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The Teaching Librarian Volume 10, no. 3 39 - profile programs, e.g., enhance and increase communication with teachers, parents, School Council, local press - establish students' advisory committee l Monitor mid-October OLA's press release for books nominated for awards and get started with purchases, processing, displays, own reading, advance notice to alert parents, share with local bookstores for their displays and orders, etc. l Increase links with public library. Increase student public library membership. RANDOM THOUGHTS Students who participated loved it. Both new teacher-librarians were impressed with the response and saw the programs as an effective and efficient way to meet their library program objectives. We plan to continue measurement of the evidence but in a more thorough manner. For instance, we need more insight from those stu- dents who did not participate and find out why in more detail. We want to ask students, teachers and parents what can be done to get more read- ers. We plan to better share the results with the greater community. In the end, participating students, their parents and teachers, most frequently lauded the first two guidelines governing the programs - one, the commitment to make these programs a fun, non-threatening, extra-curricular reading pro- gram and second, the positive role of talking about the books as the best assets. It gives new meaning to the oft-repeated adage, "Reading is a social activity." IMPORTANT NEXT STEP: LINKING TO EQAO The obvious next step is to link the Reading Programs to EQAO achievement results before and after the reading programs. Common sense and other research studies make the link, but we need evidence. What an exciting Masters or PhD thesis! Anyone out there game? Meanwhile, there is one thing we can all do, and that is to keep stats about the OLA reading pro- grams at our schools. Think of it! There are a total of 1,360 unique stories to tell and places to collect the evidence - 1,360 being the number of schools, registered this year in Silver Birch and Red Maple. In addition we had 232 public libraries to add to the data. I wonder how many children and youth read this year because of these reading programs? What is the total num- ber of books read in Ontario? Want the Support Material? For a copy of the complete PowerPoint slides with notes, log onto the OLA Web site or e-mail Sya Van Geest <syavg@rogers.com>. The PowerPoint is intended for a broader audi- ence and places the reading programs within the context of the objectives of a school library pro- gram founded on solid research with summaries of current notables such as Krashen, Beers, Booth, Jobe and Kropp. These slides are ideal for Last Words from our Young Readers I liked the different types of books. I get to vote for the winner. I read more books than I ever expected to! I read 20 books - Wow! Love conferencing with my friends. I liked the non-fiction about real things. It actually made me read fantasy and I do not like fantasy. The books filled my imagination. My friends encouraged me to read. It got me to read books I would not normally read! I learned neat facts about earthquakes. My mom and dad liked to see me read.