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Here is a fun way to help motivate students when they do not know what books to read. Links are included in the post to make the recommendation bubbles. Be sure to have other grade level teachers, the principal, special area teachers, etc...come in and write a recommendation too! Your students are bound to love reading books they know their friends and teachers have enjoyed!

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Motivating students to become wild readers is always one of my top priorities each school year. From ridiculously engaging read-aloud voices to weekly themed shelves, I am willing to pull out all the stops because growing readers matters. One of the easiest ways to achieve student book buy-in is peer pressure! Getting students to suggest books to other students immediately validates the recommendation. Today I wanted to share one way I have students share their favorite books with their friends.

Where Do Book Recommendations Fit?

Using a Daily 5 model for our reading block, my 1st graders spend 20-30 minutes reading (by themselves or with a friend) each day. As a class, we often talk about the books we are reading and in between rounds/choices students will bring a book to the carpet. This is a signal to me that the student wants to share what they are reading/learning with a friend.

If a friend finds a book they are particularly interested in or captivates their attention, we have introduced Book Blurb recommendations. I used these blurbs in 5th grade, and am excited to start using them in 1st grade! Our standard for writing a blurb is that it is a book you want to read over and over again.

The Common Core has an entire ELA Strand devoted to Speaking and Listening Standards. Book Blurbs and Recommendations give students the perfect opportunity for students to speak in front of their peers and respond in a real way (reading the book or not reading the book). Additionally, one of the 1st grade opinion writing standard is " Students will... write opinion pieces in which they introduce the topic or name the book they are writing about, state an opinion, supply a reason for the opinion, and provide some sense of closure."

Book Recommendations in Action

When students have found that PERFECT book that everyone needs to read, they may grab a blurb bubble from Work on Writing. Right now, students are using the sentence started "You should read this book because..." but eventually we will learn to structure our own sentences and eventually, paragraphs. ( Grab the template for free here.) This friend loved Ninja Red Riding Hood. Her recommendation read "You should read this book because it is like Red Riding Hood but better. It has ninjas." 1st grade standards, people!

In between each round of choice, students may bring their book blurbs to the carpet to share. They love introducing a book to the class and reading why their friends should also pick the book. Every 3-4 days, I pick 4 or 5 of the blurbs to attach to books.

I use a large paper clip to attach the book blurb to the book. When students decide to read the book, they place the blurb back in our Work on Writing spot for recommendations or take it with them as they enjoy the book.

When students enjoy the book, they return it to our window sill or whiteboard tray for other friends to read!

Currently our book recommendations are sitting on our whiteboard ledge. In 5th grade, our books and book blurbs were propped on a window sill using plate stands from Hobby Lobby.

Using Book Recommendations in Your Classroom

So, are you ready to introduce book blurbs as a way for students to share must-reads to their friends? If so, here is a game plan -

1. Model. Model. Model. (with Words) Before introducing book recommendations, model introducing and picking highlights as you do class read-alouds. "Today we read Duck on a Bike I love this book because all the animals end up riding bikes. It is so silly and always makes me laugh."

2. Model. Model. Model. (with Writing) Although I expect students to write recommendations on must-read books, for a week before I introduced them as an independent choice, we wrote a recommendation on every.single.book we read together. So, whether we read 2 or 3 books a day, we wrote a recommendation together.

3. Organize Your Materials Make copies of the recommendation form (snag it from here free) and find a home base for it. Figure out how you want students to turn it in/share their recommendations (we bring ours to the carpet in between Daily 5 rounds). Then, choose a day of the week for choosing which recommendations to display. (If you have TONS of recommendations in a week and want to encourage all students, you might decide to fill your library display shelf with all the recommendations!)

4. Launch Now, it's time to release and make tweaks based on what works and what doesn't. As your launch, BE EXCITED! This is a huge step for your readers and they will love it. Sharing books has power, so hold on.

What are your favorite ways to get students talking about their reading? Having students talk about their reading and recommending books is a HUGE part in motivating readers, so I'd love to hear your ideas!

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Book Recommendations: Student to Student - The Brown Bag Teacher

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Motivating students to become wild readers is always one of my top priorities each school year. From ridiculously engaging read-aloud voices to weekly themed shelves, I am willing to pull out all the stops because growing readers matters. One of the easiest ways to achieve student book buy-in is peer pressure!

