JB Creations

“A bottle of red, a bottle of white…..” Okay, so it wasn’t exxxxaaaactly like Billy Joel’s Scenes from an Italian Restaurant song. But it was still one of those really magical days in my classroom! I always do a unit on genre at the beginning of the year. I love books and reading and have always enjoyed sharing that love with my students. But, I’ve got to admit that it’s gotten harder and harder to accomplish this. Over more recent years, I’ve sadly watched as my gently worn books get replaced by audio books and the other distractions in my young students’ lives greatly outweigh the pull of a good story. So, I decided to make reading fun again! I transformed my room into a “Book Genre Café” for an hour in the morning and then again in the afternoon. Tablecloths, soft music, and candle (electric) lit tables beckoned students to enter and wonder. Boxes of carefully selected books along with a book-rating menu greeted students at each table as their waiters (teachers, aides, even our school treasurer!) wondered from group to group, sharing some dramatic reading from the back covers of new genres.

The hour seemed to fly by. It was one of those special times when true engagement was occurring. Students were looking at books from unfamiliar genres with eager eyes, frantically writing down titles of those interesting-sounding books that they wanted to read on their “must read” bookmarks. As they moved from science fiction to fantasy to historical fiction, my students were immersed in sampling the best literature I could find. As the students went to recess, my teaching partner and I exchanged tired but genuine smiles as we quickly cleaned up our café. It had been a good day!