reading Program for years 7 and 8, with all classes bar one participating. As always seems to be the case, these lessons experienced significant interruptions in Term 1, with 51% of lessons needing to be cancelled because of other programs using the library space, staff illness, public holidays, and other whole-school events. As a result, four of the ten participating classes have less than 50% program attendance, with two of those classes having had only one lesson to access the library and its resources.
To ameliorate the impacts of my absences when I was sick, I supported the classroom teachers in running the program themselves by providing the lesson materials. However, staff feedback suggests that the program runs best when I’m at the helm, reinforcing the value of a trained teacher-librarian’s expertise and skill in spreading a passion for reading!
Student feedback so far this term has also been positive. I’ve placed a significant emphasis on trying to build excitement around reading and on highlighting different reading behaviours in an attempt to get students to self-identify as readers. As such, we’ve played a variety of games such as Never Have I Ever and an adapted mad-libs game inspired by Cards Against Humanity which I’m calling Books Against Humanity. In this game students must obtain a variety of quotes from the book they’re reading and in small teams choose the best quote to complete the prompt I give them. There were a lot of laughs at this one, and it was great to see even reluctant readers engage with the task!
In large part due to the Wide Reading Program, our loans stats are strong so far this term. While this is not a hard and fast indication of reading culture, it does give some indication regarding the number of books ending up in student (and staff) hands. During Term 1 we loaned out 1140 resources from our physical and digital collections, surpassing the total loans for some previous years in their entirety. However, this is compared to the 1250 resources we loaned during the same time last year; the down-turn is due in part to falling student enrolments, the number of interruptions leading to the library’s closure, as well as a decrease in digital loans from our virtual library. Another pertinent fact emerging from this data is the increasing popularity of our magazines, with 31 loaned this term compared to only 2 in the same time last year.
Another way I’m trying to build a reading culture is by celebrating reading achievements in our school. I’m updating our Readerboard every month to show the students with the highest number of loans, and giving these students both merit certificates and house points in their roll calls to visibly highlight their achievement and show that we value reading. I’m also in the early stages of planning a celebratory afternoon for the students who finished the Premier’s Reading Challenge last year – they’ve chosen a movie afternoon as their reward, so hopefully other students will see their reward and want to get in on the action too! Another way I can increase participation is by embedding the challenge into the Wide Reading Program through read-alouds, book talks and activities such as the CBCA Shadow Judging.
Action moving forward: Embed PRC resources into the Wide Reading Programand continue developing activities to develop enthusiasm around reading.
Fostering Positive Wellbeing
Our school’s strategic plan has a strong focus on wellbeing; this is therefore an area where I can support the school community while advocating for the value of the library. I recently bought some of Margaret Merga’s books on this topic and intend to add them to our Teacher Reference collection, and can’t wait to read them to gain some more ideas on how to be active in this space.
So far this year, I’ve continued to support social-emotional learning through the provision of social clubs during the breaks. I’ve encouraged students to form their own clubs with my support, and as a result we’ve now added a Trading Card Game Day and Origami Club into our schedule, alongside our regular offerings of the Nintendo Switch Club and Dungeons and Dragons. While the Nerdvana Day didn’t get off the ground this term due to time constraints, this has previously been a great success with students and I will endeavour to make it a priority in Term 2. I have also discussed the possibility of a Year 12 Reading Retreat during their Trial exams to help them relax during this otherwise stressful period.
Action moving forward: Organise the Nerdvana Day and Year 12 Reading Retreat in Term 2.
These clubs and activities have had a significant impact on our daily visitor numbers, with an average 138 students visiting each break. Our biggest day was a whopping 334 students! While these increased visitor numbers contribute to a lot of noise and chaos in the library, they also represent an opportunity for students to be exposed to the reading culture I’m attempting to build, with several students who wouldn’t normally identify as readers borrowing books that they wouldn’t have come into contact with had they not been in the library space. However, the data suggests that our daily visitors and loans were trending down towards the end of term; this is no doubt due to the number of interruptions affecting the library’s ability to open in those later weeks, such as the fact that I’m not replaced when I’m absent. Ensuring continued access to the space is therefore an area for improvement in future.
Action moving forward: Advocate for the library space to be covered like any other playground duty in my absence.
