Weekly Book Reports

One successful activity I started a few years ago was a weekly book report. Each Tuesday students were assigned a new book report to be completed by the following Tuesday. I chose Tuesday as this was the day we went as a class to the media center. I had many reasons for giving this assignment. I wanted students to interact more with the independent reading they were doing. I wanted to hear about what was being read. I wanted an independent assignment that students could practice time management and organization.

 

I only set aside time to explain the assignment, usually right before we left for the media center. Students were not to take the assignment home, as I did not want parent involvement. I also did not accept them late. I would remind students for the first couple of weeks to work on it during independent times. I posted a sample on the board illustrating what was expected along with the due date and extra copies.

 

My requirements were the same every week. To receive full credit on the assignment, students were given the following criteria:

• Correct capitalization, punctuation, and spelling of the title and author information.
• Correct capitalization, punctuation, and spelling of "known" words used in sentences.
• Paper should be relatively free of unnecessary wrinkles and creases.
• Some color must be added to the graphic but the content should still be able to be read. (This was important, as I wanted students to take pride in making a finished product. Even if all they colored were the eyes on the animal graphic, they received credit, as some students do not enjoy coloring.)
• Content​. Student responses should be on level, make sense and be aligned to the assignment objective.

I had great success with these. I spent a lot of time on my sample and would show students how I cared about the assignment. After a few weeks, I would only had to remind them on Tuesday that if it were not done, they had until the end of the day to turn it in. My students were independent with the assignment before too long and I saw tremendous growth in their writing skills.

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Book Report