Reading Week at our school has come and gone.  There were so many activities and excitement centered around reading.  Our author visit by Judy Young was a great experience as well. 

Reading Week activities were designed to get kids reading and writing.  One of my favorites was a Book Buffet.  This idea came from Education World's Celebrate Children's Book Week website.  The idea is simple and an easy way to get kids thinking about other books to read.  Don't we all have a difficult time getting kids to choose books once they are finished reading one?  I do, let alone getting kids to think ahead about their reading.  The Book Buffet allows students to view several books in a short amount of time.  Here's a quick breakdown of the Book Buffet:

• Have several books from different genres on hand from the library.
• Give students 3-5 minutes with a book. During that time, they look through the book and read what they can.
• When time is up, students choose another book to read. 
  
• This continues for as long as you wish.

To help kids remember books they wanted to read or check out later, I made a simple form in Word.  They wrote the title of the book, the genre and whether or not they wanted to read it later.  This was a list they can refer to later on when they have nothing to read or don't know what to read.  Working in a fifth grade classroom doing this activity, we discussed that this could even be done once a week, every other week, or monthly with students' just-right reading books.  Follow the same procedures above only students will be sharing books they are currently reading. 

This is a great way to expose students to different types of books and get them thinking about what they can read next.  There was so much excitement in the air in the fifth grade class.  They moaned almost every time we told them time was up!  If you try it or have other ideas, please post them!