sharing the book reviews

Finally, the day has come for us to just enjoy these book reviews that we have been working on for so long. They were scored. The scores were entered. The system was satisfied. Now, students were able to share their writing, from their reading, with their classmates.

This sharing was rather devoid of technology, but that brings us closer together, allows for face to face conversations about nonfiction books. In this way, it's not just about students sharing their writing, it's about the audience gaining new insight about a nonfiction book that they probably haven't read. And that opens doors for more nonfiction reading, beginning a cycle: nonfiction reading for book reviews begets nonfiction reading of book reviews begets nonfiction reading for pleasure. I told several of the classes that this was one of my favorite days of the year so far. They have done the learning. Now they get to do the teaching. And still they learn in the process. The post-it notes were for comments, questions, connections that would later drive the discussion at the tables. (I did say it was devoid of technology.) Sometimes it's just better using pencil and paper.