Lesson video

Hello everyone.

My name is Ms. Madden.

I'm really looking forward to sharing book recommendations with you today.

Let's get started.

In today's lesson, we will begin by thinking about why we are recommending books.

Why do it at all? Then we will look at some poetry and poets.

We will move on to share some recommendations about picture books and think about our favourite illustrators.

Then we will share some recommendations about non-fiction texts before finally writing your own book recommendation.

In this lesson, you will need a book or some paper, something to write with, a pencil or a pen and it could be helpful to have a sticky note like a post-it note, but this isn't essential.

So don't worry if you don't have one.

Can you press pause and get those things now? Fantastic.

Okay, let's start off by thinking about why are we recommending books? Who recommends books to you? Have a think.

Who is the last person to suggest a book to you that you read? Has that happened before? Perhaps it was a parent, perhaps it was a friend, perhaps it was a librarian, perhaps it was someone on television or perhaps you read a book review in a comic.

Have a think and say it out loud.

Okay, well done.

Who do you recommend books to? Have you ever recommended a book? Have you ever read a book and thought this is so great? I just know that this person would love it.

Can you press pause and say their names aloud? So why is this business of recommending books important? Recommending books is important because it helps build up a culture of talking about books.

And the more we talk about books with our friends and our family, the more we encourage each other to read great books and do more reading for pleasure.

Just like you might talk about games that you love or television you enjoy watching or films that you've loved, we can do the same about books and we build up a buzz around books and create excitement about a book that you might want to read.

And then if you and another friend or a family member, read the same book, you can talk about it together.

And that's one of the great things in life to do is talk about books with people you know.

So sometimes we talk about what's trending.

Perhaps you've heard that phrase used in relation to television when you might see what's trending on Netflix, for example.

So what's trending in the world of books? Is there a book that you know loads of people are reading and really love at this moment? Perhaps it's something new that's come out or perhaps it's something old that people just rediscovered.

Can you pause and say aloud what's trending right now? Fabulous.

Perhaps you've got an idea of some books that you think should be trending.

If other people knew about them, they'd read them and loved them.

We want to make book recommendations to help create a buzz and excitement about reading and perhaps you'll start the next trend.

Okay, if you've done some of the other reading for pleasure lessons we'll have done this before, but what is a genre? What is genre, this idea of genre? Can you remember? Press pause and say it aloud now.

Genre is a style or category of art, music or literature.

Perhaps you remembered that from before.

And perhaps you didn't know that in which case, that's fine.

It's just a term that we use to describe the style of art musical literature.

And in this context, we're thinking about books.

Thus this is important today because when we're thinking about making book recommendations, often it's helpful to talk about the genre of writing that we're promoting, the style of writing or the category.

There are so many different genres.

Here are just some examples.

You could have biographical writing, a biography, historical fiction, science fiction, mystery.

Poetry is a genre that we're going to look at today.

Traditional literature, fantasy or non-fiction.

And non-fiction is another genre that we're going to look at today.

Remember, there are so many different genres but this can be helpful to categorise when we are making our recommendations.

So now we're going to have a little thing about some poets and poetry.

Do you know any poets? Could you say their names? Can you remember? Perhaps you've studied some poetry in school bubble.

Can you press pause and say the names of all the poets you can think of? Well done.

Perhaps you found that quite easy.

Perhaps you found it quite difficult.

Did you know that many adults including teachers actually find it really really hard to name a lot of poets? So I wanted to introduce you to some contemporary poets that you might not know.

So here are five pictures of some contemporary poets, people who are writing poetry at present day at this time.

And these five poets are actually quite famous.

I wonder if you recognise any of them.

If you do, press pause and say their names aloud now.

If you don't, don't worry.

Here are their names.

Now that you've seen their names, I wonder if you could match their names to any of their pictures.

If you think, oh, I did know who Michael Rosen was and I think this is his picture.

If you think you've got a better idea press pause and match them up now.

Well done.

Now, perhaps you did know something about them, perhaps you didn't, don't worry.

I'm just going to tell you a little bit about each of these poets.

First of all, we have Carol Ann Duffy.

And I chose to include Carol Ann Duffy because she was actually the best female poet laureate.

She's a Scottish poet.

So she was the first female poet to be appointed in this prestigious position.

Next we have Michael Rosen.

Now you may well have heard of Michael Rosen.

He's a very, very popular children's poet.

He's an author too.

And he's also been a children's laureate.

He writes really funny poetry.

