Light at the end of the tunnel

Ah... bookfair, thieves and dictionary days! What a combo. Sad that a couple of kids made bad choices but almost all made good choices and enjoyed looking at the books. One of my big goals is to get kids to realize that there's good stuff in books and that there's a book for everyone. Even though I won't buy Bart Simpson for the library, I think it's good that kids were interested enough in something in print to want to sit on the floor and read through it. Good stuff.

Although watching the author video is good, a lot of the kids can't sit still through the whole 15 minutes. Even though I asked them to watch it and think about which books they liked and thought we should get for the library, it still wasn't quite as engaging as I'd like. Next year, I need to preview the video and plan something a little more structured for the rest of the lesson - particularly for the 4th and 5th graders since they have more time. Scholastic has some lessons online that go with the books in the bookfair so maybe I can use one of two of them and correlate them with some of the library/LA standards.

Giving them 3 bookmarks and having them choose the books that interest them was a good way for me to get feedback and have them make some critical choices. Interesting to see the differences among the classes. Pretty predictable based on reading level.

Another note to self: Don't schedule the bookfair during dictionary days. Makes it difficult to do justice to both.

'nuff.

posted by Bookworm @ 8:12 PM