Reading Without Walls Challenge

The project

To start the new year I decided to have my students take a closer look at their reading and challenge themselves as readers.  I used Gene Luen Yang's Reading Without Walls challenge. We would spend some time in our collection identifying a variety of books to challenge our reading selves.

Our 1st challenge - topics we don't know much about

What I learned

My students WILL read outside of their comfort zone if I provide them with the time and tools to do so.  Having their friends invested in this journey with them played a huge role.  I watched books get checked out that have sat on shelves for ages.  Sharing choices was key.  Here was how Day 1 of the 2 day challenge went:

The lesson

We began by discussing what our favorite kind of books are - we all have those.  The challenge was to read outside of our comfort zone.  We talked about what might happen.  I proposed the 3 part challenge:

Our return to school following vacation was rather rocky so I decided we needed to slow things down and just focus on part 1 (Topic) for this week.  After we talked about where we might find these books (nonfiction section),  I had students go identify an appropriate book and bring it back to the rug.





3rd-5th graders noted the name of the book on their sheet for their "topic" challenge before continuing with the activity.



1st and 2nd graders chose a book and returned to the perimeter of the rug (no sheet to write their findings) where we then had a "30 second book preview" activity (all grades did this activity).  Students had 30 seconds to look through the book then pass it on to the next student.  I attempted to do this activity in silence, but the commentary was priceless and I ended up abandoning that idea.  I heard the following comments
  • Woa!
  • Ew!
  • Ooh!
  • This one's heavy
  • So adorable
  • This is fun
I asked students to raise their hands if they agreed with the following statements

I saw a book that 
  • I already knew a lot about
  • I might like to read
  • I knew nothing about
  • was cute
  • was gross
  • was interesting (this had the most hands raised)


The best part of the activity was having the students put the books on the floor in front of them when they were done.  I then told them that while they didn't have to choose the book they picked off the shelf, they were welcome to do so or were welcome to choose one that a friend chose.  I would pick up the rest and put them on a cart to be reshelved.  I picked up very few in the younger grades. In fact, I ended up settling more debates about who could take certain books home because more than 1 child wanted to read them.   Fourth and fifth graders were a bit more reluctant.  I can't wait to see how parts two and three pan out next week!


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