Fiction, Food, and Fun

 by Susan May   Indiana University Southeast

      Oprah may have her book club, but at Floyd Central Junior High School in Floyds Knobs, Indiana, we had Fiction, Food, and Fun.  It all began on an otherwise dreary day in February, when I arrived at home to discover a box on my doorstep. 

      I opened the box and found, to my delight, 50 adolescent trade books.  This may seem rather unexciting to most people, but to a future teacher it was like hitting the lottery.  My student teaching experience with Cindy Smith’s seventh grade classes was to start a few days later.  The books would definitely come in handy, but where did they come from?  The next day I received a letter from the Middle Grades Reading Network explaining that I had been awarded the books to use in my student teaching experience as well as my future classroom.

      I was very fortunate to work with a supportive teacher during my student teaching experience.  Cindy was very much in favor of using the trade books in the classroom.  On several occasions, we conducted a “book pass” using the books from the grant.  The book pass is a technique I learned in my adolescent literature class taught by Dr. Kevin Sue Bailey.  Every student was given a book to read for approximately ten minutes; then students recorded their initial impressions of the book and whether or not they would want to read it in the future.  After recording their thoughts about the book, students passed their book in a certain direction and the process began again.  This continued throughout an entire class to provide the students with exposure to a number of books.  All of my students were receptive to this book pass, and it was interesting to see how they rated the books.  At the end of the class, we had a short debriefing time to allow students to share their favorites.

      The Fiction, Food, and Fun that I referred to earlier was the title we used to describe the pizza party that my fifth period honor’s class got to have after reading the books over spring break.  Volunteers got to choose a book to read during their spring break to earn extra credit points.  The first Friday after returning, each volunteer had the chance to give a brief booktalk: share something about the book and his or her thoughts.  While the students gave their booktalks, we had a pizza party.  The students were so exuberant in their booktalks that I had to extend this lesson to a second day.  I was pleased to discover that they really enjoyed the books.  I look forward to using these books with my future classes.  This opportunity has proven to me that it is not only teachers that have fun with books; students do too!