Book Tasting Cafe: Gathering anecdotal evidence about student reading behaviors

The idea of the "Book Tasting Cafe" was sparked in 2008 when Jennie Scott-McKenzie posted about her activity, "Chez Dewey" on LM_Net. She had designed an activity to engage students in learning about the Dewey Decimal System by "ordering" books using a menu, but spin-offs quickly emerged. 

Today, the most common iteration is to set up the library like restaurant with books to "taste" as a way to hook students on choosing pleasure reading titles. The special touches of a place setting, placemat, tablecloths, menus, and other details create an ambiance conducive to reading and a feeling of ownership over one's book choices.

I've done variations of Book Tastings over the years because it's a great way to promote books, encourage students to take time to read into a book, and make reading feel like a special activity.  

But what I REALLY love about Book Tasting is the anecdotal evidence I gather while the students are busy reading.

While the students read silently at their tables, I watch them like a mama hawk. 

I'm watching to gather evidence about each one as a reader. What I learn about each child during the Book Tasting helps me connect him or her with books throughout the school year.

I learn...

• which students can get into the flow of reading quickly
• who struggles to keep their focus
• which students flip right to the end
• which students drift from the page quickly
• which genres grab their attention
• which students like lots of white space
• which students are willing to take a risk on an usual book
• which ones like a challenge
• which ones read fast 

Book choosing behaviors I see...

• starting in the middle
• smelling the pages
• reading the first page and looking at the cover again
• reading the blurb and moving on to something else
• reading the blurb and telling a friend about it
• flipping to the end to read the last page

These little bits of personal information about students' reading behaviors and preferences go into my mental file. When a child comes to the library, I pull up my memories of the Book Tasting and use the information I gathered to suggest books that will fit with what I saw that day. 

December Book Tastings in our library at

Oberoi International School in Mumbai

"Tasting" Notes

One genre per table

Students choose where to sit

They can move or stay where they are, depending on

how much they are enjoying the book. 

Five minutes per table.

Genre-shelving for our Graphic section

I'm a fan of tweaking library systems to make it easier for patrons to browse. One of my favorite tweaks is for the Graphic Novels section. 

"Graphic" books are cataloged in Dewey with the number 741.5 which is the number for comic art. But Mr. Dewey didn't anticipate that SO many wonderful fiction books would be written in graphic form, so most librarians pull their 741.5 section and put it near the fiction books.

We did that too, but now we've gone a step further and changed the 741.5 label to GRA (for "graphic"). Next we sorted our graphic books by type. We've added a line to each label to show what type of graphic book it is. 

Here's our system:

GRA

F (for longer stories/novels)

Author's name OR Original Author's name (keeps adaptations together, like Shakespeare, Riorden)

GRA

COM (for comics)

Character's name (Batman, Spiderman, etc)

GRA

MAN (for Manga)

Author's name

GRA

### (Dewey number - for nonfiction)

Author's Name

GRA 

BIO

Subject's name

Hooray for catalog tweaks! Next...I have my eye on the 800s... Stay tuned!

Festivals, Wiesner, and Sci-Fi

Week 21

PreK 3 & 4: Guiding Question - Who are some characters in Mother Goose rhymes?

This week, we learned three Mother Goose rhymes with characters in them: Little Miss Muffett, Little Boy Blue, and Little Jack Horner. After we practiced together with flannels, we divided into three groups and each group used the flannels to tell the rhymes themselves! 

PreK using flannel pieces to tell Mother Goose rhymes

Kindergarten: Guiding Question - What's a strategy we use to show we're thinking about the story?

Lost and Found, Oliver Jeffers

The Little Mouse...
Don and Audrey Wood

Predicting is guessing what will happen in the story. It doesn't matter whether we guess correctly or not: what matters is that we're THINKING about it! 

As we read these two stories, students made predictions out loud at first, and then "in my head" (tap, tap on our temple) to show they were engaged in thinking about the plot.

Grade 1: Guiding Questions - What do illustrators do? How do they complete a picture book?

An important part of our Caldecott unit is learning how illustrators create picture books. This week we revisited books by David Wiesner and learned about his process for Tuesday  and Art & Max. 

We also read What Do Illustrators Do?, by Eileen Christalow.

This introduces students to the myriad of choices illustrators need to make. It shows the different effect of particular tools and media. One "ah-ha" moment for children is noticing which illustrations have black line and which don't. 

Grade 2: Guiding Question - What are some festivals celebrated around the world?

