Starbooks to prep for STAAR benchmarks

Our First Book Tasting!

I've always seen a lot of teachers on social media heavily endorse book tastings. When I first heard of it last year, I was extremely skeptical. I didn't understand the point. As a person and a teacher I've always felt if I'm going to invest in something it needs to have a clear purpose, and I didn't understand it back then. Now, a year later I completely understand why having a book tasting is so popular. In Texas the state assessment is called the STAAR test. I wanted to motivate my students the few days before we take the benchmark test instead of boring them with a worksheet. I thought this would be a great way to motivate them, and it did!

Pros of a book tasting:
1. It allows students to look at books they may not normally be interested in. 
2. They are motivated and truly excited to visit each station. 
3. Its get them moving, doing something different and creative. 
4. They love seeing the room transformed into something else. 

I was pretty lucky with how awesome our book tasting turned out to be. I created the pamphlets they used (on my tpt)to engage them with questions about the books. I searched on Instagram for other book tasting ideas and found a lot. I asked parents to bring in store purchased croissants and cake pops. I supplied white chocolate hot chocolate, and Starbucks actually donated the cups we used. (They also donated the apron)

    Overall, our book tasting was a huge success. It was awesome to hear students ask if we can do it again sometime. I encourage teachers to consider doing something like this. It doesn't have to be a huge deal with decorations everywhere. You can easily do this activity with just different genres of books and have students notice similarities and differences between the books. I think at times we forget as teachers it's fine to do something simple. Not everything has to be "extra". 

"Good readers become great writers. Great writers become excellent speakers. Excellent speakers become outstanding listeners"