Developing a culture of reading (Part 2)

Last night, various junior and senior mentors met to decide on which programme we are going to implement at Kinbu. As mentioned earlier, we wanted to pick the most effective and sustainable idea that would benefit the largest number of students.

To start with, everyone present shared their ideas on which idea they thought was the best to implement and why. From this, we came down to about five ideas. In the end, we decided that it made most sense to go with the Library Club idea. A point was raised that it would be unrealistic to target the whole school to begin with. If we're able to implement the club successfully and make it attractive enough, eventually a large number of students would benefit. Better start small with high levels of success than to start too ambitiously and end up with little progress.

Another point was that providing incentives to the students would work well, and this could work quite well with a Library Club. One of the most attractive features of the Library Club is that it is flexible. Several ideas can be integrated together for the Library Club to organise. Out of the ideas we came up last week, these include:

• Termly quizzes/competitions based on set books. Internal (within Kinbu) and external (involving other schools) reading competitions
• Members get exclusive benefits, i.e. watch movies (e.g. The Book Club, The Debaters), go on trips etc based on attendance to meetings
• Have speakers periodically come and talk to students about the importance of reading (e.g. Ama Ata Aidoo).
• Arrange books in order of difficulty. A ‘reading marathon’ could then be introduced. Students must finish one book before advancing to the next. Can create positive competitiveness
• The club could organise writing and debating events
• The library could be emphasised at orientation – new students could be given a tour of library and encouraged to join the library club

Instead of completely scrapping the idea of having students make drama productions from books, we decided that if there was an 'outside' production happening, students could read the book and then go see the play as one of the Library Club trips. This would be at the discretion of staff at Kinbu.

The issue of students only joining the library Club for benefits (i.e. to hear speakers, to go on trips, etc) was brought up. We decided that events such as speakers talking about the importance of reading should be open to both members and non-members of the club as withholding this would be counter-productive. However, there will be a 'discounts' based system for events such as trips. The more club meetings students attend, the cheaper the trip will be for them.

Feel free to drop a comment if you've got any additional suggestions.