Volunteers: Contributing to Make a Difference

Volunteers! Their contributions make such a difference. We celebrate volunteers in our libraries and classrooms, but with so many things on our plates, it may be difficult to come up with ideas that will keep volunteers busy and feeling valued. Here are a few ideas for tasks that volunteers can complete using TeachingBooks that will support your work with readers and books — now easier than ever with our new scanning function!  

Bookroom — resources at the ready

Set a volunteer loose in your book room or wherever you keep your class sets. Ask the volunteer to look up each title and print a QR bookmark for each set of books to tuck in a set or attach to the box. Then, when a teacher selects book sets to take back to their classroom they have immediate access to lesson plans, discussion guides, reading levels, trailers, author interviews, and more.

Connect resources with titles

In a classroom library or for a specific collection of titles, decide what you would like the volunteer to look for: 

• All of the resources connected with a title
• OR One resource for each title (such as whole book readings, trailers, author name pronunciations, etc.)

Have a volunteer look up a title and create a QR bookmark or QR flyer for each title. When attaching the QR code or web link inside the book cover, you may want the volunteer to use clear tape so the resources can travel with the books!

Create student reading records

• Login as an Educator on TeachingBooks
• Demonstrate how to create and label a custom reading list for your volunteer. 
• Have them create a list under your login for each reader in your class or book group.
• Each time the volunteer visits, schedule meetings with several readers to add titles to their lists.
• You might even provide the volunteer with a prompt to ask each student about what they are reading and have them make a note in the annotation box on the customized list.
• These custom reading lists become Student Reading Records and are available for you to celebrate reading goals, share information with parents, and can be used as a tool when helping match readers with new titles to read.

What’s working for you?

Got other ideas for ways to engage volunteers?  Feeling proud of your own creative uses of TeachingBooks?  Leave your ideas in a comment below!