I don’t know about you but whenever I read a great book, I want to tell someone about it! Or EVERYONE about it! It’s like talking about something that happened in your own life. Authors that make their characters come to life makes me feel like I’m part of the story. It’s important that my students to understand and feel that too!

I make book recommendations a big part of my class, but I don’t want to be the only one recommending!

I want my students sharing about what they have read and then recommending books to their peers. This is what builds a reading community. Students start knowing who has similar tastes about books that they do. REAL LIFE!

We have several teachers at Shaw that if they recommend a book, you know it’s going to be good! Who doesn’t like reading a book your friend has read, because you can talk about it!!! Those are the best, book discussions. Isn’t that our goal as teachers to give our students a love for reading! Also, we are teaching our students how to have meaningful conversions.

My goal is to make my classroom like an Oprah Book Club!

This year I designed a bulletin board to organize student book recommendations. A place to keep them. Whenever my students tell me about a book, sometimes I forget who told me and I have to ask the class. Now I have a special place to house these.

What I do is put clipboards up with some book recommendation sheets. These sheets are labeled different genres. Students can just select which genre they are their book recommendation is and list the book, author, and their name. This way if a classmate wants to chat about it, they know where to go! Such a fun way to get students excited about books!

Get these recommendation sheets for free here!

In addition to these recommendation sheets, I also use this reading log with my students. This gets students thinking critically about their books by having them list them out, summarize them, list vivid vocabulary words, and any questions they had about the story. They can also list interesting topics, genres, and authors that they enjoy. The best part is that they’re completely digital! Students can complete these from anywhere.

I hope your students love this idea as much as mine did!