Book Talk with a Little Bit of Pi on the Side

Before I get to book talks, let me say how much I appreciate all your comments regarding teacher observations..  It was really eye-opening to see the wide variety of practices in place.  I also wasn't aware that tenure had been completely abolished in some states.  It makes for interesting thought to see that we all have the same job with the same important goal of educating our youth, however what we do is open to such a variety of rigor in its evaluation.  Gave me a lot of food for thought.

Moving on. . .

My friends conducted book talks this week.  Overall, they did a really good job.  They were to sell their book as if they were giving a cheesy infomercial.  Kind of silly, but lots of fun.  They had to summarize their book and "sell" it to their classmates without giving away the ending.

As part of the project, they also had to create a t-shirt that reflects the book.  One of the main things I noticed at this book talk was how much better their public speaking skills were from the book talks we did last month.  I don't know if it was the cheesy infomercial effect, but most had memorized their talks rather than reading them from note cards.  They also had a lot more eye contact and variety in volume and inflection when they spoke.

I thought I would share some of what they did.  Since I can't show faces, I took two pictures.  One for our school blog and then another without their head for this blog.  Yikes!  That sounds so mean, to have cut their heads off in the pictures.  I just didn't want to take the time to blurr out the faces!  Let's just say this will allow you to focus without being charmed by a bunch of cute smiles! :-)

I categorized some of the pictures. 

• Here are few of my nonfiction readers.

This friend read Favorite Greek Myths by Mary Pope Osborne

I love that he created a glossary of the gods on the back of his shirt. 

This friend read a biography on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  She found it really interesting because she said kids always learn the same thing about Dr. King every year and through reading this book, she was able to learn new information.  Out of the mouths of babes! 

This book was a huge hit.  If you can think of any mythical monster, it is in this book.  It really was varied.  We read about creatures like Cerberus to the Jersey Devil.  His t-shirt was made of some of his favorite creatures.  It was good, but I would rather he drew them or made them in some way.

• The next crop of pictures are from a group I call my Girly Girls.  If there is a book about a boy, shopping, and nail polish this group is all over it!  I often have to remind them to stretch themselves as readers.  However, notice the book choices when left on their own.

I think you get the picture! 

• This next group would be some of my advanced readers.  They are a tough group.  They have very high reading levels, but finding books can be tough because the content is not always appropriate.  These books were chosen from at-home reading with parent approval.  In the classroom, I'm not sure I would have given a green light to all these books.  I find with advanced readers, they get caught up in being able to read advanced books, but don't really have the skills yet to deeply comprehend what they are reading.

Hands down my favorite shirt!  Look at the face of the boater.

If you are going to read Jaws by Peter Benchley, this is the perfect t-shirt!

Not a lot of information on it, but her book talk was great.

I should note that they all had more information about the book on the back of their t-shirts, but I figured we are already on picture overload without my posting two pictures of each.

Here's the funny thing about this particular book talk.  One of the rules was that you could not give away the ending of your book.  My friend who read the Hunger Games gave a great recap without telling the ending.  Of course, did I think about that when this friend got up to talk about the sequel, Catching Fire?  Oh my!  You should have hear the groans when in the course of talking about this book she totally told the ending to the first book.

• This last group of pictures is just a mish-mosh of different books my fifth graders are enjoying.



UPDATE (6/2013)  I have to thank you all as this is one of my most popular posts.  Over a year later I still get emails asking me for the rubric I used with this project.  I'm sad to report that I have looked high and low and just can't find it.  I have looked on my computer and even went through my files hoping I had a hard copy on file.  Nope. :-(  But, any rubric you would use for an oral book report would work.  

  Okay, one more UPDATE (6/2014)  Believe it or not, I still get emails asking me for a rubric for this project.  I still don't have one for ya!  BUT, I found a great one that will work beautifully.  It's a Teachers Pay Teachers product by Runde's Room, a great blogger with an amazing blog!  She has created a book talk pack that includes an information sheet, student guideline sheet, information organizer, and a rubric for assessment.  You can click HERE to go directly to the product.  I purchased it a while back, and can tell you it will work well with this project.  It wouldn't include the t-shirt for scoring, but you could just add that in and I think that would be easy to do if you follow what she did on the rubric.  Anyway, hope this helps those of you still looking for a book talk rubric.

So, that is what my friends have been up to this week.  Well, that and today was PI DAY!!!  We had a lot of fun.  The four other fifth grade teachers I work with and I rotated among the five classes doing different pi related activities.  Part of my activity was a reading of the book Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi by Cindy Neuschwander.

It's actually part of a series of books that does a fantastic job in explaining some geometry concepts in a very entertaining way.

We finished the day with pie, of course!  In all, my parents sent in eleven pies for twenty five children.  Yeah, I have a serious pie belly right now! But, oh it was good!

How was your pi day?