Book Reports for Fifth Grade

[MomintheMountains]

Is there a good website or book with book report guidelines and/ or ideas? I am looking specifically for my fifth grader, but ideas that span different grades would be great.

[Ellie]

I'm not overly fond of book reports, but the book report forms on the Love to Learn Place look very good. :-)

[La Texican]

I read this on this forum and I love it! It's called Coronell notes. It moved our book reports quickly from basic outline to full of interest and with better sentences too! To use Coronell notes you draw a line down the middle of the paper and while you're reading you write your own questions on one side of the line, and answers on the other. I told my kid to "ask me questions to see if I was listening." At the end you use your questions and answers to help write the summery. It is also great practice for grammer, combining the question and the answer into a correct sentence or two.

Hmmm.. I don't know if fifth graders should still be doing oral narrations or not? If you haven't done a lot of oral reports you can always ask them "what's happening?" when you see them in the middle of a book. That will give them practice with retelling. I practicing retelling with my kid using movies too. I'll walk away saying, "tell me if anything interesting happens?" Then when I get back I ask what I missed. Find the link on here that says "first ten weeks of writing with skills free" to find out why.

Also, google "middle school literary analysis" to find official outlines, technniques, and jargon.

[bluedarling]

We are using Beyond the Book Report from Analytical Grammar as our composition program. That's basically what it is...instruction and guidelines on writing book reports.  It also teaches literary analysis as a part of that.

I think now that book reports are a bit of a crutch used by public school teacher to just check that their large schoolroom of kids is actually reading without the time-consuming step of just talking with each student about the books they are reading.  I know that mine are reading, and what they are reading, and how much time they are reading in a week just by being around.  I'd rather  have a conversation with the younger ones about what they are reading, and use that as a starting point for other discussions, and helping them find more reading.

[llifeon18wheels]

I think now that book reports are a bit of a crutch used by public school teacher to just check that their large schoolroom of kids is actually reading without the time-consuming step of just talking with each student about the books they are reading. I know that mine are reading, and what they are reading, and how much time they are reading in a week just by being around. I'd rather have a conversation with the younger ones about what they are reading, and use that as a starting point for other discussions, and helping them find more reading.

Thank you for saying this. I like the idea of book reports BUT reading and discussing living books has proven to me that my daughter is grasping the plot and the characters at a depth that I'm impressed with.

[5LittleMonkeys]

I've just recently come across Beyond the Book Report Season One from the authors of Analytical Grammar, and I'm looking forward to using it with dd10.  I'm not interested in using it to make sure my dc has read a book...and BtBR isn't designed for that purpose anyway.  It's purpose is to teach writing.  If you scroll down on this page you will see a list of skills taught in Season One.