Second graders are learning that festivals are holidays that are usually not tied to a religion. They are celebrated with large gatherings and often include special foods, parades, and dances. We are beginning to map the festivals we know of and add ones we are learning about using ZeeMaps, an easy-to-use version of Google Maps. See what we've come up with below. We hope each entry will have pictures and video!

I have "tweeted" out our map in the hope that students from other schools might like to add to it! 

Grade 3: Guiding Question - What is "Science Fiction"?

This week we learned about elements unique to the genre science fiction. Using the prezi below, we saw examples of sci-fi and discussed its qualities. Afterward, we did carousel book browsing among three tables heaped with Sci-Fi books at various levels. As we browsed, we tried to guess which elements each book had: aliens? robots? time travel? and so forth.

Science Fiction for Elementary Students on Prezi

Grade 4 and 5: Checking out and reading time

A rockin' week!

Week 20

This was our first week with our new rockers, and I'm happy to report that we are doing a great job with "gentle rocking" as we enjoy them.

Here's the round-up for our lessons this week!

PreK 3 and 4: Guiding Question - What's similar, what's different?

The Three Little Kittens came to visit us this week. We read two versions of the Mother Goose poem and talked about the similarities and the differences between them. 

The Three Little Kittens, by Jerry Pinkney

This retelling of the Mother Goose rhyme highlights the playful antics of the kittens. We add the sounds "meow" and "purr" when they appear in the text to add an engaging touch. Pinkney's watercolor illustrations show the kittens close-up, tumbling about, acting contrite, and doing their best to behave. 

Classes loved the last line, when the kittens have found and washed their mittens but ask "May we go out to play?" We know they'll be in the same predicament if they do!

The Three Little Kittens, by Anna Alter

A perfect introduction to the classic rhyme, this little volume shows mice stealing the mittens. Colored pencil drawings support the single verse given here. This version is much simpler and the illustrations have a clean look. It's perfect for preschoolers.

Kindergarten: Guiding Question - What's a conflict? How can we identify the problem in a story?

One story strategy we use is identifying the problem in a story. We read together and talk about what the character is trying to solve. Did it work out in the end? How did it get solved?

Chrysanthemum, by Kevin Henkes

Chrysanthemum has a clear problem: she used to love her unusual name but now she doesn't. 

When she starts school, three girls in her class snicker and make fun of her. "Her name has 13 letters!...She's named after a flower!...Let's pick her!" they snort. It's not until the lovely Mrs. Twinkle appears, a music teacher all of the girls admire, that these three realize that a name like Chrysanthemum's is "absolutely perfect."

Grade 1: Guiding Question - What's "creativity"?

For the purposes of our Caldecott unit, we define creativity as having "new ideas." 


There's no better Caldecott winner to introduce this concept than David Wiesner, a five-time medalist. We looked a three Wiesner books and will read more next week as we learn about how an illustrator works. 

We started with The Three Pigs and talked about layout. Children noticed how Wiesner showed the pigs entering and exiting fairy tales by using different artistic styles and extending the borders of the pictures. Next, we read Tuesday and talked about inset pictures and how they allow the illustrator to show the background and zoom in on the action in the scene all on one page. At the end of the story, some children noticed that the clouds on Wednesday morning look like frogs. This made a good segue into Sector 7, an entirely wordless story about a cloud factory. 

Grade 2: Guiding Question - What are some festivals celebrated in other countries?

Light the Candle! Bang the Drum! by Ann Morris
This picture book tells about lots of different holidays and celebrations around the world. As we heard about each one, we guessed the country and pointed it out on the map.

Next, each child took a volume in the series "Festivals of the World" and found a page of interest. We paired together to read captions and learn about one festival in our book. Next week we'll share more and create a map of the countries and their festival.

Grade 3: Guiding Question - What is "traditional literature"? 

Grade three begins a series of genre studies this week. Each lesson, we'll talk about the qualities of a particular genre and share some books in that genre. This week we talked about traditional literature. See our genre map here. It will grow as we add to it each week.

We used an excellent presentation created by Paula McMullen, a librarian in Norwood, Massachusetts called "Traditional Literature 3-5" available for download here. The presentation shows how traditional literature includes many types of stories. 

This flow chart is particularly helpful.

Grade 4 & 5: Golden Dragon book talks!

The book trailers, author interviews, and author websites are up  and ready to view on our library website. Students have already begun book talks about some of these Golden Dragon contenders. I'll also be posting talking avatars called "Vokis" on our home page, each featuring different books from the list. 

Here's last week's Voki about the novel Out of My Mind, by Sharon Draper.