Practical ideas - community involvement

Involving members of the community and having real male role models in school can be extremely powerful. Ensure that you involve your Reading Champions in the process of getting people into school and that it forms part of a Reading Champions award. Find out who the boys look up to; is it a local sports man, a fireman or a member of the forces? Then ask the boys to write and invite the chosen person into school and arrange the visit.

Public and School Library Services

Get your Reading Champions to work with the local children and young people’s librarian on boy-friendly activities.

If you subscribe to your School Library Service, request a boy-friendly book box for the school. Reading Champions could be involved in the selection of these books.

Use the Boys into Books booklist to identify recommend reads which Reading Champions could use in their advocacy role. Visit www.sla.org.uk/boys-into-books-overview.php

Help your Reading Champions to develop a partnership with the children and young people’s librarian. They could be involved in recommending boy-friendly reads and where they are located and how they are displayed in the public library. The boys could get involved in making a leaflet about the library or they could run a session showing other boys around the library.

Invite members of the community into school

For tips on how to get members of the community to take part in your Reading Champions project look at the Volunteers section of the website.

Author visits

Work with the Reading Champions to organise storyteller/authors/poet/illustrator visits in school.

The services

Ask your Reading Champions of the services into school – army, navy, airforce, paramedics and police. Ask them to talk about their jobs, their favourite reads and how reading has helped them in their jobs. For boys hoping to achieve gold status they could organise several of these visits throughout the school year.

The local newspaper

Link up with your local newspaper. Invite the journalists into school or, for boys who are hoping to reach gold status, contact the public library service about setting up a community-wide reading initiative in partnership with your local paper.

Musicians and lyricists

Invite local musicians and songwriters into school to run workshops on lyrics and rhymes. Rap has been a very successful hook in some schools.

Volunteering

If you are interested in getting adults from the community to come and volunteer to support children’s reading, contact Volunteer Reading Help who may be able to help you find suitable volunteers. Visit www.vrh.org.uk for more information.

Local businesses

Ask local businesses to sponsor an event or reading club. For example Reading Champions may like to approach sports shops, fishing tackle shops or computer games stores. These businesses may be interested in donating money for books, prizes for clubs or go one step further and get their members of staff involved.