A Book Report Makeover

Today I was going through posters I had my students make entitled, “Top 4 of 4^th.”  They highlighted four things they enjoyed about fourth grade, and I’ll hang them in the hall for Open House in August.  Most of the students illustrated topics like field trips, games they played at recess, or even talking to their friends at lunch.  But what really surprised me is that a couple of kids drew their book report they just completed for an end-of-year project.  Granted it was fresh on their minds but I was still surprised to see it made anyone’s Top 4 list.  Must not be half bad for a book report if I do say so myself!

One of my greatest missions as an upper elementary teacher is to get kids excited about reading QUALITY literature.  No offense to the wimpy kid and his diary, but sometimes I cringe at the difference in the average book I find in my fourth graders hands compared to the ones we read in elementary school.  One way that I encourage my students to read meaningful books is by requiring each of them to read and complete a book report on a Newbery Award winning book as their final project at the end of the year.  Then, we share these book reports the last week of school and it gives the kids some ideas for summer reading (hopefully).  

I signed up for a TPT Seller Challenge and the first challenge was to make over an existing product from your TPT store.  Since it had been on my mind today, I chose to make over my book report.  I love this product because it is Common Core aligned for third through fifth grade, so you can mix and match the pages that fit your students.  There is a page for EVERY Reading (literature) Common Core standard for each grade level.

For Makeover Madness, I updated the color on the cover and changed the title so that it could be used for any quality or award winning novel, not just a Newbery winner.  I had unnecessary headers and footers, so I nixed them and updated the fonts.  I also noticed this year that my students had trouble fitting their writing on some of the pages, so I enlarged the graphics to give them more room to write.  I'm so excited about my new and improved book report!

My Award Winning Book Report a great way to review the standards from the previous year at the beginning of the year, or it can serve as a capstone to review a year’s worth of standards.  And the best part is it’s on sale for 20% off (only $1.60) Tuesday through Friday this week!  Check it out…