One of the events for Book-O-Ween is decorating a book based on a favorite character. This year, we chose to make a jitterbug from the book First Day Jitters. Although the book did not actually have a jitterbug, we made the character up after the nervous, jitterbug feeling you get on the first day of school. I read this book to my students on the first day of school and we all made jitterbugs about how we were feeling on the first day of school.
Another event on this day is that the students get to dress up as a character from a book, but they have to have the book with them in order to dress up. Many of our students came dressed up as their favorite character from a book. One of my students came in dressed up as Benjamin Franklin because he checked out a book about him from the library. He looked adorable! I think Book-O-Ween is a great activity to get students excited about books. It encourages students to read and get excited about reading.
One last event that the school puts on is a Book-O-Ween parade, where we all gather on the P.E. court and parade in our costumes. There are performances put on by the students, singing, and dancing. Overall, it is a fun day for teachers and the students.
We printed out the lyrics so each student had a copy of the song to follow along with. We played the video of the song on the SMARTBoard and we allowed our students to sing and dance to the song. We played it a few times and our students had a great time. I was surprised at how much they were willing to sing and dance. They had no shame in acting silly, which was nice to see. It was fun to provide a space where our students could be themselves and have fun.
At the end of the lesson, I had a mix of emotions. First and foremost, I was excited and happy. It was amazing to see our students so invested in reading. It was a joy to see our students having fun, participating, and not being afraid to truly try to understand the story. On the other hand, I was kind of disappointed. I wish my students were invested in reading like this all of the time. Seeing this happen in my classroom made me realize a few things. As teachers, it is important for us to find material that is interesting to our students, that they are passionate about because it will show, like this lesson did. If teachers can find material that interests our students in this way, education would be amazing. Our students would love school, participate, and try their best to learn. Although finding material is not an easy task, I will try my best to incorporate material that is relevant and interesting to my students, because in the end, it will be worth it.
At the end of the day, I gave my students a little Halloween treat as they also exchanged treats with each other.