Speed Dating - with BOOKS!

The first time my classes tried speed dating with books was in 2013. It's time for a new blog post!

Before we first started, I found these blog posts to be especially helpful:
Tips for Getting Kids to Do More Choice Reading: Book Speed Dating
          by Erica Beaton (@EricaLeeBeaton)
Building Our To-Read Lists: Book Speed Dating
          by Colby Sharp (@colbysharp)
Book Speed Dating: How I did it and why I'll do it again
         by Leigh Collazo (@MrsReaderPants)

We've usually got some kind of contest or challenge going on for reading at our school library. This month is no different. With the challenge in mind (and the new face lift our library has had), here's how it was set up (and now our teacher-librarians set it up for us!):

There were six tables, with different categories from our "TMS Tower" challenge. Here are the challenges:

We're hoping students will find this fun, fairly easy, and will get them out of any "reading ruts" they may be in currently.

The challenge was explained, students received a page where they can take notes on which books might look appealing (and from which category they come), and we broke into small groups (3-5 depending on the class size) and let students browse for about 3 minutes per table. Then students regrouped and the local library challenge (100 Books before High School) and prizes were announced.

I loved the twist this time with these fun categories. I also loved the incentive to complete the challenge by the end of the year - when you complete it, you get to choose a book to donate to a library in need. Mrs. Fahnoe shared how fortunate we are at our school to have such wonderful books (most in great condition!), and how it'll will be beautiful to see more books going to kids who need them.

Of course, not every child took this seriously. That doesn't mean we're giving up! The plethora of books should be a clue to them that there IS a book for them out there, should they choose to stop and take some time with it...