As pupils prepare to break up for the long summer holiday, we're sharing some excellent initiatives and events that can help keep children creatively engaged and enthusiastic about books, reading and writing over the break. Sharing information about some of these creative programmes with teaching colleagues and parents before the summer holiday can encourage more engagement with literacy and creativity during the summer and into the autumn term.
500 Words: the UK’s biggest story-writing competition for children aged 5 to 11 opens for entries from Tuesday 23 September until Friday 7 November at 9pm. Children are encouraged to write a story that is 500 words… or less!
Children of all abilities and backgrounds can enter; spelling, punctuation and grammar are not marked, it’s all about the creativity. This year, Library staff are also able to submit stories on behalf of parents via the 500 Words website once the competition opens in September. There are some brilliant prizes up for grabs! 50 finalists will be invited to a glittering grand final — supported by none other than Her Majesty The Queen herself. Each winner will receive a bundle of books, and the gold winners in both age categories will also win a spectacular 500 books for their school library.
With the concerning decline in the number of children writing for pleasure in the UK, 500 Words continues to inspires a love of literacy - 84% of teachers who submitted stories on behalf of students in 2024/25, felt their students were more engaged with literacy and writing as a result of taking part in the competition.
To help you support young writers over the summer, a special 500 Words and Oxford University Press story pack is available now to download and print. The pack contains easy, step-by-step guidance to help young writers bring their stories to life, providing fun activities that you can share with children and families throughout the summer period.
You could also consider registering as a volunteer judge to support the competition. 500 Words relies on the thousands of volunteers who read and mark our brilliant stories. Every judge is entered into a random draw and could see themselves receiving a ticket to the final. Register here.
We're pleased to be hosting a webinar sharing more information about Encouraging Creativity with BBC 500 words on 30 September 2025. You can hear from schools who have run the celebrated competition as a tool to engage children in stories and encourage their creativity. We’ll be joined by representatives from the 500 Words team as well as librarians and teachers who will share how the project has impacted their schools. Register now.
The Summer Reading Challenge: this year's Summer Reading Challenge and Teacher Reading Challenge are now live. The 2025 challenge is all about exploring nature and discovering the outdoors, with The Story Garden booklist featuring 59 fantastic books about nature, adventure, and the great outdoors. The list is curated to include titles for all reading levels, including picture books, early readers and middle grade titles, as well as dyslexia-friendly titles. With a mix of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and graphic novels, there should be something for every reader.
The Summer Reading Challenge also provides the perfect foundation for encouraging children to participate in 500 Words later in the year, encouraging pupils to channel their enthusiasm for stories they have read into their own creative writing for the 500 Words competition.
The Reading Agency joined us recently to share new ideas to engage with both of these opportunities and contribute to a reading culture in your school. We also heard from SLA member librarian Sharon Corbally on how she uses The Summer Reading Challenge and as an excellent aid to secondary school transition and library induction. SLA Members can watch the webinar back here.
If you're looking to recommend some brilliant summer reads to your pupils, you can also take a look at our new SLA Book Lists. Created exclusively for SLA members, our carefully curated book lists will help you to build collections that engage the children and young people you support, across all their varied interests, learning styles and levels of reading enthusiasm. Each book list contains suggested titles in different categories, from old favourites to recent releases; from books that will make you think, to stories that will make you laugh, and each category contains a suggestion for one title for less confident and one title for more confident readers.