Book Week 2016 – Activity Ideas
Book Week is a fantastic time for promoting libraries and engaging readers in a variety of activities to increase their connection with reading, Australian literature and library services. Here are just a few activity ideas, both my own and adaptions from others’, for this year’s Book Week.
Storytelling
Guest storyteller: Many libraries are fortunate to be able to afford a special guest visitor or author during the Book Week celebrations. This year storytellers, performers and Indigenous storytellers are sure to be popular. But if the budget doesn’t stretch to such an event, perhaps look within the library or school community. I’m sure someone within that population sticks out as a person who is good at spinning a yarn or has a knack for making a story spring to life. And if you still can’t find a willing victim, perhaps try an online video or retelling.
Group storytelling: Story cards and dice, such as Rory’s Story Cubes, are excellent for promoting storytelling with a group. While any story cards or flip chart would work I particularly like the Story Cubes (no, I’m not being paid to write this), as they are so tactile and pretty. But a cube net that students can create and design their own set of cubes would also work.
Giant Board Games
Bingo: I’ve promoted this Reading Bingo from Random House before, but I think it would make an excellent giant bingo game. Create a giant board by enlarging each square and laminating. You would also need smaller copy to cut up and place in a container from which to randomly draw each square. As a square is drawn players have to name a title that fits, e.g. A Book That Became A Movie – The Hobbit. Write the book title on the square on the giant board (use a whiteboard marker so that it can be erased to play multiple times). This could be played competitively, with the names of students also listed on the squares, in teams or simply to see how quickly a group can fill the whole grid or one line.
Scrabble or Bananagrams: Check out this post from Constantly Lovestruck about a giant game of bananagrams, with a list of how many tiles you will need of each letter.
Pac-Man: This librarian created a giant Pac-Man board on the floor of her library. Details can be found on the blog Tvahlsing.
Guess Who: I have seen giant Guess Who games and DIY Guess Who games using everyone from Bible characters to US Presidents. I would make a giant Guess Who game using book characters. You could use animated characters from popular titles such as Diary of a Wimpy Kid or instead use the actors that have become the iconic representations of book characters.
Quests
Scavenge Hunt: I ran a library scavenger hunt for Book Week last year and it was a huge hit. I plan to update the questions to reflect the theme, Australia: Story Country.
Amazing Race: The librarian from Rock The Library blog has shared this quest based on the popular TV show with a library-themed twist that would be easy to adapt.
You can also check out my Pinterest board, Library – Book Week, which I will be continually updating to reflect the 2016 theme.
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