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Lending Library

Services can build libraries with physical and digital resources for children to use on-site and borrow for home, connecting early literacy learning between different environments.

Program details

  • Priority area: Communication
  • Primary audience: Parents/carers, children
  • Delivery mode: Resources (books, kits, manuals)
  • Strength of evidence: Level 3 Promising research evidence
  • AEDC sub-domains:
    • Language and cognitive development Basic literacy
    • Language and cognitive development Interest in literacy/numeracy and memory
    • Language and cognitive development Advanced literacy
    • Communication skills and general knowledge
  • Item cost: Variable

Program description

Services can develop their own library of books and resources for children to use at the service and take home. This can help connect early literacy learning between the service and the home environment. The library could include digital resources such as 'Reading Eggs' (developed by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation) or hardcopy resources such as children's story books or other literacy games and tools.

Detailed cost

Costs will vary depending on the number and type of resources purchased.

Implementation considerations

  • Target population: children and their families.
  • Factors to consider: to maximise the benefits for children's language and early literacy development, it is important to consider how a lending library program would encourage and support parents/carers to read effectively with children. Consider incorporating this support through formal parent training such as 'Hanen: It Takes Two to Talk' or 'Hanen: I'm Ready' (included in the school readiness funding menu), or by setting up a parent coaching program.

VEYLDF alignment

Item uses these practice principles

  • Partnerships with families
  • High expectations for every child
  • Respectful relationships and responsive engagement
  • Equity and diversity

Item responds to these sub-outcomes

  • Children begin to understand how symbols and pattern systems work
  • Children engage with a range of texts and get meaning from these texts

Updated