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Here is the full post for this challenge. If we have enough interest at each school, we can create a display in the front hallway or on a large wall space somewhere in the building for everyone to see. Please comment if you think this would be a good way to motivate and engage our readers.

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Over the last few years, thousands of teachers have used my Tower of Books Challenge with their students as an engaging independent reading challenge, often replacing a stuck-in-a-rut reading log. (You know the one... that chart with good intentions of ensuring students are consistently reading but eventually becomes a roll-of-the-eyes chore void of any student motivation. Yeah, that one.)

I recently did a huge makeover of the challenge, with better, brighter color-schemes (two fun choices now!), updated fonts, and overall better organization. And even more recently, I added several pages of accountability and extension ideas to give you even more options and flexibility.

I've never really blogged about Tower of Books, but with the recent updates, I thought it would be a good time to create a post that explains them and answers several of the most common questions I receive regarding the resource.

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What IS the Tower of Books Challenge?

The Tower of Books Challenge is based on two core ideas: to widen students' reading choices and to provide a fresh and motivating way to keep track of what they read.

Students are given a reading list with numerous genres and categories of books they must read to meet the challenge. For each book students read, they create a book cut-out from the printable files, fill in their book information, and begin forming their... Tower of Books!

Towers can be built with 2D book spines, each one representing a book read from the category list:

Or, towers can be built with 3D book look-a-likes, each one representing a book read from the category list:

Lots of different category lists are are included to help you suit the challenge to your students, as well as parent letters, a reader pledge and other activities to help with accountability, and even "Master Stacker" award certificates.

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Michael, there are so many options. Can you walk me through the decisions I need to make to get this thing up and running?

Options are good as long as you know what they are and how to use them, right? Tower of Books has grown to include lots of choices, designed to (1) help you suit your needs for your specific group of students, and (2) allow you to have future challenges that are different from your first.But if you're just getting started, it might be helpful to check out this "Quick Start Guide" video I made to get The Tower of Books Challenge up and running:

So to summarize the main points in the video...

Choose a 20, 30, or 40 book challenge. How many books do you want your students to read? Think about the age of your students and the time frame you have in mind.

Choose a category list. Students will read books that fit into each category on the list you choose. There are nine different lists, each one varying in genre, book type, and quirkiness, and each one comes in all three amounts (20, 30, and 40 books). And there's an editable category list too, in case you want to customize a list even more.

Choose a format for how students will keep track of the books they read. You can do the two-dimensional version or three-dimensional version, or there's even a "paper saver" version where everything's recorded onto one sheet of paper.

Whether you do the 2-D or 3-D version, you get to pick which color scheme you prefer: a retro chevron theme or a bright colors theme, or save some ink and use the blackline version.
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Michael, I love the idea of the Tower of Books Challenge but I don't think I have the space to display it all. What suggestions do you have?

Space to display the lengthy two-dimensional tower mats or the the three-dimensional stacks of paper prisms might be limited. Many teachers find it helpful to have students keep their towers at home, even if the bulk of the challenge is done in class. But keeping everything at school might still be doable! Consider some of these ideas:

For 2D towers kept at school , an easy solution to not having enough display space is to simply not display the towers. Instead, have students keep their tower mats rolled up like a scroll. When students need to add another book spine to their tower, they simply unroll their scroll. But if you are looking for space to display the tower mats, consider using the hallway, which often has miles of unused space. Still, I'm not sure any place beats hanging the tower mat on the refrigerator at home.

For 3D towers kept school , consider using window sills, tops of book cases, or that often unused floor space underneath your whiteboard. It might not take long for towers to start falling over, so consider having students add a bubble of tape in between each book prism. You also might consider asking your media specialist if you can stack towers on top of book cases in the school library.

If none of those options will do the trick, consider using the Paper Saver version of the challenge, which condenses the 2D tower mat onto one sheet of paper. It's obviously not as dramatic of a way to track students' reading but the practical trade-off might be necessary.

One strategy that makes a lot of sense is to use one of the original tower methods for the first Tower of Books Challenge that you do with your class, but then with future challenges, use the Paper Saver version of tracking. Changing the category list for these future challenges keeps them fresh and student engagement high.

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Michael, does Tower of Books have to be an independent challenge?

