I don’t know about you, but I feel pressure to do it all! Promote books, read aloud, coding lessons, makerspace lessons, digital citizenship, media literacy, research. The list of things that I feel like I have to do in less than 30 weeks is overwhelming.
My friend and colleague and I hatched this plan that we would teach our 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students, in our separate schools, how to create quick book reviews. We thought that it would be a great way to generate excitement around books and that it would put our students in the driver’s seat as book promoters.
We wanted a way for them to promote books that would include media literacy and digital citizenship. For us, it made perfect sense for them to record their book reviews and share them.
We had to develop some simple criteria for our students to create a book review. What started out as multiple planning sheets that met the needs of different types of book reviews for different genres and mirrored a lot of the graphic organizers they used in Readers’ and Writers’ Workshops.
Our current book review requirements have been revised so that our students can review a variety of books in a short period of time. There is one planning sheet and rubric that can meet the different genres and opinions of a reader.
We knew that this would not be a skill that comes naturally. I remember that when I taught grades 3-5 writing a reading response with text evidence took a great deal of time. So, we knew that it would take some teaching and time!!! We decided that it would take a couple of weeks to:
This past year we did this in late October / early November. It just happened that this is when we came up with the idea. We were in an ISTE certification course together when we hatched this brain child. Next year, the plan is to build it into our Library Media Orientation.
After seeing their plans and resulting recorded reviews, it was clear that there was a need to hold students accountable for high quality work, do a deeper dive into what a text cited review looks and sounds like, and to develop a better way for them to collect evidence.
I spoke with the classroom teachers to make sure that we are seeing the same things and how we could collaborate to work on the skill of providing evidence, or supporting a claim. I decided to turn this into a synchronous Classcraft Quest. I say synchronous, because I want them to complete certain tasks within the quest within give time frames. I also thought this would be a great way for students to learn some time management skills when working within a self paced platform.
While I am reinforcing the skills for students to use evidence to support a claim, I am also teaching them some awesome media literacy skills and meeting a lot of ISTE Standards.
To add an additional layer of fun and gamification, I created this badge for students to download when they finish the quest. They get to show it off in their Seesaw portfolio so their families can see what they’ve been up to in Library Media.
I made this with Makebadges; a super quick way to make badges on the fly!
Students are learning how to take notes in real time and crowdsource those notes. While we practice, I will read aloud to students and they will type evidence that supports a claim into a shared link. I did this slightly differently for different grade levels. Grade 3 is submitting text evidence in an Answer Garden, Grade 3 in a Padlet, and Grade 5 in a Google Slide. They will then use that crowdsourced evidence to plan and execute their review.
Students are recording their reviews. My students are recording their reviews in Flipgrid. My colleague’s students are recording their reviews in Seesaw. We are teaching them that they are sharing for a specific purpose and to convince other students in the districts what books they should read next.
We are also teaching them that they can personalize the video while also demonstrating appropriate recording behavior. This can be tricky, because there are a lot of YouTube videos out on popular channels they watch that have people talking to people off screen, or being super silly and off task on screen. There is a time and place for that as it does add a comedic element, just not for this particular purpose or with their current skill level.
After recording their review, we teach them how to review another person’s review. This is a great way to build their own review skills! It is also a great way for students to learn how to interact with others online. Both Flipgrid and Seesaw provide opportunities for that.
They learn how to comment well so that it stays ‘professional’ and empathetic while not becoming personal.
They learn how to be a bit more conservative with the like button. Even adults mindlessly click the like button online, but why are we really clicking it?
Not to mention that we should be creating content that has purpose for the greater good, not just to garner likes.
After initially teaching the students our expectations, our students complete book reviews during book circulation. We have found that it really helps with behavior to have students engaged in a task after checking out books or while they take turns checking out books. I leave about 15 minutes at the end of each class for students to borrow books and complete a book review. Sometimes it takes them two classes to do this: one to plan it and the next to record it, but that’s okay! In the end, they will gain important skills that will support them as critical thinkers and global digital citizens.
