Speed Booking

 Last night, I realized that my open house date is a month away! Yikes! Where is summer going? Slightly panicked, I got into school mode and started to get my wheels turning about some of my back to school activities. I find the first two weeks of school the most stressful... I always question what to do? where to start? should I try something new? etc. I'm feeling more confident about next year as we just redesigned our reading, writing, and social studies calendars as a department last year.

Today, I thought I'd share a simple reading activity for the first week of school! It's called Speed Booking. My Awesome Teaching Partner Chelsea came back with the idea after our district's Columbia Home Grown Workshop last year. It's a great way to get students talking about reading the first week of school! It's nothing fancy or time consuming but it works! It's a rip on Speed Dating where students shuffle partners and talk about books for 3 minutes together. It's completely nonthreatening and is a great way to start to foster that "I LOVE" books mojo in the classroom. Last year, I modeled talking about a book I read over the summer first - to show it's no big deal. If a student read absolutely NOTHING over the summer, I let them choose a favorite book from last year.

Here's what my teaching partner and I projected on the SMARTboard:

Last year, notes were optional but lots of students were writing down short ideas about their partner and books. This year, I made a handout that students can fill in during the 3 minutes. You can grab the handouts by clicking the image!

I also added a reflection sheet for any books students might want to read throughout the year. If you want to read about another school's take on Speed Book you can check out this article.

What do you do the first week of school for reading?