We are so pleased to announce that our new Social Reading Spaces Toolkit is now available to download!
Developed with Farshore and HarperCollins Children's Books, the toolkit builds on the findings from our collaborative Social Reading Spaces study and contains everything you need to know to set up social book clubs in schools, including information on selecting students, setting book club expectations, creating a welcoming space, choosing books, structuring book club sessions and overcoming boundaries to engagement.
Conducted over 12 school weeks between October 2024 and February 2025, the Social Reading Spaces study trialled an innovative new approach to book clubs. 17 school libraries across the UK, from the Shetlands to Torquay, ran social book clubs with no expectation or pressure to read, instead fostering conversations and book talk in a relaxed and pressure-free setting.
Of the over 400 children who took part, 84% said it was a worthwhile experience and 60% said they were more interested in books and reading after the study. For some young people it was transformational. One school measured the Reading Ages of the 32 boys who took part pre- and post-trial using STAR Reading Assessment data, which revealed that these students’ Reading Ages increased by an average of 1 year and 3 months, compared with a five-month average growth in reading age for the year group.
The new Social Reading Spaces Toolkit will enable school librarians, and indeed all those who work to support and encourage young readers, to use the evidence from the study to gain the necessary support for running similar book groups. Other supporting resources include an advocacy presentation, designed to help teachers and librarians advocate for investment in social reading spaces style book groups to their Heads of Department, Senior Leadership Teams, Governors or PTAs.
Authors including Alexander Armstrong, Anna James, B.B Alston, Derek Landy, Lemony Snicket, Ross Welford and Salomey Doku have also written letters sharing stories about their own relationships with reading and books, which school librarians can share with book club participants.
Find out more and download the Social Reading Spaces Toolkit.
Watch SLA Training and Events Officer, Vicki Harris introduce some highlights of the toolkit and how to use it: