The importance of libraries can’t be overstated. Libraries don’t just provide people with books to read for fun, they provide people with the opportunity to develop critical thinking and information literacy skills, they’re a place to find community, they connect people, and they level the playing field, allowing everyone to have access to the resources they need, regardless of who they are.
We’re very lucky at Stretford High School to have our library at the heart of our school, a welcoming, inclusive place in which all students can borrow books, study and revise, use the computers to complete their homework, and engage with any of the activities that are on in the space.
The Stretford High Library is open to students from 8:15-8.30 am every morning, at break and lunch times, and from the end of the school day until 4:00 pm Monday-Friday.
In the Library, you’ll find Miss Hodge, Stretford High’s resident librarian, who is available to help with any book/literacy-related queries and – on Wednesdays – Mr Lovatt, our Connexions advisor. Additionally, our ‘reading champions’ act as library helpers and help us to promote a love of reading within the school.
Here in the Library, we’re committed to promoting literacy on a school-wide level, to helping every student discover their new favourite book and continue/begin reading for pleasure, and to maintaining the Library as a safe space in which all students can be themselves and feel represented in the stories they find on the shelves.
Additionally, we run a number of clubs in the library after school.
On Monday, we run ‘Book to Screen Club’ where we read a book and watch its TV/film adaptation in order to compare and contrast.
On Tuesday, it’s Creative Writing Club. In the club, we produce work based on a different theme each week and students are encouraged to experiment with their writing and develop their love of writing for fun.
On Thursday, we have Dungeons and Dragons Club. Students can engage with the role-playing game and develop their storytelling skills and their ability to think on their feet in the face of (imaginary) dragons, trolls, and much more!
On Friday, the library hosts our LGBTQ+ Society – a relaxed space for students to talk, complete activities (often focused on promoting wellbeing), and engage with LGBTQ+ books, TV shows and movies.
The benefits to reading regularly for pleasure are well documented, and at Stretford High, we are constantly adapting our approach to promoting reading for pleasure in line with the latest research from The National Literacy Trust. Along with running events to help us in our reading for pleasure mission (for example, World Book Day, Scholastic Book Fairs and author visits) we also run events and activities in the library at break and lunchtimes, clubs after school, KS3 students have a library lesson once every half-term, we encourage students to share book reviews with their peers in our newsletter every week, and we run our ‘Reading Champions’ program, where students can gain different rewards for achieving certain reading goals and helping to promote their love of books within the school.
In the last year, we have managed to increase our library loans by over a thousand books as compared to the 2022/23 academic year, we’ve drastically decreased the gap in loans between the genders, and we’ve used loan data to continually adapt our reading for pleasure approach – as we will continue to do heading in to the next academic year and beyond.
