Even though you may not be to the end of the school year just yet, you still will want to start planning for an end of year reading celebration with your students.

Why Celebrate?

Well, this is easy. Your students have worked hard this entire school year. You probably had your students make SMART goals (see our blog post here to explain how to do this) and most of your students have made it! Those that didn’t, put a lot of effort into trying to get there. All students need to be a part of the celebration to realize what they have accomplished. It also helps to solidify that classroom community you worked so hard to build from the first week of school.

How do I plan for an end of year reading celebration?

This is where the fun begins! Since you are celebrating reading achievement, it is only fitting that the celebration focuses around books! There are many different things that you could do on this special day. Below are some examples you could use.

Have students design a new book jacket for their favorite book! The materials for this would be easy! Just some blank paper and either crayons, colored pencils or markers. They may want to have the title and author handy so they don’t have any spelling mistakes.

Students can share an iMovie that they have made about their favorite book. The program is so easy to use and many students may be familiar with it already. We have them select the “trailer” option and then have them pick the theme that fits their book. Make sure that they don’t give away the ending as all good trailers leave the person viewing wanting more!

Another choice is for your students to do a Book Talk about their favorite book. Just like you have been doing this school year, have your students share about their favorite book to the class.

Another fun end of year activity could be to rewrite an ending to a book. We know sometimes kids can be bewildered or even disappointed at how the book ends. This would be a fun way for them to put their own twist on an ending. Then, of course, we would want them to share!

A final idea for an end of year reading celebration would be to pass out reading awards for students who met their goals. This could be a simple 5-10 minutes where students come up and get their awards.

Whatever you choose, make sure to celebrate your students’ reading success!

Get ready for reading excitement in your classroom! If you have not yet done a Tournament of Books with your students, then both they and you have been missing out!

The Purpose

The Tournament of Books is a great way for students to read high quality literature and pick their favorite books all in one activity!

Tournament of Books Directions

If you are familiar with the NCAA basketball tournament, there are over 64 teams that are matched up on a large bracket format. Fans from across the United States pick the teams that they think will move on to the next game. It progresses until there is one National champion.

The Tournament of Books operates the same. Using the Tournament of Books template found in our resource, you will fill out the top 16 books that you feel students have enjoyed throughout the year. Then you will place each title in the document matched up against another book, so there will be 8 games in the first round.

Then, hype it up! This can include creating the brackets on a wall in your classroom before the tournament starts. We will print out the book jackets for the 16 books. Then we make the brackets using blue painters’ tape (easy to remove). We place the book jacket titles in the appropriate places.

Next, we make copies of the brackets with the titles for each student. We tell them it is their job to select which books will move on to the next level. If you want, you can do short book talks (see our previous resources) on each book to refresh students’ memories. We have the students write in pen so they can’t change their answers.

As students are filling out their books, let them know that Round 1 is worth one point. Round 2 is worth two points. Round 3 is worth four points, and the winner is worth eight points! We will do one round per week so this will take five weeks to complete so plan accordingly.

To make it easy for data collection and to show students the results, we create a google form where students can vote for each round. We make it so students can only vote once. When the voting is done for each round, you can look at the results in pie graph format and share it with students. Then you can move the book titles onto the next round on your classroom wall. Students can then score their sheets.

We will keep a leaderboard in our classroom of who is in first through fifth place. After each round, we will change it based on how the students do.

Optional Prizes

At the end of the tournament, we will hand out certificates for the top three places. You could also do ones for all the participants if you choose to do so. We may also provide a treat, or even a copy of the top book for the first-place student! This is all up to you.

The Tournament of Books is a great way to promote reading and excitement all in one. Have fun!

We are going to cut to the chase right away. We want to share our top five ways that we have found to help raise reading scores in our classroom.

Beginning of Year Survey

One of the biggest mistakes an educator can make is not taking time to get to know students right away. We all know that there is pressure to teach curriculum and the standards, but getting to know your students is so much more important. We have developed a survey (download for free here) that goes right to the heart of their thoughts on both reading and writing.

