A successful library should be at the heart of the school community. Ensuring you have the library facilities to enhance teaching and learning is essential. Reading Cloud is a Library Management System that provides a cost effective way of cataloguing a school’s physical library stock, to help promote, engage and manage reading throughout your school.
Easy to use and get started
Simply scan the ISBN barcode and Reading Cloud does the rest. The system then automatically adds further information such as the title, author, synopsis and images. Schools can track and trace resources easily, determining which books are most popular to help inform purchasing decisions and reduce stock loss. In addition, integration with SIMS simplifies the whole process of setting up pupil accounts as pupil information is already held in SIMS.
Support student learning
Engaging students to read to support their learning can be challenge – Reading Cloud allows students to create their own profiles and avatars, and add and chat to friends to share their thoughts about their favourite books and authors. An automatic list of recommended reads helps students pick books similar to ones they have previously enjoyed. Teachers can also reward avid readers and make interventions for any reluctant readers by tracking this through the system.
Meeting curriculum objectives
Teachers can create targeted reading lists for specific year groups or class sets to support curricular topics. Reading Cloud’s catalogue search functions encourages children to actively search their school library online to develop their information seeking skills, whilst the blogging and reviewing area where students can write about their favourite books and authors, builds their confidence, social skills and understanding texts.
Drive parental engagement
Reading Cloud is accessible from any internet enabled device, meaning that parents can also access Reading Cloud at home. Parents can monitor their child’s reading progress and assist with writing and videoing book reviews to engage with their child’s learning. Parents can also scan a book’s ISBN through the mobile app and get information on whether it’s in the school library.
Track and evidence reading initiatives
The ability to track, report on and identify key reading trends in your school will prove invaluable when it comes to reporting for Ofsted. With the key statistics Reading Cloud provides, you can see how many pupils are using your library, compare users by demographics and see the most popular titles in your school. You can also compare the most popular books and authors across the complete Reading Cloud database, giving you an indication of which books to purchase for your school.
Reading Cloud isn’t just for tracking the books in your library, it’s for tracking pupils. Using the software, teachers can keep a close eye on what children have been reading and whether they are making good progress
Mike Barnes, Headteacher at Flakefleet Primary School
Students search and share what they have read. It’s lovely to see a class so enthusiastic about a library programme and I am pleased that they want to use this at home. Reviews have already started coming through and quite a lot of students logged on at lunchtime independently which was nice to see
Library resource manager at Thorp Academy