While the original intent of Tower of Books was to be an independent challenge, it has the flexibility to be used in other ways too. Here are three of the coolest ideas teachers have come up with:

Whole Class Record: Many teachers have used Tower of Books to keep track of all the books read aloud in class. Whether novels, mentor text picture books, or even basal stories, using Tower of Books in this way is a fun way to see all the reading the class has done together as well as the wide array of genres, too!

Class vs. Class: If multiple classes have a license for the Tower of Books, try a friendly class vs. class competition, or even a challenge between the whole grade level!

Small Group Teams: My favorite spinoff for Tower of Books is to form small group teams with about 2-4 students per team, where each team works together to complete the challenge. It's a great way to incorporate some interpersonal skills, hold each other accountable, AND it really cuts down on the materials needed.

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Michael, I worry about accountability. How can I ensure students are really doing the reading?

Holding students accountable for actually reading the books for the challenge can be tricky. As with anything, the more accountability measures you take, the more risk you have of decreasing student excitement and increasing your own workload. So, try to strike a balance so students are still motivated to read and complete the challenge, but do so with integrity.

I've added several pages to the Tower of Books resource to help give you ideas for more accountability. One of the simplest is a "Reader Pledge" that you can have students sign prior to starting the challenge.

I like how the pledge makes clear that "an honest short tower is better than a dishonest tall tower." Of course, this may not suddenly make someone honest. As Taylor Swift says, fakers gonna fake. But at least this pledge lays out the foundation for what's important.

Once the challenge has started, try choosing a couple of the new activity sheets to help hold students accountable for reading the whole book. These pages include summary sheets, book reviews, and book recommendations.

Now, if it's me, I would not want to require students to write a full-on summary for every book they read for the challenge. The motivation factor can really start to dwindle after a week or so. Plus, who wants to check all those summaries? Not me.

I know what you're thinking... If I only require students to write summaries for certain books, then they'll just make sure to read those books only. Here's the trick: you require a certain number of summaries (or reviews, or recommendations, or a combination) for the books read in the challenge, BUT, you don't tell them which books they'll do summaries for until after they've added them to their towers. For example, you tell students, "Boys and girls, after you have five books in your tower, I'll tell you for which one of those five books you need to write a summary. So be sure you've really read all five books so you are prepared."

One way to do this is to roll a die after every five books to determine which of the five books students must summarize. If a two is rolled, students summarize the second book in their tower, and so on. Or for every ten books, flip a coin: heads, you write book reviews for all the even numbered books in your tower; tails, you do the odds.

Another method of accountability is to, from the outset, make students aware that throughout the challenge you will be asking them to complete activities involving the books they read and add to their towers. (Not the actual, physical book, though. That would be impractical to keep them all handy. But that's okay, because students have a record of their books within their towers!)

The key here is not to show all your cards at the beginning. Informing students that they'll need to have really read their books, beginning to end, in order to complete these activities, is all you really want to tell students at the beginning. Leaving the details for later is important in preventing certain students from finding the loopholes.

One engaging and not-super-time-consuming activity to throw in once or twice at any point in the challenge is a book sort. Maybe halfway through, when you know all students have completed a certain number books, ten for instance, have a book sort. (Some students may be well beyond ten books--that's okay!) You randomly choose five numbers within the minimum number of books completed and students use those books for the sort. For example, "Boys and girls, I want you to check your towers and use the books with the following numbers for the sort: #3, #5, #6, #9, and #10." Then have students sort these five books into two groups. You can have students determine how to sort them, or use the included sort, "Books I'd read again" and "Books I would not read again." Students then explain their reasoning behind sorting each book the way they did.

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If you've already purchased The Tower of Books Challenge, be sure you've gotten the latest updates with the accountability and extension pages. You can do that by simply redownloading the resource from your "My Purchases" tab on TeachersPayTeachers.

For details on purchasing The Tower of Books Challenge, click HERE or the image above.

Now get to stackin' everybody!

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The Tower of Books Challenge: A Reading Log Alternative

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Over the last few years, thousands of teachers have used my Tower of Books Challenge with their students as an engaging independent reading challenge, often replacing a stuck-in-a-rut reading log. (You know the one... that chart with good intentions of ensuring students are consistently reading but eventually becomes a roll-of-the-eyes chore void of any student motivation.