To understand where are students’ mindsets are before diving into essential learning targets is so important. From our survey, we will know the students who enjoy reading and writing, who absolutely despise it, and those that may struggle. By understanding where each student is, we can better plan for students we need to target and provide additional support.

Set SMART Goals to Raise Reading Scores

The first part of a SMART goal is Specific. Your goal needs to have a clear focus. If you take a look at the example on the slide, most students will say, “I want to get better grades, or better at reading.” That is way too broad and does not include any specifics.

Here is an example of a SMART goal for reading: By the end of the year, I want to be able to read at the 750 Lexile level by reading each night and by checking my progress with the STAR reading test.

The second part of a SMART goal is how is it going to be measured? Our district uses the STAR reading assessment three times a year. This allows both the teacher and students to track their progress three times during the school year. It will be easy to see growth or if there is no growth, making a new plan for how the child could meet the end goal.

The third part of the SMART goal is Achievable. Can you provide the resources for the students to meet their goals. In this case it revolves around improving reading fluency and comprehension. You have to be able to make available books whether it be in a digital or print format. Do you have a class library, a school library? Do your students live close to the public library? Are there apps where students can read online? Do you have high interest books available? Are you introducing your students to good books? These are all questions you will have to have answers for.

The fourth part of the goal is very important. Is the goal realistic? The worst part would be for a student to set a goal that isn’t attainable. When using the goal with a reading assessment, the lexile levels would be important to look at after the child’s first test. What realistic benchmark could you use? It is always good to set a goal to reach the next level above.

And the last part of the SMART goal is Timeliness. In setting an academic goal, it is best to measure it a few times a year. Yes, the goal can be for the end of the year, but if you don’t check in at least three times during the school year and wait until the end, there is less of a chance for success and to raise reading scores. That is why setting up checkpoints throughout the year is important.

Student Choice

No matter what your reading program is, you have to allow student choice. There has been a move from equality, to equity, to expert learning in the modern day classroom. Expert Learning involves choice in how students show their understanding of a concept.

For example, if you are teaching theme, you may use a novel from your curriculum or student book choices. But the way student show their understanding can be up to them. Maybe they create an iMovie, or possibly design a poster. Some extroverts may even want to do a speech or a mock TV show. The possibilities are endless, but you have to allow that choice. Students will have a vested interest in their choice and will perform at a higher level then just a standard paper and pencil worksheet.

A Wide Variety of High Quality Books

You must allow students access to high quality literature. This can be through your classroom library, the school library, or any online reading site such as Sora. The tough question may be where to find a list of good quality books. Well, we have taken care of that for you through our Book Talk resource. We have picked the most popular titles from various genres (fantasy, realistic fiction, historical fiction, mystery…) and have provided you with summaries that you can share with your students.

When you use Book Talk in your classroom, you are exposing students to great titles that they can add to their Books I Want to Read list (download for free here) in their notebooks. Then they have a list they can go back to throughout the school year. When students have access to these books, they will want to read more and that will translate in higher reading fluency and comprehension.

Monthly Book Logs

We used to be huge proponents of reading logs based on minutes and they still can serve a purpose for some students. But we have found that having a focus each month on a genre or theme has been more effective. For each month we pick a specific genre or theme and then recommend books to students. Each student is then required to read at least two books to meet the goal. If the book is over 250 pages we will count it as two books and the student would meet the goal.

We found that this goal is more attainable then a nightly requirement of 20 minutes of reading. When the student knows that finishing a book is the goal, s/he is more apt to work towards that then a minute amount. Getting students to read outside of school is key to growth.

We hope that you can implement these five ways to help raise reading scores in your classroom.

Make sure to check out our Book Talk bundled resource today!

If you are an upper elementary or middle school ELA teacher, you have probably at one time used reading logs. Through years of struggling to get students to read outside of school, we have come up with a new way to get students excited about reading at home.

