I'll do almost anything to "sell" a book to a reader. It doesn't matter if it's a student or adult, old friend or stranger in the grocery store - I'll try my best to be a #bookdealer and find that one perfect book for a reader. Thanks to Pinterest, I took every student at SPMS on a date with a book - several books - in February! BAHAHA! It was epic and amazing and FUN! I started with an overview of what speed dating was and how it worked... the kids were horrified at the amount of social interaction dating required:
Ahh, youth. Next, I went over the "Mrs. Hurley's 6 Rules for Dating" which (mostly) apply to both humans and books!
Then we moved into the speed dating area: Complete with red tableclothes, LED candles, heart decorations on the tables, vases with fake roses (shout out to the Dollar Tree for all the decorations!)... I even turned down the lights to "set the mood"! But by far the worst was the music. I streamed some of the worst covers of the world's cheesiest love songs. Some of my favorites were:
To be clear, I enjoy some of these songs... but the covers were AWFUL. And I blasted them as loud as my speakers would go! The students had 3 minutes with each "date". At the end, they had to rate their dates and write some notes about the date and why they gave it the rating that they assigned it. Click HERE for my rating sheet sample - this one was for 8th grade. Feel free to copy and remake as needed. Below are pictures of some of my kids mid-date. It was SO MUCH FUN! Hands down probably one of the most loved activities I've put together for my students! The best part was setting up those "second dates"... here is just one sample email I had from students immediately after classes. I received over 100 hold requests for books that were "dated" during this activity! One book had so many holds that I ordered 3 "emergency" copies (in addition to the two I already had) sent from Amazon and processed them the next day to put them in the collection... there were more than 15 requests just for that book!
It's important to note that not all of the books I put out were brand new. Many of these were great titles that I noticed weren't circulating. I am happy to say that all of those books are really feeling the love now! I even "sold" some of these books to staff members - some of whom weren't ELA teachers! They fell in love just by walking through and wondering what in the world was happening in the library... and they left with a hold on a book they couldn't imagine life without. YES. What books would you put out for your students? Comment below and let me know!!
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About the AuthorHi! Welcome to my blog! My name is Christine Hurley. This is my 17th year of teaching - I've taught Kindergarten, 4th grade, elementary media, and now I am in my 6th year of teaching middle school media! Archives
September 2020
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