Visual Book Logs

Each year, I try to find unique ways to help my students display their list of books that they have read over the course of their time with me.  This year, I had the students combine their computer skills with their writing skills to create a fun display that was a hit with everyone who came across it!  (not to sound boastful or anything....they just turned out really cool.)

This year, my kids created Visual Book Logs.  

To begin, I gave my kids a template with a "tablet" on one side and empty space on the other.  Super simple.  (you can grab it here)  Using the Book Record Book Shelf that they have been keeping all year long as a guide, I asked them to search the internet to find pictures of the books that they had read this current school year, either at school or at home.  They then took screenshots of those books.  Since they are using Chromebooks, the screenshots were saved right to their drive.  They then were to insert those screenshots "collage-style" into the blank space on the tablet template.  On the tablet side, the students took, and inserted, a selfie with their favorite read from this year.  

I then asked the students to write four paragraphs about themselves as a reader.  Though I didn't provide them with any sentence frames or guided writing scaffolding, I did outline the paragraphs as so:

P1 -  How they see themselves as a reader

P2 -  My favorite read this year

P3 -  How they have grown as a reader

P4 -  How they seen themselves as a reader in the future

I did ask them to add a picture to match what was being discussed in each paragraph as well.

Then it was all printed out, the Visual Book Records were laminated, and it made for an awesome display!  This didn't take very long, just a few days of working during language arts.  The essays did take a bit longer than the screenshotting, but the kids were pretty good at writing and typing by this point in the year, so it wasn't overwhelmingly long.  I would say this project is definitely a winner and something I will do again!