The Usdaw Learning centre at the DHL Argos site in Castleford has found that, under the different guises of 6 Book Challenge and Reading Ahead, literacy and reading have become a very popular learning initiative.

As the Challenge entered its fifth year staff really looked forward to pushing their reading and challenging their normal comfort zones, and wanting to push for more completers, especially for the National draw. So they looked at something new for this year, Book Clubs.

Sean Dixon is the Usdaw Union Learning Representative Co-Ordinator at the site and takes up the story.

Using the Quickreads books and the Quickreads resources as a base we planned a Book Club on each Operational team. My aim was to beat previous years entries for the National draw, in 2014 we had 12 and in 2015 we had 14, I set a target of 20, 40% as we had just over 50 people on Reading Ahead. 18 people signed up to the Book Clubs from all sections, Warehouse Colleagues to Team Leaders."

The goal was to run the club to assist, not complete, those participating in the challenge in order to be in the National draw. The plan was to meet four times, and through this read three randomly selected Quick Reads books, none of the groups knew what they were getting, neither did organisers until the planning had finished.

Sean didn’t want to get into looking into the list and picking books as it was later raised that books people wouldn’t normally read were part of their challenge, and that expanding the genres people read worked really well.

This was quite quickly pulled together, not having done this before and wanting to ensure it was all planned correctly, they had a two month window to run with it, 28th of April until 23rd of June.

Sean said:

The Quick Reads resources were crying out for a Book Club and stimulated conversation around varying topics. 

The resources were quite lengthy, aimed for more than the half hour we planned, so certain questions or smaller sets around a chapter were highlighted and separated. These were then laminated and with each book a task was chosen, this gave each person something personal to discuss with the group, and a bookmark."

The Book Clubs were informal, private and relaxed with the group first meeting to discuss what was happening, how they would proceed along with giving out the first book and resource. Initial meetings went well and everybody was enthusiastic to try something new.

During the following meetings discussions around the books varied and the groups comments were written up as a recommendation to others and placed on the Learning Centre noticeboard.

The final meeting was a celebration, following the same format of discussion on each personal question and group discussion, cream cakes were available as a thank you for participating.

Sean felt that the actual discussions were the big positive for him. The enthusiasm people were showing and the depth they had thought about these short stories was wonderful to be involved in.

Feedback was also sought to gauge views on what went well and what could be done to improve. The main positives from the groups were the discussion and debate they could have with others about the reads and also that some found themselves reading books they would not normally have chosen. 

Sean said:

This really pleased me as the positive way the groups had approached the concept was felt by all, the discussions often spilled over to other books they had read or had been recommended to them, that the group read books they wouldn’t normally and pushed themselves to do so even if in the end they didn’t particularly enjoy it."

Following feedback next year’s book club will allow people longer to read the books, and, dependant on group size, a longer time for discussion with possibly read time in with the Book Club.

Sean summed up saying:

I am glad people felt it was a good way to help complete the Reading Ahead Challenge, we had 20 completers for the National draw compared with 12 & 14 the two previous years. 

The enthusiasm and positivity that has come out of doing this years Book Clubs has meant it will become a fixture in our learning year."