Our Library Monitor program is also expanding, with several students approaching me throughout the term asking if they can join the program. Early in Term 2 I will incorporate these new students into the program and develop their skills as junior librarians in training. Their assistance is vital in helping maintain the library collections, especially as our loans increase.
Action moving forward: Train the incoming library monitors.
Maintaining Effective, Relevant Collections
Collection management is one of the biggest, most underappreciated aspects of our role as teacher-librarians, largely because so much of it is done behind the scenes and is therefore invisible to the majority of our school community. We’ve had an influx of student requests, so in addition to my plans to replace many of the outdated resources weeded over the last few years I’ve had to dedicate a significant portion of my budget to fulfilling these requests. As a result, there’s not a huge amount of money left for future purchases! A more balanced allocation of funds might be prudent in future years. However, one benefit of ordering so much so early in the year has been that we are getting a steady arrival of new resources to process in our systems as stock becomes available. This will hopefully allow us to spread out the accessioning process and reduce the number of orders we need to chase up at the end of the year.
Over the past few years I’ve invested a significant amount of time in updating our collection to ensure it’s relevant to the learning and recreational needs of our school community. When I first started, the fiction and non-fiction collections hadn’t been weeded for several years and the median date of publication was 1981. Last year our average date of publication was 2006, and I’m happy to report that due to my efforts last term this date is now 2010, while our median date is now 1995. While this is still not as up-to-date as I’d like, it’s a significant improvement.
I’m also in the process of cleaning up our catalogue and moving some items to locations where our students and staff are more likely to find them. I’ve set myself the goal of cleaning up 10 catalogue records a day, and while this isn’t always achievable it has made a significant impact on the number of resources with outdated or incorrect catalogue metadata.
In NSW Department of Education schools, we are required to have a Professional Development Plan (PDP). This year I’ve set myself three somewhat ambitious goals.
Goal 1: To raise the perceived status, professionalism and value of the school library by ensuring its effective management. This will be achieved by conducting a needs assessment and creating a strategic plan aligned to the school’s Strategic Improvment Plan by the end of Term 3.
This is a huge goal with multiple steps, which is why I’ve set its completion at the end of Term 3. This term I asked for planning time and was knocked back, so have asked for time again in Term 2. I’ve submitted a proposal through my Head Teacher for this planning time to be during the HSC Trial exam period when the library would normally be closed; hopefully my line managers will see the value of this goal and understand my attempts to support the school while minimising disruption.
Action moving forward: Gain approval for planning time in week 9.
Goal 2: To support the diverse needs of our students by working with the Engaged Students for Learning committee to reintroduce a school-wide High Potential and Gifted (HPGE) education initiative.
This is another area where I’ve sadly made limited progress, largely due to the restrictive nature of our committee meeting schedule which has meant we’ve only had one official meeting last term. We were supposed to deliver a presentation during a staff meeting on how to identify and support HPG students, but beyond informal conversations with staff there’s been no movement in this space for me yet.
Action moving forward: Conduct an evaluation of existing HPGE activities with the committee.
Goal 3: To forge strong connections between the library, teaching staff and students by supporting the implementation of the new English syllabus through the expansion of the Wide Reading Program and engagement with research into reading for pleasure and for information.
I feel that this is one area where I have successfully achieved my professional goal. The new English syllabus explicitly references reading for pleasure and our English faculty has embedded the Wide Reading Program into their units as a result of my continued advocacy over the past two years. I’ve also posted previously about my research into reading for pleasure, though more could be done in the information literacy space.
Action moving forward: Continue research into reading for pleasure and information; continue using data and feedback from students and staff to plan engaging activities which provide access and time for self-selected, socially supported reading with the Wide Reading Program.
A few colleagues and I are interested in developing a school-wide reading culture to support the literacy development of our students. We’re in the early stages of this process and I’ve just started doing some initial research into what works for other schools and how we can proceed within our own setting. From the early responses I’ve received for my inquiries on Facebook and Viva Engage it seems that this is something of interest to a lot of teacher-librarians, but few of us feel that we work in a school with a strong reading culture.
One useful resource I’ve investigated over the last few days is Madison’s Library, who has been on her own journey creating a school reading culture since 2021. I liked how she started her journey by considering how we know whether a school has a reading culture or not, as this forced me to consider my own assumptions about what a reading culture is and what we might already be doing to support pleasure reading and literacy development.
