The first week of school I like to introduce the kids to each textbook we will use throughout the year. This gets kids excited about what we will be studying, and it gives a point of reference for later in the year. This activity is SUPER easy.
- I pass out 3 post-its to each student, and tell them they have X number of minutes to page though their reading book and mark stories they think look the most interesting.
- They can move their post-it notes as many times as they want to, so they can mark 3 stories, then change their mind.
- I put on some music and let the kids go to town! Note: there is a lot of talking during this activity, and I don’t “shush” them because they are such great conversations! “Ohhh, this one looks good!”, “Turn to page 413, there is pictures from space!”, “Whoa, look at this!” Those are conversations that make my teacher heart smile :)
- When the time is up, I ask, “Who found a story that looks really good?” I call on a student who tells me a title. I tell all the kids to turn to that page. “Does anyone else have a post-it on that story?”
- I write the title of the story on the bottom of the whiteboard, and each student who marked that story comes up and puts their post-it end to end to create a bar graph.
- Then, I ask, “Who has another story that looks really good?” And we do it again!
- By the end we have a bar graph of the most anticipated stories of the year.
While this sounds like a great activity but doesn’t it create a fair amount of devision in the kids in the class? Eg: If a student picks a story that’s really unpopular won’t they be teased about it by the others?
Also, kids tend to copy other kids so the line up will be very distorted? I never quite understood why teachers did this. Please enlighten me.
I never thought about that before, and in my 4 years doing this activity, we never have had that problem. I had a lot more kids say, “Wow, I didn’t see that story!”. Also, I use moments like that to teach some interpersonal skills about having different opinions.
I have the kids spend about 10 minutes paging through the books and putting their post-it notes in their book and then putting them up on the board…so by the time we are done it is pretty accurate. Although, every year there are stories that tend to be really popular…like one about baby seals. I’ve found that it is a quick, fun way for the kids to preview their book.
Hope that answers your question.
Amy aka The Nerdy Teacher