Monday, April 17, 2017

Book Talks - It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

I love joining Teach Mentor Texts and Unleashing Readers each week to share my reading life.

 Squeezing this post in under the wire. I have to head for a track meet shortly to cheer on my boys. 

 I didn't read a ton this week, 

but what I did want to share was how I was going to begin recommending books. As always, it is good to surround yourself with smart people. My friend Colby Sharp posted on his blog this morning that he was using Instagram's Stories to do book talks. (Read his post HERE) I was immediately excited.

 See I've used Padlet for years for book talks, and it's great. We even tried to incorporate video book talks with Flipgrid. What I like about the idea behind Instagram Stories book talks was that it could solve two problems for me. 

 One, I've always posted photos of what I read on Instagram, and I will continue to do so. Recently a former student who is in 8th grade made a comment to me that he wished I could talk to him about the books I posted, that reading what I wrote wasn't the same as hearing about it. Using Instagram Stories to give quick book talks could solve that issue for him. I can do quick book talks and it won't clog up my Instagram feed, my students that follow me can look at them or not in the Stories part of the app.

 Two, I think I'm going to make an Instagram account for my class, much like our Twitter account. This is linked to one iPad in my classroom. Students can go up and share a quick book talk in the Stories part of Instagram. Because they can only be 15 seconds long, they will have to think ahead on what they are going to say and be concise - a skill they could all work on a bit. 

 Thanks, Colby, for the inspiration. Colby's working on a hashtag for this idea of his. Follow him on Twitter or Instagram to see what one he lands on. And if I get our class account working, I'll post from our Twitter account (@sageshoots) or my Twitter account (@katsok) tomorrow. Thanks!

 Here are two quick reviews I posted today: 
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