I gave my second book talk this week. I chose Holes because I know it so intimately- reading a book once a year for children will do that- and could focus on the presentation rather than the content.
Giving a book talk is not unlike giving a minilesson. Start with a hook to get the students' attention, present the information in a concise yet creative way and finish with something thought provoking to get them started on their own. It made me miss the classroom.
It was on my first day of teaching that I realized that teaching is acting. If you expect to be the center of attention (hopefully only briefly and for the express purpose of instruction) it is important to be articulate, animated, and attentive to the audience. Students will tune you out if you don't put on a good show.
Today I visited a Brooklyn grade school and the librarian taught her first grade class how to book talk. She modeled book talks for them, showed them kids and other teachers doing them from schooltube.com. Independently the students will have the opportunity to present book talks on books they love to their peers at the start of each library class. This is a fabulous idea to get kids to think about which parts of a book stay with them and get them to talk about the books with their classmates. It will also promote reading since kids are so influenced by their peers.
At the end of the book talks the librarian did not have multiple copies of each book she talked. This made me wonder- should you only book talk when you have multiple copies on the shelves? What procedure or routine could prevent students from bickering over books. One idea is to book talk several books at once but in a class of 25 this is not a complete solution.
The school where I teach is Spanish/English dual-language, but there is a considerable amount of dissent from students when it comes to working and learning in Spanish. Most are more comfortable in English and their Spanish competence is therefore disproportionate to English. Book talking in Spanish is going to be a fabulous way to entice students to read en Español. It will also provide them with support as they begin the book because they will already have a sense of what it is about.
Here is a list of book talking resources from YALSA:
http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/profdev/booktalking.cfm
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Great post! I loved reading about the school librarian teaching her first graders how to do it. I'll be they LOVE it. Lots of good thoughts here--I think you bring up a really good point about active teaching and how that applies to booktalks.
ReplyDeleteAnd, good for you for choosing a book you're familiar with and love for the booktalk from class. Just as a side note, for the very reason you described, I'm wondering if a librarian would really ever need to booktalk Holes for a class since they're already reading it? Now that I'm thinking about it, it might be a great way to get the kids excited about their required class reading.
Again, good post!
I think you're right, Jack- no librarian would need to booktalk Holes, but mostly because there is a popular movie version of the book. That in and of itself gets kids excited about reading it. Unfortunately it also strips away a lot of the surprises and twists in the plot.
ReplyDelete