Six Book Challenge™
Running the Six Book Challenge
A one day course for staff from libraries and learning organisations.
1 October in London (10.30am to 4pm) Booksellers Association, 272 Vauxhall Bridge Road.
This course is fully booked
7 October in Birmingham (10.30am to 4pm) Birmingham Central Library.
Course aims
This course aims to tell participants about how to run the Six Book Challenge, including planning and building partnerships with other organisations, planning and running activities, acquiring stock, and evaluation and follow up monitoring.
Trainer
Genevieve Clarke (National Coordinator for the Vital Link, The Reading Agency)
Background
In its first year as a national scheme, The Reading Agency's Six Book Challenge was run in over 80 per cent of English library authorities. Libraries teamed up with partners including local colleges, adult and community education teams, prison education teams and trade unions. This course draws on the lessons we have learnt during that first year and prepares delegates for running the Six Book Challenge successfully in their own organisations in 2009.
The Six Book Challenge is one of the strategies being used across the country to engage learners in reading for pleasure. As you may know adult literacy learners are a key audience for the National Year of Reading and the Six Book Challenge provides an attractive and ready-to-use package to engage them in reading for pleasure. It also offers ways of measuring reading confidence and skills. While the resources support the National Year of Reading and its legacy as part of a local authority's ongoing commitment to reading development for learners.
The Six Book Challenge helps libraries to meet the local priorities of:
• social inclusion
• literacy and lifelong learning
• partnership working
It also helps meet learning priorities:
• student retention
• student progression and achievement
• student employability and Skills for Life
This course will enable you to develop partnerships with your local learning providers or library service. It will equip you to run the Six Book Challenge effectively so that you get the best value from the activities and are able to learn useful lessons from running the project.
At the end of the course
By the end of this course participants will:
• understand the aims and context for the Six Book Challenge
• know how to use the full range of promotional materials and resources effectively
* know how to talk about the Challenge and its aims to colleagues
• know how to set up and develop long-lasting partnerships between libraries and learning providers
• know about the range of books appropriate for adult learners and understand how to promote them
• have ideas for engaging and supporting learners through the Six Book Challenge
• understand how the Six Book Challenge can be evaluated and how the evidence from evaluation can be used for outreach and advocacy work.