The Traditional Approach

If you were like us, you had a monthly reading log where students had to track a certain amount of minutes. It was handed out at the beginning of the month and collected the first part of the next month. You may have reminded students about it periodically during the month. When you collected the logs, you realized not all of your students were turning them in. So you possibly incentivized by offering a treasure box, homework coupon, or some other gimmick to get them to read. Trust us, you were not alone in doing this.

The Struggle

Probably the main struggle was helping students find good books. Sure you had a classroom library with great titles, and students had access to the school library. But students were constantly saying that there is nothing good to read. You may have even printed off lists of top books for kids. You maybe reached a few kids, but there were some that still were reluctant to try books from the list.

Apathy

After the first few months, you started to see a pattern of students lack of enthusiasm for reading logs. They knew that they weren’t going to read at home, so they quit even filling out the logs. Some may even have thrown them in the class garbage before the end of the day. Even though you tried different ways to motivate those students, they weren’t buying it.

A New Approach

This year we are trying something different in our ELA classroom. We realize that the main issue is getting students excited about books. Our old approach was not cutting it. So we spent hours upon hours this summer compiling a list of high interest books separated by genre and theme.

We then created slideshows that we are going to share with students through a monthly Book Talk. As we are sharing, we are giving students a Books I Want to Read sheet (download for free here) where they can record titles they want to read. This will make checkout times easier when we go to the school library or when they look for books online through Sora.

Finally, we are tossing out the reading logs focused on minutes read per month. Instead we are focusing on the number of books read based on the genre or theme for the month. We want our students to read at least two books a month that are focused on the theme or genre. If a book is over 250 pages we will count it as two books, so those Harry Potter fans don’t need to sweat! Here is an example of a fantasy log below.

Our Goal

We want our students to enjoy reading plain and simple. We also want our students to experience growth in their reading fluency and comprehension throughout the year. This can be accomplished by students reading more outside the classroom.

So we have created a new bundled resource that will include everything we talked about above, plus more! In the Book Talk bundle you will get:

• Adventure Book Talk Activity (30-pages)
• Diversity Book Talk Activity (17-pages)
• Fantasy Book Talk Activity (31-pages)
• Friendship Book Talk Activity (61-pages)
• Historical Fiction Book Talk Activity (37-pages)
• Mystery Book Talk Activity (31-pages)
• Nonfiction Book Talk Activity (17-pages)
• Realistic Fiction Book Talk Activity (66-pages)
• Science Fiction Book Talk Activity (31-pages)
• Student Choice Book Talk Activity (17-pages)
• Tournament of Books Book Talk Activity (20-pages)

Make reading enjoyable for your students this school year!

If you have not used Book Talk in your upper elementary or middle school classroom, you have been missing out!

What is Book Talk?

A Book Talk is simply introducing a book to the class in an engaging way. We have worked hard on writing brief summaries of high quality books that you can share with your students. The goal is to get them excited about the options of books they could choose to check out based on the theme/genre of each month.

Why is it effective in the classroom?

Book Talk is an effective way of introducing a wide variety of literature to students. Through Book Talk you can engage students before they even check out a book from your classroom library, school library, online books, or the public library. Book Talk will help to spark curiosity in students and give them options to choose from when selecting books which is so important for reading success.

How does it relate to a monthly genre or theme?

We have designed Book Talk around monthly themes/genres. When you select the monthly theme/genre, you can simply use our Book Talk to introduce those types of books. We have found that by finding high quality books from different themes/genres increases the likelihood of students wanting to read more, and that is the goal.

How can it improve student success?

Book Talk can improve student success because it is designed to help students find engaging books to read. We carefully selected high interest books that we have either read, students have read and recommended, or books from top lists recommended by teachers. When a student has a book that s/he is interested in, the chances of finishing the book go up dramatically. We all know that the more a student reads and understands the better scores s/he will have in school in all subjects.

How does it engage students?

