#bannedbookweek

What we've been doing: Last week was Banned Book Week.  I did not do anything last year to celebrate this week, but this year I saw Tracee Orman pinning lots of interesting ideas on Pinterest for the week.  I decided to join her and celebrate it with my students.

Day 1: We started off banned book week with a series of Youtube videos.  The first one we watched was a cute stop animation of what happens at a book store at night.  You can find it here.  Then we watched this man explain the history of banned books.  Lastly, we watched this video that showed many banned or challenged books and why they were challenged.

Day 2: These 11 quotes from authors on banned books provided a great discussion about the reasons behind banning books.  Next time I would use these quotes as a starting point for a class discussion where they would be graded.

Day 3: On Wednesday we went through a PowerPoint of these crazy reasons why 12 picture books have been banned.  Reading and discussing the reasons behind banning children's books really put things in perspective on the crazy reasons people don't want books shared.

Day 4:  The students took a "how scandalous is your reading history" quiz.  Then we looked at these images of banned book character's mug shots.  We spent the next hour drawing our own.  I drew Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird, but it's not good enough to post on the blog.  :)  Here were the final products of the rest of the kids.  We had Captain Underpants, Little Red Ridinghood, and even Gatsby!

Day 5:  We have never done a debate before as a class, so we decided to take on the challenge to end Banned Book Week.  Before starting, we talked about debates, what they look like and how you should talk and react.  My coteacher found a video of one woman doing a mini debate, representing both sides of the issue.  She tackled school uniforms.  We had the kids draw from a hat which side they would represent.  We gave them only five minutes to prepare for the debate.  Overall, it went well.  The side agreeing with banning books had much stronger arguments, but the side disagreeing with banned books had a better rebuttal.  It was a decent attempt at a first debate.

Next year I would love to create book covers with reasons why the book was banned.  It would be neat to have an interactive bulletin board, or bookshelf display.  It is a little more challenging to do in my tiny classroom.  I love dreaming and thinking about how I will change these lessons in the future.