Lindy -- Recycled for everyone

When I taught third grade the kids would get very excited when the Scholastic Book Club box would arrive. It became clear that the contents were not equally shared since not everyone ordered each month. Some kids spent a lot and some never got any. I got an idea that if a box arrived that was for the whole class and everyone had choice it might be just as exciting. I had a lot of books from my childhood and bonus points that had never been seen so I decided to have a mystery box arrive at school for the class. It was filled with more books than kids. When it arrived I acted very surprised and read a letter that was enclosed asking for kids to please love and read these books. The sender also asked if they would review them and return the postcards in each book so she would know if they were good books for third graders. (I had the postcards addressed to my mom so they wouldn't know I was behind this.) I wasn't sure if this would work but the kids decided every book in the box needed to be read, even the easy ones! Kids shopped and chose books. Some of my lower readers recognized books from second grade and I steered them in that direction so they'd be successful saying that everything needed to be read. Kids talked about the books and shared their progress as they prepared for their postcard writing. I ended up doing this two more times and each time they felt it was a job they had to do so that lady would get her reviews and know what books were o.k. for third graders!

If I was doing this now I think I may create a review site that they could post their review on so we could eliminate the postcard part. This would also be a little up-to-date in the social media world! Maybe they could just Tweet under a particular hashtag that the "lady" sent.