Finding a really good book can be such a joy! Helping students find that joy is one of my greatest professional pleasures. But sometimes I think the greater triumph is helping them find "
their genre". Genre, simply defined, is a category. Helping students discover the category of book that suits them will help them find books they love for the rest of their lives. Book formats, whether it be paperback, eBook or some future format that is yet to be conceived, may come and go, but a person's favorite genre is often the same throughout their lives.
So I asked our 4th graders to help me identify the genres they had experienced. Together we brainstormed examples of each. I then asked them to research other book titles that fit into each genre. We put together advertisements for each genre using the iPad app PicCollage.
Students took the information they had gained from our brainstorming session and used it to create videos about a selected genre. Here is their inspired work using the iPad app iMovie.
