Book Talks!
Book talks are a wonderful way to begin your reading workshop, especially in the beginning of the school year. It is important to do many of them in the beginning of the year and then maybe a couple a week throughout the year. Once you give a book talk, you will hook your readers into reading!
Book talks are 2-3 minutes long, like a mini-commercial about a specific book in your classroom library. Try to start with books that you are excited about yourself. Your students will feed off your enthusiasm and will be anxious to read the book themselves. Reluctant readers will be more willing to choose a book to read when they see that their peers want to read a certain book that you have recommended.
When thinking about how to give a book talk there are many different options: give a brief summary, read a section from the text, show the illustrations, describe why you like the book, why others recommend the text, or even tell a part of the text from one of the character's point of view. Make sure that you select books that are different genres, topics, authors, and series. This will help to expose your students to a variety of texts.
While giving a book talk, have your students write down the title of the book and the author in a notebook, so that they have a running list of books that they would like to read. Especially since you may only have 1-2 copies in your library and MANY students will want to read the book immediately after you have completed your recommendation. This will also help to decrease the time that students spend in the library searching for a book to read. If they have a list, they just have to review it and then locate the text. Remember to remind your students to choose a "just right" book (one that they can read on their own- not too hard or too easy).
Scholastic is a wonderful resource for book talks. The site has interviews with authors about specific books that they have written, as well as videos that recommend books to students. Visit the following site to locate your next book talk in your classroom:
http://www.scholastic.com/librarians/ab/booktalks.htm
Once your students have heard many different book talks, show them how to give their own recommendation to their peers about the books that they enjoy from the classroom library. This will help to work on many different skills such as: summarizing, persuading, use of voice in writing, and presentation skills.
Here are some of the books that have recently been recommended in the classroom that I team teach in:
Go ahead... try them out in your classroom and watch the books fly off your shelves!
