
Book Reviews and Discussion

Dear Parents and Teachers,

Although Building Rainbows does not discriminate by age, this site originally was developed with young people in mind. We are especially proud of the book reviews and discussion contributed by young people. Please encourage a young person to contribute their thoughts and opinions along with you.

By encouraging our children to be critical of what they read, we are teaching them to be critical of other media outlets and, possibly, even what they, themselves, think and do.

With this goal in mind we are including a lesson outline below for teachers and parents to use with their students and children. We hope the ideas in this lesson help you use this resource more fruitfully.

As always we are interested in your feedback on what we can do to make this site more educationally rewarding. Please give us your thoughts by clicking the feedback link.

Publishing Book Reviews

Appropriate grade levels : preschool, kindergarten, first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, undergraduate

Subject Area(s) : reading, writing

General Topic(s) or Theme(s) :

book reviews
books
literature

Objectives :

Students publish their own work on the internet for others to use.
Reading incentives.
Creative and critical writing practice.

Materials :

web browser and internet connection
popular book titles

Introductory questions to stimulate discussion :

what kind of things would you like to see in a book review?
what kinds of things are important to you when you are choosing a book to read?

Introduction Activity :

Have the students (or read to the students) from the "How to write a good book review" page here

howto.php

If the students have unique ideas that are not covered in the page above, enter them in the feedback section of this web site.

Browse some of the book reviews on this site to get a feel for how their own reviews will look when they are published.

Body :

Have the students enter a book review of a book they recently read. It doesn't have to be a book they really enjoyed, but the students review should be critical and useful to other students their age.

Follow the guidelines in the introduction activity for writing the reviews. The reviews can be contributed to www.buildingrainbows.com. This is a fun site that even younger students will be able to navigate and contribute.

The students and teachers can check their work and submit ideas for discussion on the unique discussion forum that is created for each book title in the archive.

For "whole class" books or "read aloud" books. Take a vote in class on the final ratings to give the book. Graph the tallied votes if it is grade-level appropriate and use those for the review submitted. Each student can then contribute individual comments to the discussion forum for that book. It may help to have the teacher initiate the discussion with an appropriate question or comment at the beginning of the forum. The students can take it from there.

Conclusion Activity :

Explain to the students that their book reviews are now archived for others to enjoy and use in their decision making.

Explain the value of the internet as a community resource for things like book reviews. As an example, have the students search or browse for book reviews that others have contributed, specifically searching for books which they may enjoy at a future date.

Vocabulary Terms :

critical
review
critique

Evaluation Activity :

Have the students write down books they found while browsing that might interest them in the future. Ask them if the internet is a good "resource" for helping in this decision making process. Does sharing your views on books with others help others? What other kinds of resources might you use to help in your decision making, especially those which existed before the internet?

Internet Resources Referenced in this Lesson :

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