Golden Sower Matching Game

Every year the 6th grade students come in to learn about the Golden Sowers (our state award books). For these days/activities, I always want to find something besides book-talking that I can do to showcase the books and have students become familiar with the general summaries of the books and the AR information, if applicable. In our building, we have students in grades 6-8, so I have 20 books total to feature. The Chapter Book list is geared towards 4-6 and the Novels list is geared towards 6-8.

Last year I created a slideshow in Google Slides linking book trailers I found on YouTube for all of the Chapter Books. Each slide also had the genre, the AR info, and a picture of the cover. Students were in groups of 2-3 and watched the videos together. The Novel Books each had a handout with my review, the AR info, and a picture of the cover. The students viewed these as a gallery walk.

This year, I wanted to find a way to showcase the books that did not involve YouTube since it is blocked at our building. In order for students to view the videos, I had to override the filter multiple times. To combat that, I created a ThingLink image for both book lists. These images have links to my Goodreads review of each book, along with a video if applicable. For the Novels list, in addition to the ThingLink, I also created a matching game where students have to match the summary of each book with a picture of the cover. This was actually pretty easy to do since I already had summaries written for each book. I used Google Draw to put the cards together. The hardest part was getting them to print LINED UP front to back. My amazingly awesome building secretary helped me with that part. 

On the day of the activity, students will be divided into two groups-one starting with the computers and the ThingLink for the Chapter Books, and the other at the tables with the matching game. The first group will go through the images and links for each Chapter Book and fill out the handout to put in their Reading folder. The second group will have a couple of minutes to scan the Golden Sower page on this website (found HERE) before beginning the matching game. 

I have included the Google Folder I made that has all of my handouts for this activity in case anyone is interested.