Here we have Benjamin Zephaniah, another British poet.

I love Benjamin Zephaniah's poem, "Talking Turkeys".

He's very funny and thought provoking.

And Benjamin Zephaniah says that a lot of his poetry is influenced by the poetry and music of Jamaica.

Next we have Kae Tempest.

Now Kae Tempest is a very successful performer and poet.

And I chose Kae Tempest to show that poets often are writers or playwrights, sometimes singers at the same time.

And there's all sorts of different poetry that they write and perform covering all sorts of different things.

Finally, I have Jackie Kay who was there another very successful Scottish poet.

So now you've seen five contemporary poets.

Perhaps next time you're in a library or a bookshop or a school book corner, you might see if you can find any poetry written by one of them, or you could ask a teacher or an adult.

Do you know any of these poets? Here I'm going to recommend you to you two book collections of poetry.

I think you might enjoy these.

The first is a book called "Love That Dog" by Sharon Creech.

Now, this is a story told in free verse and it's written in a diary format and it's about the story of a boy who actually resists his poetry homework.

So it's all about poetry.

It's a really moving and uplifting story.

When I first encountered this book, I thought, how strange a story written with free verse but I found it really moving and uplifting.

And I think you would like it too My next recommendation is a poetry collection called "Moon Juice" by Kate Wakeling.

Now "Moon Juice" the poems and mangers covers a range of subject matter.

Poems about curious characters in strange situations.

I think that illustrations in this book really help you interpret the poems in a more meaningful way.

And what I love is at the back of this book, there's actually interviews with the poet and illustrator as bonus material.

And I love often reading firsthand from the poet or the illustrator about what they wrote and why.

So I wonder, might you like to read one of these books of poetry? Press pause and point to the one that you think sounds most exciting.

Okay.

Now we're going to think about picture books and illustrators and not that genre of book that you might read or recommend.

Because remember there's so many different kinds of texts that we can read and enjoy.

And when we're thinking about reading for pleasure, we can read anything.

Do you have a favourite illustrator? Someone who illustrates picture books or perhaps graphic novels? If you do, can you press pause and say their name now? Fantastic.

This could be someone, a book that they have written that you could recommend later in the lesson.

Now, I have two recommendations for you.

You may have seen these books before.

The best book is a wordless picture book by Shaun Tan.

Shaun Tan is an absolutely incredible illustrator and he writes and illustrates lots of picture books that are really really interesting and thought provoking and really popular with older children.

This story is about the story of an immigrant who has to leave his home and travel to a new land.

The images and illustrations are really mesmerising and the themes and story of the book are really important and significant and it helps you to empathise with a very difficult situation.

I highly recommend "The Arrival".

The next picture book I'm recommending is one called "If".

A mind bending way of looking at big ideas and numbers.

Now, big ideas and numbers like how big is a billion or how big is the sun can be quite confusing to comprehend and think about, it can boggle your brain.

But each double spread in "If" looks at a different idea or concept and visualises that in a really brilliant way.

For example, if the sun would be the size of a grapefruit, then the earth would be the size of a grain of salt.

There's loads of different examples of ideas like this represented fantastically.

Some to do with the planets, some to do with history and timelines.

And it's a great book that you can come in and out of.

You could just sit and open and just like go to one double page spread.

You don't need to read the whole book in one guide.

Either of these books sound good to you, which one might you like to read? Can you press pause and point to the one you'd like? Okay Now we're looking at another genre.

This time, non-fiction books.

Sometimes we overlook non-fiction books, but they are great and can be really, really fun to read.

What are your favourite non-fiction books? Can you press pause and say aloud all the non-fiction books that you would like to recommend to someone else? Fantastic.

I wish I could hear your recommendations.

I have three recommendations here for you.

I think you might like them.

The first is a recasting of "On The Origin of Species." And you might've heard of that before.

It's a very famous text that was written in 1859 by Charles Darwin, the famous naturalist and biologist about the theory of evolution.

Now, this is a modern version of this text that has some quotes from the original texts.

Also some new information written told by Sabina Radeva.

And it also got fantastic illustrations, pictures and maps and diagrams that really help to understand the information.

The next book I'm recommending, is one called "Hidden Figures." The true story of four black women and the space race.

If you are interested in space at all or history, then I'm really recommend this book to you.

It's actually based on a book that was written for adults, and then a film that was made about these inspirational women.

And it's set in a time in which there were lots of barriers put in place for people of colour and for women.

But these heroines overcame racism and sexism to achieve amazing things and support men going into space in this space race.

