How to Help Students Find Books They Like

As a bookworm, I've always been of the belief that people who don't like to read just haven't found the right book yet. :) Here are a few tools you can use for kiddos who can't seem to find anything they like to read:

1. Scholastic Book Wizard {available in The App Store and Google Play Store, too!}

This search is best for students who know of a subject or topic they might be interested in reading about, but they don't know of any specific books they've enjoyed or might want to read.

In the "all books" section, just type a title, author, or keyword and click the red "find books" button. 

If the student has a favorite book and wants to find something similar, click that middle tab labeled "search for similar books," type the name of the book, and click the green "find similar books." 

Then you can narrow down the results by reading level, interest level, theme/subject, or genre {not pictured below because there were no options listed under "genre" for my searched title"}. I searched for The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown and got 20 search results.

Here's a link to the FAQs about the mobile version. 

2. Book Seer

This search engine is best for students who have enjoyed at least one book in the past. 

Type in the name of a book you enjoyed {and the author}, and Book Seer generates a list of similar books from Amazon. I typed in Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss and got these results:

3. What Should I Read Next?

This search engine is also good for students who have enjoyed at least one book in the past.

My search for The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd pulled up over 50 search results.  

ELA teachers, this might be a great way to kill two birds with one stone during that first week of school; kids will get to search for some books they start the year reading {and what a good opportunity to also teach them how to find what they need in the library!}, plus you'll get to know each student a little better based on which books they choose to read. 

Taking it a step farther with tech integration:

1. Back-to-school project: showcase 5 books that describe your personality. Use ThingLink, Tackk, or Shadow Puppet Edu to create a collage, poster, or slideshow of the book covers. Students can type or orally narrate how they relate to each book.

2. Reading Goals: which 5 books do you plan to read next, and why? ThingLink, Tackk, and Shadow Puppet Edu would work well for this project, too. 

3. Like suggestion #1 or 2 but don't have time to integrate a full project? No problem. Use Answer Garden to let students put titles and authors on the board and try to find common ground with classmates.  

4. Book Reviews: students can record themselves reviewing a book on something like Shadow Puppet Edu, Seesaw, or Croak.it. Link the recording to a QR code and place the QR codes on a bulletin board or even on the back of each book in your classroom library. 

Interactive Images on ThingLink

Happy summer break! I'm always torn at this time of year -- do I take a break or use this time "off" to start exploring ideas for next year?

For those of you on board with the latter idea, here's a tool you might want to play with over the summer: ThingLink. 

logo via the ThingLink website

I've known about ThingLink for a couple years now but didn't start using it until this year....and I wish I had started sooner. :) It's such a unique tool with so many possibilities!

What is ThingLink?

ThingLink describes themselves as a way to create interactive images. Basically, you upload a picture and then add "tags" to it. Adding a tag creates a bubble that pops up when moused over; this bubble can provide a link and/or text. 

via the ThingLink website

Free Features

• Access via the web, iOS app, or Android app 
• Create 1 group of up to 100 students by registering the students under your account (so kids don't need an e-mail address in order to log in) OR students can log themselves in with their existing Google account
• Tag images and videos with text and links
• Create slideshows with your ThingLinks
• Students who are logged in can only see other students' and teachers' ThingLinks

Premium Features -- $35/year for the teacher (my fav capabilities are italicized)

• Advanced tagging tools (like these rich media tag options)
• Create up to 30 groups with up to 1,000 students
• Students who are logged into their student account (under your name) have the same abilities as you do (except they can't tag videos)
• Ability to present your ThingLink full-screen 
• Replace the image on your ThingLink without losing any of your tags or other information
• Access to wider variety of tag icons (100+ options)
• Ability to make icons always appear (so that people don't have to mouse over the image in order to see the tags)
• Upload custom tag icons
• Use the rich-text editor on tags (include bold/italicized text)
• Make images private
• Customize the bubble and text color of your tags
• Add multiple interactive images to create one slideshow (unlimited images can be added to a show)
• Google Drive links work directly within the image (see the feedback form embedded into the bottom, right corner of this presentation ThingLink)
• Remove the ThingLink logo at the bottom, right of your slides or replace with your own image

Gettin' Fancy

You can upload any picture to create a ThingLink, but I like to upload images I've created on my own. Click here for an example of a ThingLink where I created the image.

You can create your own image in basically any photo-editing site or app, but I actually just use Microsoft PowerPoint to create my images. This post reviews how to edit and save pictures in PPT. I just use a colored shape for the background, import the pictures I need, group it all together, and save as a picture. This post has a video tutorial that shows how I use PowerPoint and digital scrapbooking elements to create an image. 

Ideas for Use

• Teachers (for students): give your students a paperless or flipped lesson (like this, this, and this) -- works really well if you're incorporating a lot of media (like a Blendspace + EDpuzzle or YouTube video + Prezi + Socrative quiz, etc.) 
• Teachers (for other teachers): create a professional development session/workshop in ThingLink (like this)
• Students (any subject): ask students to create a ThingLink as part of a culminating project to show their learning
• Students (any subject): create a mini-research project 
• Students (back to school): tag a personal image to create a "getting to know me" ThingLink at the beginning of the year
• Students (ELA): upload a student-made illustration, and then place tags that tell a story all around the illustration (Ooh...could you do a "choose your own adventure" story with this?! My wheels are turning...)
• Students (ELA): tag the image of a book cover to give reviews on the book, favorite quotes, descriptions of characters, and/or examples of literary elements
• Students (geography): tag a collage of land forms with a student voice recording explaining what each land form is/looks like and can be found
• Students (geography): tag the capitals on a map 
• Students (history): tag a map where each battle in a war took place (describing each battle and telling who won)
• Students (history/social studies): tag an image of a person as a mini-biography (this would be particularly handy if students were using lots of different tools to display facts about the person -- like a video or audio recording of the person from YouTube, a mock Facebook page for the person, a Voki depicting what that person might have said about x issue, an iMovie with photos from the person's life, etc)
• Students (science): tag a collage of the steps or results of an experiment with a student voice recording explaining what's happening in each picture, a website or video explaining why the results occurred, etc.
• Students (science): tag a diagram -- say, of a cell or a flower -- with labels, and explain each part's function