Use big feelings to choose your next read
Helping kids build emotional vocabulary for their reading lives
Today for your Friday treat, I’m trying something different and sharing a library lesson idea. I’d love your feedback on whether this type of feature is something you’d like to see more of in the future.
With my fifth graders, I’m in the midst of a reading engagement unit. Each week, we’re trying out a different strategy to help kids make book choices that get them excited about reading. Strategies we’ve tried so far include using feeling, using genre, and using first line.
Today, we’re deep diving on the first: using feeling to choose your next read. In my experience, kids are pretty on board with the idea that stories have big feelings, but when asked to generate a list of moods/feelings, kids tend to rely heavily on the same few classics: sad, funny, scary, yadda yadda. They feel broad, generic, and not very captivating. My goal with this lesson was to broaden student vocabulary for thinking about the expansive feelings stories can contain, and give them a visceral experience of a book with a strong (and maybe surprising) feeling.
Let’s get into it.
Lesson Goal:
Kids will name a feeling they want on the page, and choose books that match the feeling/mood they crave.