This month I’m excited to share something new I introduced in my fifth grade classroom this spring: book recommendation bookmarks.
Book Recommendation Bookmarks
My fifth graders love bookmarks. Every time I attend a conference I make sure to scoop up any promotional bookmarks I can find for middle grade books. But, inevitably, we run through them in the month or two after I get back.
So this year, I decided to try something new.
Instead of using promotional bookmarks to introduce students to one new book, why not put together a collection of bookmarks that feature several books? By targeting titles in our classroom library, students have the opportunity to immediately seek out and read any titles that grab their attention.
I printed these out four-to-a-page, giving a finished size of 2.5 inches by 7.5 inches, which made for a good, solid bookmark, and allowed me to feature six titles per category. I also used cardstock so that they would stand up to repeated use.
The bookmarks were a big hit. I keep them in a container near our book return basket so that students who have just finished a book can instantly find something new. Some of my voracious readers like to use the bookmarks like a checklist, keeping track of which books they’ve read. Other students spend time browsing through the selections to get exactly the theme they want, and some students simply grab whichever one is on top and go with it!
Some of our most popular categories include novels in verse, magical school stories, survival stories, sport stories, and super sad stories. Some kids prefer picking books by genre, other kids prefer books by theme or vibe. It’s a great way to highlight a mix of older books and newer books.
What categories of books would be most popular with the readers in your classroom?
Summer days are meant for daydreaming on beach blankets, sitting on porches lost in a great piece of fiction, and writing about this very moment we’re in. It’s a great time to pull out a journal and create a poem that captures these special moments. Poetry seems to fit the lazy timeless summer experience and allows writers to capture the thunderstorms that feed our gardens even as they shake us to our toes, or paint the experience of hot sun on our faces, popsicle juice dripping down our hands, and even the moment we dip our faces into clover or lavender and breathe deeply.
But where to start? There are some iconic how-to books including Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry.While this book tends to be a bit dense, there are a few books that speak directly to middle graders. Poetry Play by Amanda Shackelford uses rhyme to encourage writers to play with their experiences.
One of my personal favorites that speaks directly to writers in clear language is JoAnn Early Macken’s Write A Poem Step-by-Step.This how-to walks writers through idea generation to revision.
Giggle-Worthy Poetry Prompts for Kidsby Mike Downs and Sandra Athans offers writers six poetic forms and suggests easy ways to generate poems. Writers might use their own names to create acrostic poems, use free flowing ideas like “Purple Pickles” for free verse poems, or create concrete forms from surroundings (think a star-shaped poem about a star or back to lavender, consider that shape in simply describing this plant).
In thinking about writing poetry on timeless summer days, I’d recommend picking up a classic collection that also teaches style such as A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetic Formsillustrated by Chris Raschka with poems selected by Paul Janeczeko.
Over 25 poetic forms and examples are provided. (This is the most borrowed book from my personal university library and the one book that I keep having to replace because students forget to return it. I don’t mind because they end up writing a variety of amazing poems).
Of course a summer library visit to choose poetry by Robert Frost, Mary Oliver, Amanda Gorman, and Eve Miriam who offers us the opportunity to bite into poetry with her poem, “How to Eat a Poem” or seeking pictures books by JoAnn Macken, or the above authors of How-to books, mentioned above, as well as so many other favorite picture book writers who write in a variety of verse styles and provide hours of learning enjoyment even as the poems will tickle our spirits and help us lose our creative hearts in our own writing.
Here are a few more possible writing prompts:
Look around you. What color is your world?
Study a blade of grass and look so closely you can see an ant wandering through that jungle, or find cracks in the dirt below. Describe it in a haiku (3 lines, 5 syllables, 7 syllable, 5 syllables).
Write about how timeless summer feels, using free verse let metaphors for timelessness flow.
Consider a more difficult poem like a sestina which requires you to find 6 words that will be ending words that change order to create a 36 line poem. To find the words, look around you and select a few nouns, some verbs, and possible adjectives and adverbs.
Make a list of the best things about summer.
Write a concrete poem about the last thing you ate.
Write a persona poem.
Style copy a classic poem or respond to a classic poem. For example, Mary Oliver’s poem, “At Blackwater Pond” tells the story of the poet’s sensory experiences at this pond. There’s a frog in this poem and I wrote a poem from the frog’s viewpoint. Here’s that response:
A Frog At Blackwater Pond
In Blackwater Pond the lily pads tremble
throughout this night of rain.
I absorb water through green skin. I breathe
oxygen and moisture. The excess slides
down my slimy back and puddles
on the leaf pad. I hear the drumming
of drops, spattering,
insistent reminders that this beautiful
water is my life force.
