InterACTIVE teaching is all about being reactive and responsive when it comes to what and how we teach. We also know that engagement comes through games and the act of “time running out.” So combine the two and you essentially get the idea behind “first chapter Friday.”
This idea was pitched to me by my awesome, amazing, and ultra creative reading coach. (Find her on social media at @literacyunscripted on both Twitter and Insta) She knows my love of books—chapter, picture, fiction, nonfiction—you name it, we love to read and talk about it. We share books with each other constantly and we both have a strong belief that students should be able to read what they want and chose based on interests rather than by reading level, points earned, genre, etc.
In the perfect utopian classroom students would be reading often, choosing their own books and finding time to become active and avid readers, but we all know that this isn’t the reality. Our classrooms are filled with standard driven lessons, curriculum pacing and unfortunately for many yearly state assessments. Students are given very little time, maybe 20 minutes a week—if that—to spend inside their school library and are often unaware of the titles housed along the shelves. And don’t even get me started on the titles that are out there that just might not be available in the school library. So the idea of #firstchapterFriday was pitched to help introduce our students to more books.
In a nut shell, #firstchapterFriday is a 15 minute part of our day every Friday where a new book is introduced to the class and the first chapter is read aloud. It is a great way to expose students to new topics and titles and also provides a quick and easy way to review genres, writing styles, new authors and so much more. We have been doing it at the very end of the day after we pack up but it could easily be how you start the day, or squished in between other scheduled parts of the routine day.
The books can be from anywhere, but I would suggest choosing books you either have in your own classroom library or ones that are available in the school library so they are available for students to check out and read if they choose to do so after hearing the first chapter. Here are the titles we have read so far in my 4th grade classroom.
Giving students a choice when it comes to their reading is key to helping them become independent readers while also being an easy and simple way to share and expose them to more.
Stay interACTIVE!
-K 👗
Looking for more interACTIVE ideas for your classroom? Check out our book The InterACTIVE Class!