October
30
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The Books My Students Are Reading by Colby Sharp
Each month, when my kids head to lunch, I ask them to leave their independent reading book in a pile on one of our classroom desks. While the kids are away, I make a video sharing the titles they are currently reading. It if fun to make/share, but what I love about it the most is what I learn about my class. These monthly videos help me identify trends and holes in our collective reading lives.
Below you will find the video. I hope that you’ll consider trying something like this with the books your kids are reading. You just might learn something about your readers!
Please let me know in the comments below which books are popular in your classroom/library.
Colby Sharp is a husband and father of five. He teaches fifth grade in Parma, Michigan. Colby is the co-founder of Nerdy Book Club. He co-hosts The Yarn podcast with Travis Jonker. Colby currently serves as the president-elect of the Michigan Reading Association. He co-authored Game Changer! Book Access for All Kids with Donalyn Miller, and he is the editor of The Creativity Project: An Awesometastic Story Collection.
Nerdy Book Club 
Thank you so much for this. As a very recently retired school librarian, who misses talking about books with kids, I really appreciate your sharing these.
My pleasure!
Colby: Thanks so much for all you do with books and sharing with us! My tip: Read The Nest. I don’t typically like scary books either, but this is well written and fun to read! Not too scary, but yet…. I’m an elementary librarian in Minnesota, and each year I share Maud Hart Lovelace Nominees and The Nest was a nominee book last year, lots of kids checked it out, and only one said she didn’t like it…
Love this! Thanks for taking the time to share the books that your kids are reading. I’m a MS librarian and currently in high demand are the My Hero Academia books, the new Wimpy Kid book, the Selection series, the Reynolds Track Series, all the Gratz books, On a Scale of 1-10 by C. Scott, The Third Mushroom. the Unwind Series – just to name a few! Happy Reading!
Hi Colby, I’m a 5th grade reading/writing teacher in Colorado. My kids are devouring graphic novels this fall. Several kids have told me I have to read the Wings of Fire series. Do your students like them? The Unwanteds has been a popular series. Roll With It is on my TBR list. Song of the Whale is one of my favorites now as well! My 7 year old daughter wears hearing aids and I gravitate toward books with kids with hearing challenges. Check out the novel in verse Macy MacMillan and the Rainbow Goddess. Sweep is one of my favorite books too! My parent/student book club just read Escape From Mr. Lemoncello’s Library and everyone (kids and adults) LOVED it! I am thinking we will do Sweep for our winter book read. Heartbeat by Sharon Creech is fabulous and my kids have liked it as a whole class read before we do bookclubs with novels in verse. Thanks for your book recommendations. I have some new book titles written down to add to my library!
I’m very excited to see two of my recent favorites (Sweep and The Next Great Paulie Fink) in your book pile. Guts and Dog Man are also very popular in my son’s 5th grade class right now–as well as Wings of Fire, The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl, and Sal and Gabi Break the Universe. A couple of new books that my son really enjoyed are The Dark Lord Clementine and Charlie Thorne and the Last Equation.
I just started (and finished) White Bird: A Wonder Story. I listened to the audio while reading and it was just beautiful– with sound effects and other theatrical elements.
We are reading in my fifth grade class: The Vanderbeekers (books 1,2,3), Front Desk, Sweep, Holes, Wings of Fire books, The Shadow Children series, The Strangers, and I got one student (so far) to read Louis Sachar’s Fuzzy Mud – and so many more books! Love hearing your recommendations!
I have always enjoyed watching this video every month but this month I decided to watch it along with my students. The students were so excited and added many books to their “want to read list”. I will be sure not to watch it with them every month. Some of our titles are Wonder, Guts, Lemonade War, I Funny, Timothy Failure, You Go First, Wish, The One and Only Ivan, Princess Black and many I Survived titles. I LOVE our IDR time every day; it gives me time to read books to book talk as well. For read aloud, I am reading The Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus. I also read a picture book every day as I follow Jillain Heise’s #cbad. THANK FOR ALL YOU DO TO HELP US BUILD A STRONG CULTURE OF LITERACY IN OUR CLASSROOM!!
Read The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. His work is really branching out to new readers since thanks to Netflix and Amazon turning his work into series. Graveyard Book is great for fifth.
Loved this, a lot of my kids are reading these books but the favorite read aloud I have is Gemini Summer and quite a few are reading it again. Love the idea of having them leave books to check out what a lot of them are reading and do a video.
Thanks Mr. Sharp for sharing your list! Our class of 5th graders in Jackson are reading several of the same books/authors. We watch your video together as a class! From this video, we are most excited about reading Sweep and Rebound. We are reading Invisible Emmie, Diary of a Wimpy Kid Wrecking Ball, Guts, Battle of the REd Hot Pepper Weenies, Ghost, Haddix, Secret of the Fortune Wookie, Independent Study, Smile, and El Deafo. We want to get What’s His FAce, The Next Great Paulie Fink, and The Line Tender. Thanks for inspiring our reading!
Hey, Colby! My students wanted to share a couple of titles that they’re loving right now. First, Grant is loving Miles Morales: Spider-Man. Kenny, Zuriel, and Matt are loving The Wild Robot, Liam is loving Diary of a Wimply Kid. Esaias is loving Awesome Friendly Kid. Nicolas is loving The Girl Who Drank the Moon (and we have to have book talks everyday :). Aven is loving Peak. Eyael is loving The White Giraffe, and Alexander is loving Wonder. We loved watching your video. Many thanks from Colorado!
So many great titles!!! Thank you for sharing.
I enjoyed the video and jotted down many of the titles mentioned. Thanks for sharing! I look forward to booktalking ” A Royal Guide to Monster Slaying” by Kelley Armstrong. It is a historical fantasy full of mythical beasts – great for Harry Potter fans.
Those HP fans are always hungry for more.