Although I work in a middle school- I LOVE using picture books for lesson starters, mentor texts and more. November is Picture Book Month and I knew that I wanted to do something to share my love of a good picture book. Using picture books at the middle school and high school level is important to help with higher-order thinking skills. Check out this article from School Library Journal for more information.
If you don't follow Shannon McClintock Miller and her blog, take a moment to go do that now. I have seen her talk several times about a You've Been Book'd program that she does, and I wanted to make it work for my middle school.
I looked through my own collection and pulled some that had multiple copies of already. These were mostly past Bluebonnet winners (Bluebonnet books are our Texas list for 3rd-6th graders) After looking through my own books, I then reached out to other libraries. My goal is to have one book per staff member.
When I first started this idea, my goal was to have a set of books per content team (about 10 books) that they could circulate through their team. This went along with Shannon's idea. However, in middle school- you might have now understood my big flaw with that idea. If a social studies teacher read a book to their class, they would also hear the same book from their math class and ELAR class, and electives class.
Here is my current plan and how I organized it:
-I have 10-12 copies of 10 different titles
-I divided these titles into 5 content teams (ELAR, Science, Social Studies, Math, Electives) which each content team has 2 picture books that they can read
-On Monday I will put this flyer along with one of the books in their box (these were created in Canvas)
-The teachers will be invited to read their book to their class and exchange it with a member of their content team to get another one.
-If teachers want to do more than just read the book to their class, I have also created a Google Slide that has a starter along with a resource that they can do more with