Finally, I've got a recommendation that's a very fun and frivolous book.

This is called the "Children's Miscellany" and it's not that new it's been around for a long time.

And this book is full of fascinating facts about history, the animal kingdom, plants and planets.

And again it's another non-fiction book, which you can dip in and out of.

If you've got five minutes and you just want to relax, you can read a few pages of facts that would be fun to tell your friends.

My son loves this book.

He reads it over and over.

So I wonder do any of these books sound like one thing you would like to read? If so, press pause and point to it now.

So, what are your recommended leads? Because in today's lesson you are going to write your own recommendation and it's best to choose a recommendation that you think someone else would really like.

Can you write down the titles of the books you think you might like to recommend? Okay.

Now we're getting to the time to write a book recommendation.

So we have to think about what makes a good recommendation.

First of all, it's got to be a great book.

Don't recommend something that you didn't enjoy reading yourself because then the chances are that someone else won't end up reading it.

You want to recommend a great text.

But then what do you write in your recommendation? Well, you might include information about what genre the text is or the style of the writing.

You could include information about the setting and characters particularly if it's a piece of fiction.

Now, next on my list, I've got synopsis, but I've got it crossed out.

What we don't need in a book recommendation is a synopsis.

That's a summary of what happens.

We'll find out what happens if we read the book.

Sometimes when children or adults make a big recommendation they end up retelling the whole story.

We don't need that in a book recommendation.

Just the tiniest bit of the information about what happens to get us hooked in.

You might include ideas about stories that are similar in theme or the texts that cover similar themes or other authors that are similar.

If you like this, then you might like this.

So if you really liked Roll Dar stories then you might like David Wayan stories.

If you really like picture bits about this, then you might like this.

So something similar.

You might include information about why you liked it because that might be the same for another reader.

And finally, you could include how it made you feel.

So these are all ideas that you could include in your recommendation.

But whatever you feel you should include is probably going to be the right thing because this is about your own personal reflection and choices.

So I'm going to show you an example that could give you some ideas.

But again, your recommendation is your own.

So here's a recommendation for non-fiction book that I love.

You can press pause and read this to yourself first and then I'll read it aloud.

Okay.

I love the non-fiction book "Africa, Amazing Africa" by Atinuke.

This is a fascinating book which gives interesting and thoughtful information about all the countries in Africa.

It is organised in a really helpful way by geographical region with fantastic maps and illustrations to help the reader.

If you like to find out about different countries and cultures, then this is the book for you.

Just to point out that a few things I included in my recommendation that might help you.

First of all, you can see I spoke what genre the text was.

I loved that non-fiction book.

I then commented on the style of writing.

It gives interesting and thoughtful information.

And at the bottom you can see in pink.

I said, if you like.

So I recommended for a particular kind of person.

If you like to find out about different countries and cultures, then this is the book for you.

So I directed my recommendation.

I made it a bit more specific.

Sometimes we can do a really short recommendation.

Do you remember, I said you could use a post-it? Now this is an example of a post-it recommendation where you just write something just one sentence about why you love a book.

And then you leave that posted on the book so that when someone else sees it, they might say oh look Emma, Ms. Madden loved this book.

For example, with the story "Mic Drop", I wrote, "I love this bit because it's an exciting mystery "and it's also very funny." So when you're writing a book recommendation, you could do a longer recommendation on a piece of paper or you could do several short recommendations, on post-its.

And if you don't have a post-it, you could write it on a piece of paper and slip it inside the front cover.

So that someone else who sees the book might get a lovely surprise and think that's interesting.

I might try this one.

When you write your book recommendations please remember to write your ideas in full sentences.

I love this bit because, full stop.

I think you would love it if, full stop.

If you're ready, and you know what book you're going to recommend then pause and write down your first two sentences now.

Fantastic.

So now you are ready to recommend your favourite books.

You could recommend them to a friend.

You could recommend to a family member a parent or carer.

You could recommend to a teacher because we're trying to create a buzz around books.

You could do the longer written recommendation or you could do a post-it recommendation.

I wish I could see what you were recommending.

Press pause and off you go.

Well done.

In today's lesson, we thought about why recommending books is so important.

We found out about some poets and I recommended some poetry to you.

You thought about your favourite illustrators and I recommended some picture books to you.

I also recommended some non-fiction texts.

And then you have written your own bit of recommendations.

I wonder what genre that you recommended? Congratulations! You have completed your lesson.

Happy reading!.