What is the Reading Trail?

The Reading Trail is a project run by the Library Resource Centre with the English Department. It takes place every year and all first and second years take part.

There are rewards for the Reading Trail, but prizes go to the people who try the hardest, not the people who read the fastest.

How do we start the Reading Trail ?

Your English teacher and Mrs Macfadyen will talk to your class. Amongst other things, we want to know

• what do you think about reading?

• what do you think about books?

• what is your favourite read of all time?

  This helps us look out for particular books which you might enjoy. But don't forget there's more to reading than books. Lots of people say they don't like reading... and two minutes later, they're telling us about their vast collection of comics - that's reading too!

And then we'll tell you why we think reading is so important.

• Did you know reading can make you smarter?

• Did you know reading can help you in every subject?

But most importantly, we talk about the fun you can have when you're reading or talking about a story you enjoy.

And we all love reading!

Targets

You will be asked to give yourself a target - how many books will you try to read before Christmas?

Be sensible about your target. You won't be able to read 100 books so think about how many you could read in a week and multiply by 10. Mrs Macfadyen and your teacher will help you - just ask.

Colours

We've looked at all of the fiction books in the LRC and given them a code from A-E, plus Teenage fiction for more advanced books. Each letter has a colour. You can see the coloured stickers on the books.

Level A	Level B	Level C
Level D	Level E	Teenage

Your English teacher will give you a starting colour and you can read anything you like at that level or above.

But what if your favourite author writes at a level below your starting point?

Think about it this way - the Reading Trail is about trying your hardest. That includes trying new writers and new genres. And later on, you can go back to reading what you like again!

However, if you're desperate to read one particular book that's below your levels, we will allow it - but only one (it's only for one term after all). We call this a "time out".

But perhaps now that you've met some new writers, maybe you'll be happy to keep trying different books! We hope so.

 

Why is it a Trail ?

For every book you complete, we'll ask you to create a mindmap.

This shows us that you read the whole book and that you understood it. We'll also show you the mindmaps from last year's classes to help you decide what to read.

When your teacher or Mrs Macfadyen has accepted your mindmap, you'll be given an paper outline of a foot. Inside the foot, you write down the author and title of your book and then mark it out of ten and pin it to the wall. (Write your class on the back so they won't get mixed up!)

Each class has space on the library notice boards so you can see how well your class is doing. This is your Class Trail.

 

What happens at the end?

The Reading Trail gets pretty frantic towards the end of term. Everybody wants their classes to have the longest trail, and people are trying to achieve their personal targets. There's a lot of competition between classes.

And then we hand out the rewards...

Prizes

Every class votes for the person that deserves to win because of the effort they made. That makes a list of 10-12 pupils who get a very special prize.

These pupils get a day out of school at a large Glasgow bookshop where they are given the responsibility of spending part of the library's budget. They also get lunch!

The class prizes are awarded to the classes who made the most effort in S1 and S2. And that's a pretty cool prize too. Last year, we made popcorn and turned the LRC in to a cinema for the afternoon for two lucky classes.

Conclusion

So that 's the Reading Trail. If you have any other ideas to make it even better, please let us know!

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