After several Think Alouds on my part as well as peer sharing of how students choose books to read, I begin to feel students are engaging in the books they choose. As more and more students reflect greater expertise and comfort with choosing their independent reading books, I try to set up a situation in which the students can apply what we have been talking about. We do “Book Bag Browsing” with the books from my classroom bookshelves. I ‘bag’ eight sets of 8 to 10 books in plastic shopping bags. Each bag includes a variety of genres and types of books available in the classroom library, including a book or two from a series, perhaps a book that was made into a movie, or thin books, both fiction and non-fiction.
I divide my students into groups of 4. Each group spreads a bag of books on their cluster of desks. They have a short length of time, 3 to 5 minutes, to steep themselves in previewing the books in any way they want. When time is up, students record in their “Books I Need to Read” log any books they would like to read later. Then they bag up their group of books and pass them on to the next set of students. After three or four rounds of exploration, the groups leave the books spread out on their desks and then students spend a few minutes ‘shopping’ for a book or two that appeals to them.
Whispers, chatter and movement sweep through the room, the talk sparked by excitement. The students take to the books with renewed vigor; these are the same books that had been on display or on the classroom book shelves all year. Like old friends, revisited, books fell open, students fell in.
There is a renewed interest in books and reading; since the Book Bag Browsing activity, the students have come to conference about their books with more enthusiasm, and with more than one book in their Monitored Reading folder. Almost no one talks to a classmate during the silent reading time any more, they are too busy reading. At least one or two students each day say they chose their book after the Book Bag Browsing. I read their journals:
“The Book Bag Browsing gave me a chance to see this book. I didn’t know what it was about before.”
“I had time to really look at this book.”
“Another kid in my group read this book and really liked it.”
Based on my personal classroom experiences, I have shared and modeled this activity with many teachers in many language arts classrooms. In fact, several times we have set up a Book Bag Browsing activity early in the year as a way to introduce the breadth of titles and genres available for student selection in the classroom library. The results are always the same: it seems no matter how the reading culture of the class felt before this activity, there is strong engagement in its wake!