Her examination of organisational culture and climate was also interesting. Some of the research she referenced argues that organisational culture “is the glue that binds people towards a shared vision or goal” (Dearnaley, 2021, paraphrasing Lee, 2020) or “the way things are done in an organisation” (Dearnaley, 2021, paraphrasing Heath, 2021). On the other hand, “If culture is the values, belief systems, motivations and assumptions then climate is the patterns of behaviour, habits and feelings” (Dearnaley, 2021, paraphrasing Randhawa, 2019).
She referenced Katzenbach, Steffan, and Pronely’s 2012 Five Point Strategy for initiating effective cultural change. They argue the need to:
Match the change strategy with the culture
Focus on a few small shifts in behaviour
Honour the strengths of the existing culture
Integrate formal and informal interventions
Measure and monitor cultural evolution
She also refernced Rick’s 2016 CREATE strategy:
C – clarify values and organisations culture.
R – reinforce the vision, ensuring everyone in the team knows the vision, values and culture code and how these will work towards success.
E – empower behaviours that support the values, culture and vision
A – align conversations
T – target efforts on high impact areas
E – emphasise success
She also gave several interesting definitions of what reading culture is, based on current research:
A culture of reading is the tangible and visible expression of how all members of the school community value reading and engage with reading (Reading First, 2007)
A positive reading culture provides support, encouragement, modelling, resources and opportunities to read for pleasure (Merga & Mason, 2019).
Reading is seen and embedded across the school, in all classes, across all areas of the curriculum and the daily life of students (Daniels & Steres, 2011).
A supportive school reading culture is availability, opportunity, encouragement and support for reading (Merga & Mason, 2019).
A unique feature of a reading culture is that it promotes reading for leisure, rather than for just academic purposes or educational outcomes (Cochrane et al., 2022)
Intrinsic student motivation for reading, reading engagement, autonomy, and student choice are also key features of a strong reading culture (Daniels & Steres, 2011).
She then referenced the work of Daniels and Steres (2011), who suggest three actions towards building a strong reading culture:
Make reading a school-wide goal and priority, allowing time and expectations for reading.
Provide ongoing support and training to staff to support readers, including how to talk to their students about reading and develop their own reading practices.
Commit resources, including time and money to ensure access and commitment to reading is evident and supported.
Her conclusion regarding the position of the school library in this cultural change was a profound one for me. She argues that while the library can support a school-wide reading culture, it has to be enacted and owned by all members of the school community. This will be a significant challenge moving forward, since my time-poor teaching colleagues will likely find any initiative proposed in this area as just another thing to add to their workloads, despite their good intentions and understanding of the benefits. Maintaining the momentum, especially with such a time-consuming initiative, will be a challenge for any leader.
References:
Dearnaley, Madison. (2021, October 8). Building a school reading culture – Part 1. Madison’s Library. https://madisonslibrary.com/2021/10/08/building-a-reading-culture-part-1/
Dearnaley, Madison. (2021, October 23). Building a school reading culture – Part 2 organisational culture research. Madison’s Library. https://madisonslibrary.com/2021/10/23/building-a-reading-culture-part-2/
Dearnaley, Madison. (2021, November 3). Building a school reading culture – Part 3 culture change research. Madison’s Library. https://madisonslibrary.com/2021/11/03/building-a-reading-culture-part-3/
Dearnaley, Madison. (2022, June 23). Building a school reading culture – Part 4 what is a reading culture? Madison’s Library. https://madisonslibrary.com/2022/06/23/building-a-reading-culture-part-4/
Dearnaley, Madison. (2022, July 3). Building a school reading culture – Part 5 measuring reading culture. Madison’s Library. https://madisonslibrary.com/2022/07/03/building-a-reading-culture-part-5/
Dearnaley, Madison. (2022, October 6). Building a school reading culture – Part 6 measuring the starting point. Madison’s Library. https://madisonslibrary.com/2023/10/06/building-a-reading-culture-part-6/
Dearnaley, Madison. (2022, October 6). Building a school reading culture – Part 7 reading culture characteristics. Madison’s Library. https://madisonslibrary.com/2023/11/15/building-a-reading-culture-part-7/
