Lesson Plan
This lesson encourages a continuing classroom conversation about books and reading.The PowerPoint contains visual prompts to help students begin sharing experiences with finding appealing books to read.It is especially useful for reluctant and struggling readers.
1. The Warm-Up activity asks students to look at three different book covers to decide which book they would most like to read. This activity may be done orally in a whole class group, as a Think-Pair-Share with a partner, or as a written journal entry. The three covers are, of course, very different but are all from the same book.
2. Students will look at covers from the Bluford Series, including both the original covers with drawings and the newer covers with photographs of "hotter" teens. Students will understand that covers are both hooks to help make books appealing to readers and hints about the contents and topics of books.
3. Students will read several summaries of Bluford books, noting that questions are used to draw in readers.
4. A brief aside asks students to consider the meaning and truth of the expression "Never judge a book by its cover." A link to the Paul Potts audition in which judges were led by the external appearance of Paul Potts to expect very little of his singing ability.
5. Students will provide ideas for how to find a good book. This PowerPoint promotes reading multiple titles in an apealing series.
6. Students will complete a book jacket project and use the book jacket for a Book Talk. The catch is that the book must be "The Best Book I Never Read." In other words, students will dream up a book they would like to read, and then create a jacket with graphics and a summary, along with a title page and table of contents, to use as a mock up when presenting the book to the class. This project will require students to think about what they enjoy reading and help them define themselves as readers.
