Saturday Spark Motivation: Musical Reading Chairs!

Lately, it seems as though my students are checking out. We still have twenty days of school left and have a LOT to get accomplished in that time. The same students that were avid readers are reading more and more, but the ones that never reading enjoyed reading are back at doing anything and everything to avoid the subject. To get their attention, motivate my students to read, and help them find a new genre or interest to read about, I came up with Musical Reading Chairs. 

Next year, I will ABSOLUTELY incorporate this into my lesson plans for the first few days of school.

This turned out to be a great interactive approach to get the kids reading, moving, sharing, conversing, all while having fun.

I divided the class into two sections and had them all bring their chair and "Just Right Book" over to the carpet. We arranged the chairs like we were playing good old Musical Chairs. I had the students sit down and continue reading their JRB, while I set a timer for 3 minutes. 

I then turned on Pandora to KidsBop and played some fun music. The students had to put their book down on their chair and walk/dance around the circle until the music stopped. I took video of this because it was pretty entertaining to watch. lol

 

When the music stopped, they sat in the closest chair, picked up the book, and started from page one for three minutes. We repeated this 4 times and the kids LOVED it. We then put the room back in order and all met on the reading carpet. 

I gave the students a chance to discuss books that interested them, with the students who were reading and knew more information about the book. The students were all busy buzzing about books, not one student sat around speechless. 

Next we created a "sign up sticky" for the books. If there were multiple people interested in a book we put their names, in a list, on a sticky note, and put it on the last page of the book. When the current reader finishes the book, he/she will know who to pass it off to.

There is nothing better than getting students motivated and excited to read! Guess which book was the most popular? 

 

Looks like I will be ordering more of this series for next year!

Have a wonderful long weekend teacher friends! Thanks to my sweet friend Joanne for hosting today's linky! :)