As a 4th grade ELA & Social Studies teacher, teaching these subjects at a STEM school was a at first a daunting task. Incorporating technology and PBL in a meaningful way is not always as easy as incorporating through the disciplines of math and science. Our ELA team has been able to refocus lessons, using many of the ideas and activities we were currently implementing in order to align with STEM. I’d love to share our latest one with you: #30secondbooktalk.
The idea actually came from our awesome county STEM Coach, Brenda Eason. Brenda shared it with the teachers in our school and the idea took off! First, teachers were divided into brackets: 4-5 Fiction Fanatics, 2-3 Thrillers, K-1 Wonders, Special Edition, Team Book-Heart (after our principal) and The Mystery Team. Each teacher (4 in each bracket) created a 30 second book talk video. We used Photo Booth and even our phones to record the videos. The final product was made with iMovie. It was simple to do, fun and the kids LOVED it!
Teachers chose a book they felt would get kids fired up about reading. Everyone had a different style which made the videos so cool to watch. Some teachers chose to dress up as a character in their book or add music while others videos featured students. I channeled my inner Grand High Witch into my first video for The Witches by Roald Dahl and several characters, Kissin Kate, Stanley and Madame Zeroni from HOLES by Louis Sachar. These choices were easy for me as I’ve enjoyed reading these books for years and have had plenty of practice emulating voices of the characters!
After the videos were released, a voting frenzy began. Mrs. Eason posted the videos on her YouTube channel and created a Google form to make voting simple and easy to tally. We had thousands of votes and suggestions for future book talks! We posted the links for videos and voting on social media so parents, students, and the public could vote.
Then, the winners of each bracket went on to create another #30secondbooktalk and the new videos were shared with the students. We had some 4th and 5th grade students introduce the first round of book talks. Our SciGirls, a club at our school, introduced the second round of books and announced the winner of the final round.
In the end, Mrs. Spencer, our AIG teacher, pulled out the win! Of course, the other victory was that the students were super excited about the books featured on our #30secondbooktalk videos! Soon after my second video, I started reading HOLES to my classes and they have been hanging on my every word, and that’s a huge win in my book!
Check out all of our #30secondbooktalk videos at this link.
Katie Pasvankas has been a 4th grade teacher at Patriots since it opened in 2010. Prior to that, she taught at R. Brown McAllister, also in Cabarrus County, and in New York. For the last few years, she has been happily teaching ELA and Social Studies so she’s able to focus on bringing her two favorite subjects together and bringing history and characters to life with her animated teaching style. You can follow her lifestyle blog at colorfullykatie.com.
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