Year 8 English: Genre Tasting activity

The Library Team had a request for "something different" from the Year 8 English teachers. 

Normally we would talk to them at the start of a wider reading session and talk about the new books on offer, some of these would be picked up for the session, but often most students would go to the area or genre that they like every week. 

The idea was to expose students to more books than they would normally look at. After some discussion we came up with the idea of tasting and then came the placemats and bookmarks.

The tables looked lovely with the placemats and bookmarks!

At each table we had a sign with the name of the genre, a QR code to the catalogue for that genre and a selection of 4-6 books. We opted not to list the books on the sign, as each class might be presented with different books. We had six Year 8 classes to cater for!

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Each student got a bookmark and then they had about 5-10 minutes at each table to read the blurbs and then decide which book they would want to read in that genre. Students were encouraged to write down the name of the book and then they could follow up at a later date.

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At the end of the lesson, students could borrow one of the books from the tables to take home and read.

Some of the English teachers collected the bookmarks to have a look at what the kids had chosen. You could always do this activity with a form to collect which books interested the kids as well. However we did get some great feedback from students in regards to the physical bookmark that they could fill out and take with them.

If you want a copy of my genre tasting files (canva), just shoot me a message konstantkaos via gmail.