We’re enjoying winter break in Western New York this week, and I’m glad to have some extra time to myself to catch up on all sorts of fun things like laundry, tax preparation, and car maintenance. Did I mention the dentist? I have to schedule that appointment too.

At times, I’m a huge procrastinator, and there is no better way to stall than logging on to Twitter and asking for some help from my friends there. This is how I blew through six hours there yesterday: I asked if anyone would be willing to share some of their favorite alternatives to the traditional book report. So many people shared so many stellar ideas that I’m going to have to devote a series of posts to this topic rather than the single post I had intended to.

Stick around for the next few days. We’ll be talking about approaching reader response in all kinds of creative ways. From paper and pen projects to generating mind-maps and using social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace to reveal plot, mood, and character, I’m hoping to provide you with the best of what my network on Twitter provided me. I’ll be sure to share my own ideas as well, and I’m hoping that some of you will add your inspiration within the comments field.

So tell me, what are your alternatives to traditional book reports?

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2 Comments

  1. We’ve used several tech tools to good effect in my primary building. For example, one of my 2nd grade read several global versions of the Cinderella story with their classroom teacher, and then used VoiceThread to talk about their favorites. My kindergarten classes are reading and then retelling Red Riding Hood using costumes, a digital camera, and VoiceThread. Another K class read the Caldecott-winning Flotsam with me, and drew pictures of “what happened next” after the story ends. I used PhotoStory, Glogster & a PBWiki page to share their work: http://squareone.pbwiki.com/Flotsam

    • Thanks so much for adding this in! I’m hoping that others will jump in too. We had such a great banter going about this on Twitter yesterday. Trying to capture some of that here. Hope you are enjoying your trip, Anne-Marie!

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