Promoting Summer Time Reading to Students

Summertime reading has always been enjoyable for me. It gives me a chance to catch up on my personal reading list. This summer I am listening to Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption and reading History of Norway by John A. Yilek. I am sure that I will finish several other books before summer is over, including a professional title or two. I enjoy reading and like to read books and enjoy the leisure summer brings that allows me to read things I don’t have time to read during the school year. However, I always am looking for ways to encourage my students to continue reading for pleasure during the summer months to exercise their brains. This year I to promote the local public library’s summer reading program through tweets on my school Twitter account, posted information on the school video announcements and placed flyers at the circulation desk. Other tactics for promoting summer reading that I have used in the past include posting summer reading links on the school library media center’s homepage, sending links to summer reading lists to classroom teachers to share with their students and parents. I have also promoted the public library’s summer reading program with announcements on the website, posters around the school building and flyers in the library media center. This past spring I went a step further and invited the young adult/children’s librarian from the public library to visit school and promote the program. About half of the English Language Arts teachers took advantage of this visit and signed up for a 20 minute time slot on the Google Doc I shared with them. Now that I have invited a children’s librarian to visit and talk to students about the public library’s summer reading program I would definitely do it again.

Another new promotional activity for me was advertising e-books through Overdrive the last month of school. Overdrive has great graphics that can be used for publicity purposes for free on their website. Some of the graphics are designed for use on social media, and even better are the graphics designed to promote summer reading . Needless to say I began to Tweet about Overdrive and how the books are available 24/7 even during summer vacation. I even went as far as to use Hootsuite to schedule a Tweet a week promoting the school library media center’s Overdrive collection. Additionally, I used Hootsuite to schedule one to two Tweets a week  to promote books in the library media center’s Overdrive collection. The Tweets included a picture of the book’s cover as well as the school’s hashtag. Including the school’s hashtag ensured that staff members with Twitter accounts would see the library media center’s tweets and retweet them. Another reason to use the school's hashtag was to ensure that Tweets from the library’s account would appear on the Twitter feed on the school’s homepage.  

Another way I have promoted summer reading at the high school level is to allow students to check up to 10 books out the last week of school. At the time this seemed like a natural progression since staff were allowed to check library materials over the summer for personal and professional reading. Several students took advantage of this program every summer I ran it. I believe that twenty was the all time high for participation. A few students even asked if they could stop in during the summer to return books and check out additional books. This was possible since the library aide worked in the library several days during summer summer school. The enthusiastic readers were told that they could email the library aide to ask which days the school library media center would be open. Two students took advantage of the library aide’s offer, so I qualify it as a success since additional materials were checked out. Students checked out a variety of materials over the summer. One of the more popular items checked out during the summer were book series. Students who checked out series commented “I can finally read the entire series in order” or “I’ve been waiting to read this series but haven’t been able to because the first book is always checked out.” (editorial comment: Students were reminded after the latter comment that they could log into library's circulation system and reserve a book, or ask library staff to reserve a book for them.) Students with reading lists for various classes also checked books out. In addition to checking out print materials, students were also allowed to check out audiobooks. This program was publicized through daily announcements, flyers posted around the school, the library media center’s website and emails to staff. Teachers who taught classes with reading lists promoted the program in their classes. The due date for materials checked out over the summer was the Friday of the first full week of school. Not everything was returned on time, but usually all items were returned. I ran the summer checkout program for 10 years and only lost two books due to a student moving over the summer. After the first year of running the summer checkout program students began asking in mid-May when they could check out books for the summer. A few students even asked if they could reserve certain books for summer checkout. Comments like this were like music to my ears. Now how to get the rest of the student body to read more for pleasure.