Genre Book Tasting
Teaching genres in my classroom was a three day experience this year and ended with a delicious book tasting that the kids and I loved! I truly feel that the success of our book tasting was a result of the scaffolding I used to introduce genres and practice categorizing books correctly. I would strongly suggest anyone hoping to conduct their own book tasting, take the time to make sure the content knowledge is there.
Day One: What is a genre?
To start this lesson I used a Prezi (click on link) and an anchor chart (see below) that the students were able to refer back to throughout the following lessons.
On the first day of the lesson, I talked to my kids about how we can categorize a book. I started with the image of a watermelon. "All the book of the world are represented in this watermelon." I told the students. There are so many books that people wanted to be able to sort them out. So they first decided to split the watermelon in half; into fiction and non-fiction books. Soon people realized that they needed a more specific way to categorize books. They needed to cut each half into slices. These slices are the the different types of genres.
After going over all of the different genres, as a class, we went through the examples on the Prezi and tried to identify which genre the book or movie would fall into. The students were able to discuss with one another and then were asked to defend their answer.
Day Two: How to sample a book.
On day two, I introduced four ways that student could use to make an educated decision about which genre a book fell into without reading the whole book. With a sample book I demonstrated each strategy.
1. Look at the cover
2. Read the summary on the back or inside flap.
3. Flip through and look at the pictures.
4. Read the first two or three pages.
Students were given a chart and asked to work together as a table to identify the pile of books that I had placed in the middle of their tables. They wrote down the books titles, the genre they thought it might be and which strategy they used to come to that conclusion. They spent about half an hour documenting which genre they felt each book fell under.
After working as a group each group shared one book and what genre they felt it fell in to. We then tallied all the genres that each group had identified and made a bar graph to represent each genre.
(I added in the bar graph and tallying because my students struggle with data analysis. It was a natural way to integrate it into what we were doing but definitely not something that is needed.)
At the end of the lesson I stopped the students and showed them an Evite email that I had sent to myself invited the kids to come participate in a book tasting the following day! I told them we would "Gobble Till we Wobble" which they thought was pretty funny.
Day Three: The Book Tasting!
Setting the scene for this book tasting was half the fun for me! I created a menu for the students to follow that included each of the genres and their brief description, as well as the strategies we had talked about yesterday on how to sample a book. Find this document at my TPT store by clicking here.
Then I set a place setting for each student which included a paper plate, these adorable little forks and spoons, a book and their menu.
When the students arrived I had on some French music with a Paris Picture on the smart board and also put on my old waitress name tag which they loved! I explained the rules of the restaurant: When I pulled their stick they would find a spot. Once the bell rang they could begin their first course. Students should work through the steps and come to an educated conclusion as to which genre was at their place setting.
Throughout the experience I walked around asking students how their "first few bites were" and insisting that they act appropriately or be asked to leave the restaurant.
We had a great time and were done with our book tasting in about 30 minutes. As a fun treat for doing such a great job, I ran into these fun oreo flavors and knew that it would make the kids' day to actually get to 'taste' some exquisite flavors.
This activity was so fun and kept genres from getting boring and overwhelming. It is definitely something I want to do next year and would love to fit it in with another topic another time if I can.
