Freedom to Read Stations

 The month of September I like to celebrate Banned Books Week. I feel like this year was more important that ever with the amount of book challenges we have seen in our state. Thankfully, we have a district that follows policy and has a committee decide instead of just pulling books. 

I wanted the students to understand what was going on with the book challenges. Most of the time, this encourages them to read. When they find out adults are trying to take books away, they want to read them. You would think adults would figure that out by now. 

Banned Books Week Stations 

I found stations on Twitter that @Mrs_Bongi had created. I took hers and changed them up to fit my students and time restraints. She had 6 stations, but since I only see the classes for 45 minutes, I knew I wouldn't be able to do all 6. 

Station 1

At station 1, students looked at the Pros and Cons of books being challenged. I explained that no matter the issue, and no matter our opinion, we should always have an open mind and hear the other side. You probably won't change your mind, but at least you looked at both sides. 

I copied an article from our Gale Opposing Viewpoints database in TexQuest. Students read the article, then formed their own opinions. 

Station 2 

For station 2 I created ten cards with book summaries. Eight of the books had been challenged, and two had not been challenged. The students' task was to decide which two had not been challenged. They were surprised to find out some of the books that had been challenged and the reasons. 

Station 3 

At station 3 students had a choice between two articles: Police protests two novels on summer reading list and Texas banned more books than any other state. 

After reading their choice of article, they were to write their reactions on post-it notes and stick to the poster. 

Banned Books Week Stations by Joni Harris

Our Banned Books Weeks display

FREADOM bulletin board outside the library. 

New School Year

 ** I forgot to post this back in September, so here it is late. 

Adjusting to a new school year 

Last school year was a huge adjustment with over fifty percent of our students learning from home. This school year, everyone is back at school in person. It was like the first year teaching again in some ways. Adjusting back to lessons in person instead of on a screen, and back to a full house in the library was necessary for all. 

I open up the library every morning before the first class begins. Together, the students and I decided that we needed it to be a quiet space in the mornings. The majority of students coming in were wanting to get away from the loud noises in the cafeteria each morning. Other rooms, such as the band hall and theatre room, were also loud. We discussed it, and it was decided that the library would provide a quiet area. I think it is important that I let the students help me make that decision. 

Banned Books Week

During the last half of September, we celebrated Banned Books Week. This year I teamed up with the 6th grade Social Studies teachers and tied it in with the Nazi Book Burnings. We disussed reasons why Hitler wanted to burn the books and why some people try to ban books from libraries. There were some really good conversations. The the kids are always really surprised to find out that Captain Underpants from their elementary years had been challenged multiple times. 

October

October is one of my favorite months! I like to highlight the scary books that we have, even though it is my least favorite genre. Middle school students just seem to flock to the scary books, and some of my reluctant readers get excited about the scary books. 

With the classes I did a lesson over Edgar Allan Poe. Together we researched his life, but then groups had to solve the mystery of his death. We learned in our research that his cause of death is unknown, but there are several theories of how Poe died. Groups took the clues from their research and came up with the theory they agreed with based on their information. They had loads of fun! This is definitely an activity I will repeat in the future.