It's Time to Nominate!

Dear Friends of KOALA,

You still have TWO WEEKS for your students to become involved in the nominating process for this year’s KOALA Awards. Completed nomination forms for the 2020 KOALA Awards should be sent to contact@koalansw.org or students may nominate online. All nominations are due by Friday April 3rd.

Please find below a few ideas that you can quickly implement in your Library, Library Lessons or school classrooms to help get your students involved in the nominating process for 2020. Students may nominate up to FOUR books.

If a book is to be nominated, there are FOUR criteria that the book needs to meet:

1.       The book must be Australian.

2.       The book must have been published since 2011.

3.       The book must not be a previous winner.

4.       Nominations must be for a specific title e.g. Selby Surfs not Selby series

KOALA Nominating Ideas

  • Use this attached Powerpoint Presentation to introduce and inform your students about the nomination process.

  • Set up a display of books and nomination station that you have highlighted or read to your students over the course of Term 1 to give them some suggestions of books to nominate.

  • Involve class teachers in the nomination process. Over the next two weeks, select and send to classrooms a few Australian authored Picture Books for teachers to read to their class. Students may want to nominate some of these titles on the nomination form sent to the classroom. Display each classes’ TOP THREE NOMINATIONS and check next term to see if they have made the Shortlist.

  • Have a look at your loan statistics to compile a list of Australian authors’ books that have been most borrowed over Term 1. You could even extend this list to your loan statistics from 2019. Have students nominate their favourite reads from this list.

  • Use the CBCA 2020 Notables Lists to build a display of books that students could read over the coming weeks in the Library and then have them choose their nominations from what they have read.

  • Look at previous years’ CBCA Winners and include these books in your display or for distribution to classrooms.

  • Print and display a list of Australian authors near your nominating station so that students can check to make sure their selection has been written by an Australian author.

  • Print the list of previous KOALA winners and display to assist with the nomination process.

This list of ideas is not an exhaustive one. Teacher librarians, librarians and classroom teachers all have a myriad of ideas of how to promote reading in their schools. Using the KOALA Awards Nomination Process is another launchpad to achieve this. We look forward to seeing which Australian books your students feel should be considered for the 2020 KOALA Shortlists.

Happy reading and nominating!