About 4 weeks before your Book Fair arrives start recruiting volunteers to help with the following:

1. Before your Book Fair

Letting everyone know

• Send out Book Fair invitations - classroom teachers could distribute these, or they could be given out at assembly.
• Put up Book Fair posters and create displays - try the school secretary or the allocated children helpers.
• Send a letter home to parents and highlight it on the website - perhaps the Head teacher could be involved in this?

Making it look great

• If you choose to use a theme, you'll need volunteers for creating displays and decorating. There is usually at least one person in a school who is a dab hand at visually exciting displays. Enlist their help to create a display in the entrance or reception to school the week before the Book Fair arrives to create excitement about the forthcoming event. At a whole school gathering, such as assembly, invite the children to bring in suitable props (all clearly labelled) for the display. Encourage volunteers to dress appropriately, which all adds to the fun and excitement.

Create an event

• If your Book Fair can be linked to something else going on in school, such as parents' evening or a special achievement assembly, make it more inviting by offering refreshments. PTA members, dinner ladies or playground supervisors are ideal candidates for bringing in cakes and biscuits and making urns of tea and pots of coffee

2. During your Book Fair

Setting up and running your Book Fair

• Setting up the book cases just before the Book Fair opens
  If you are lucky enough to have space you may be able to just do this once and leave the cases up for the duration of the Fair. But in most schools, the cases need to be put away and reopened each day. Parents or older children make great volunteers for this. Set up a rota.

• Manning the cash desk
  You will need to set up a rota for this. Depending on the size of your school, you will need at least two cashiers. Before the Fair it's a good idea to have a brief training session for all cashiers. Make sure they know to whom cheques need to be made out, how to use the credit card machine and how to take orders if the books aren't available. Older children love the responsibility of being cashiers, but it makes sense to have an adult helper alongside them in case of any queries - a parent helper or teaching assistant would be ideal.

Let classes look before they buy

• If children have the opportunity to spend some time browsing through the bookcases, they are far more likely to encourage their parents to come and buy for them! Classroom teachers, teaching assistants or school buddies (Year 6 partnered with Year 1 children for example) are perfect for running browsing sessions during the school day. To give more information on particular books ensure that volunteers have the Book Talk Notes from the Planning Kit or download here

Getting everyone involved

• Holding competitions
  The best competitions are fun to do and easy to manage! They help to promote the Book Fair and if you announce the winner during the last day, it's likely to bring more people back for a second visit! Enlist a volunteer to be responsible for running the competition. Older children will come up with some great ideas for competitions, or use the online resources such as wordsearches or colouring competitions.

• Reading with children
  Invite volunteers hold story-telling sessions. Parents and grandparents are often willing to do this but also consider asking your local librarians, and if there are any local authors, ask them too! You could even try your local theatre or amateur dramatic group, they should be good at holding an audience, but also find out about local celebrities - the local football team could provide some great role models. Make sure your volunteers have a copy of the Family Guide to Reading to give them some tips on reading with children before they come in and the Book Talk Notes

3. After your Book Fair

Wrapping up your Book fair

• Counting up
  The money taken at the Book Fair will need to be counted and double checked. Children relish the opportunity to do this and love finding out the total amount raised. They will be pleased to announce this, perhaps at an assembly, so everyone knows how successful the Book Fair has been and how many new books for school have been obtained.

• Choosing how to spend the commission
  This doesn't have to be one person's responsibility, perhaps the literacy co-ordinator may like to choose some books for the school library, the children helpers could be allowed to choose some classroom books, or individual teachers given a budget to spend on educational resources from the Commission catalogue. But one person will need to coordinate which books are requested. Books can be taken from the Book Cases or the Commission Catalogue - don't forget there is now a new online Commission Shop
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