Celebrate Literacy with Teen Read Week™

Educators looking for a way to encourage the kind of dreaming in their young people that leads to new ideas can turn to their local libraries this October.

Teen Read Week™, the national adolescent literacy initiative created by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), an Educator Innovator partner, is an annual celebration of reading for fun that features a different sub-theme every year. This year’s theme, Turn Dreams into Reality, will be celebrated October 12-18, 2014.

Through Teen Read Week, educators are encouraged to use the opportunity to spotlight all the great resources and activities libraries provide to inspire teens to succeed in school and beyond. For this year’s theme, libraries will highlight a variety of resources in their collection related to the theme such as inspirational stories, career resources, how-to books, and more.

Librarians know that teachers are busy and, as trained professionals, they are happy to help develop and implement lessons. And since there are more public libraries in the United States than McDonald restaurants, it is easy to get in contact with your local library for assistance.

Here are some ways librarians can work with educators as part of Teen Read Week:

• Recommend appropriate books and materials for specific age groups or for a specific topic (for instance, college-readiness and career resources)
• Conduct “booktalks” to get your students excited about reading (they could highlight specific books relating to the Teen Read Week theme)
• Come to your school or classroom and issue library cards
• Develop “pathfinders,” or lists of recommended resources for students to use for a particular research topic
• Recommend resources for your classroom library and/or recommend the best vendors for purchasing items for classroom libraries.
• Help select and include appropriate instructional technologies into your lessons

For more information about Teen Read Week™, as well as resources to help you plan, please visit the official Teen Read Week website. Leverage Teen Read Week to promote career & college readiness with teens. Be sure to view this webinar for resources, a live chat, and more information about how to participate in Teen Read Week. Join the online discussion on Twitter using the hashtag #TRW14.