So I was thinking what if students researched a book they have NEVER read, and then did a book trailer on it, and there goal was to convince other students to read the book.
With the competition that I mentioned above only 3 of my students participated in this competition, so I didn't have the opportunity to see all of my students do this project. Now you must be wondering why am I even sharing this? Well I had this great idea of giving students a project like this where they could pick any book they have never read, but were interested in reading and creating a book trailer. In the book trailer students had to include the following:
Including all of those elements along with using technology, and on top of all that convince others to want to read the book. Now why would we even have students do something like this? Why not give them a test that could do the same thing? Our students will be authentically engaged in a task that they have personal investment in. They get to choose the book, NOT the teacher, and they may be totally invested, because its something the student is interested in. You can figure out if they know the elements of the story. Can your student identify a setting, or plot? It would be a fun and easy way to get students excited about reading, but at the same time evaluate their knowledge on the elements of reading!
Below I have attached a link to the video my students made during their competition. They used iMovie, but there are other apps that I have listed below that you can use with your students that would do a lot of the same things.