QUALITY STORYTENTS

A resource for family, early childhood and community literacy workers

We put the adjective “Quality” in front of Storytent to reflect the influence William Glasser’s Choice Theory has had on our work. Throughout the document there are many references to relationship building, something we believe is at the heart of storytent success. This will be immediately evident in Section II, The Philosophy Behind Quality Storytent Methods, which deals with some of the theory behind our practices. Here we show how we incorporate ideas from three broad approaches to education into our work. We also look at what it means to work successfully with families, with readers, and with non-readers in this kind of project.

Planning for a Storytent, Section III, covers the practicalities of tent selection, location, personnel, and so on. In Section IV, How to Deliver a Storytent, we look at the nuts and bolts of running a tent. We also look at some of the challenges and obstacles we encountered, and talk about how we overcame them, in Section V, Special Challenges.

A companion document was written to help libraries use the Storytent program to outreach their services. Summer Reading Club: Outreach library service through a neighbourhood storytent program can be accessed at www.nald.ca/clr/readclub/cover.htm, and describes the Storytent Summer Reading Club Outreach program (2003 – 2004), its researched successes, and tips on how to implement this type of program in communities. It also details how the methods and outcomes of the Storytent program are consistent with guidelines published in Great Britain, in 2002, by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Start With The Child: Report of the CILIP Working Group on library provision for children and young people (CILIP, 2002).