To put it simply, good books equal reading success. We all have had struggling readers in our classroom. It is now time that we provide them with a list of high quality literature to choose from. There are no more excuses of not being able to find a good book. When a student finds a book that s/he likes, it leads to looking for more books by the author or in that genre as well. The joy of reading is contagious and we have seen increased engagement in our students.

It is now time for you to give Book Talk a try in your classroom!

What happens to the love of reading as students progress through the grade levels? Where are those same kids who couldn’t wait for a read aloud or who were so excited about starting a new book in reading groups?

What have we done as educators to put out the fire that students once had for books? It is not too late to change course and right the ship! We have some creative ways to bring that love of reading back to your upper elementary and middle school students.

Book Talks

When students get into the upper elementary and middle school levels, it is important to surround students with good books. Because kids at this age still love to be read out loud too, we do weekly book talks in regard to novels that are popular with their age group.

Many times it is just reading the book jacket to the students. When we do this, we sometimes have a student, or two, that has read the book. That gives the book a little bit more credibility as an option for students.

We have compiled a list of books that are popular to share with students throughout the school year with a summary of each. These books have been big hits with our students. Check out our massive Book Talk resource here.

Allow Choice

One of the biggest mistakes a teacher can make is not allowing students to make their own choices about the books they are reading.

Yes, we all have reservations about graphic novels, Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, and other easy to read books, but if that is what a student needs to get off and running with reading, please do not limit choice!

Even when we do our book talks centered around a theme or genre, we never want to assign one book to fit all students. Please allow choice in those areas and you will have more vested interest from your students.

For whatever theme or genre we are focusing on, we usually have at least four books for students to choose from. But if they have a title that fits the criteria that they want to read, by all means let them!

Reading Contests

At some point in our teaching careers monthly reading contests were tied into the number of minutes or number of pages students had to read in a month in order to get some sort of incentive. This method DID work with some students, but not all of them.

We had to rethink the wheel and figure out what is an attainable goal that all students could reach? We know that every child is different and reads at a different pace. That is why our reading contests are centered around the number of books that fit the theme or genre of the month.

For example, if the theme is “overcoming obstacles” we would require books that fit that theme to be read by the end of the month. Popular titles like Hatchet, Wonder, Fish in a Tree, or Holes can fit this category.

We have created “themed” reading logs with book suggestions for students to use throughout the year. You can find those as part of our Book Club bundle.

Special Days

Special reading days should become a normal part of your school year.

A favorite of our students is campfire/flashlight reading. We find a youtube video of a campfire and have that playing on our screen. We then pass out individual small flashlights to our students. They are free to move about the room and find a spot to read. They love this.

Another popular choice is outside reading. Students love to take their books outside and find a quiet place to read. Make sure to bring your own book too so you can model reading as well.

Sometimes it is as easy as finding a different location in your building to have students read. It could be the hallways, the cafeteria, the gym, or even an empty classroom, but getting out of your own room can be fun and exciting for students.

We know there has been recent controversy around celebrating Dr. Seuss’ birthday, but Read Across America Day should still be celebrated. You can use this day to celebrate reading in so many ways. Maybe this is a day that you allow comic books, graphic novels, picture books, newspapers and any other form of reading for students. We have even had stations on this day where students read to each other, listen to books being read aloud, silent read, and then design a book jacket for their favorite book!

Learning about different holidays with literature is also a great way to introduce students to different celebrations around the world. This is especially important if you have a student in your classroom that celebrates a holiday that is not a mainstream one such as Christmas or Easter.

Self-Motivation Through Assessments

The biggest motivator that you can provide for your students is data. When students come into your classroom you probably have some data points to look at. It might be STAR, AIMSweb, state testing, running records, or even Accelerated Reader, but there should be some data as to what level each child is at in regard to reading.

You need to sit down with each child and show him/her the score that s/he is beginning the year with. This data point is something that should be written down and a goal should be made to improve that score.

Then, track the students’ scores throughout the year and continue to revise goals. Celebrate successes when students show improvement in their reading scores.