— Ann Angel
Explore your summer world and see if you can fill a journal with this summer’s “aha” moments. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
It’s summer! I know everyone is busy, so here’s a short and sweet STEM Tuesday Writing Tips & Resources post in place of my normal rambling dissertation on the beauty and significance of STEM in a literary world.
I am the son of an engineer, a civil engineer. My dad was an engineer to his very core. He thought like an engineer. He fixed things, like our bikes, broken baseball bats, toys, etc., with an engineer’s approach. He packed the trash and the garbage cans every week with an engineer’s efficiency. He wrote everything in that classic engineer’s script—an engineer to the core.
Me? I am not an engineer. I am a microbiologist. My approach to life is messier than my father’s, and my handwriting is nowhere near the neat and precise handwriting of an engineer. However, that is not to say I did not learn a thing or two from him. In fact, I gleaned many things about how he worked and went about his business that still stick with me in my creative life. One of those is his particular area of civil engineering expertise, bridge construction.
Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, 2011 (Almonroth, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
The main function of a bridge is to connect. A functional bridge is built through solid design and execution of its structural parts. The pilings and the caps support the deck and create the stability necessary to establish the desired connections.
For example, an island in the middle of a large lake or sea is not easily accessible until a bridge is built that connects one place to the next. As writers and creators, we can bring this concept of bridge building into building stories,
Outlining or developing the plot points of the story provides the structural plan to assist in the execution of the story. The plot points are the islands sitting isolated in the open water. Once we get our plot points envisioned, the next step is to work to build the structural parts through design and execution.
The storytelling magic happens with the type and style of the bridges we build to connect the plot points. The stories that grab readers contain bridges with interesting features, bridges that are fun to traverse. The successful story bridges make the journey a more enjoyable experience beyond simply getting from one plot point island to another.
One tool I use to create the plot islands for outlining my stories is the Brooks Model from Larry Brooks’ excellent book, Story Engineering.
Opening Scene/First Page
3 Essentials
Whose story is it? Protagonist
What’s happening here? There’s a world & there’s something off in it.
What’s at stake? The specific conflict for the protagonist.
Hooking Moment (In first 20 pages)
Exposition/A setup of inciting incident(optional)
First Plot Point (@ 20-25%)
First Pinch Point
Context Shifting Midpoint (reactionary to action @~50%)
Second Pinch Point (~60%)
Second Plot Point (75%)
Ending/Resolution – New Normal
These nine points give me destinations to target. Once these are loosely set in stone, the drafting begins, and my creative brain switches from planning mode to bridge-building mode. The job becomes creating and building effective bridges to transport the reader to the next destination in an entertaining and engaging manner. The goal is to engage the reader in such a way to keep them traveling along the bridge instead of wanting to stop halfway across, racing for the railing, and jumping off the bridge deck into the water below.
As you ponder your stories, don’t forget the power of building bridges to get your story to its target destination. Adopt a bit of a civil engineer’s mindset into your creative work, but feel free to leave the perfectly formed engineer’s writing script behind if you so choose.
Mike Hays has worked hard from a young age to be a well-rounded individual. A well-rounded, equal-opportunity sports enthusiast, that is. If they keep a score, he’ll either watch it, play it, or coach it. A molecular microbiologist by day, middle-grade author, sports coach, and general good citizen by night, he blogs about sports/life/training-related topics at www.coachhays.comand writer stuff atwww.mikehaysbooks.com. Two of his science essays, The Science of Jurassic Park and Zombie Microbiology 101, are included in the Putting the Science in Fiction collection from Writer’s Digest Books. He can be found roaming Bluesky under the guise of @mikehays64.bsky.social and @MikeHays64 on Instagram.
The O.O.L.F Files
This month on the Out Of Left Field (O.O.L.F.) Files, we cross the bridge and explore bridges!
This was the first big bridge project my civil engineer dad worked on in the early 1960s for the Kansas Department of Transportation. After it was completed, he transferred back to Kansas City in 1964. I now live and work within 30 minutes of the bridge and still get a great deal of joy visiting and driving across the mile-long bridge.
Here’s a YouTube drone video that uses the Randolph Bridge as a backdrop to show the drone’s features.
I highly recommend Story Engineering and its companion Story Physics. It’s one of those craft books I reread every few years to not only refresh my creative skills, but to revitalize them. It’s a reminder that discipline and structure actually help me be creative rather than stifle my creativity.
The Mike Hays Best Bridge in Fiction Award goes to…
Robert Enrico’s 1961 short film adaptation of the story is a must-watch.. I remember watching this in school and being completely mesmerized. Of course, we’d already read, or supposed to have read, the story, so the infamous Ambrose Bierce “Gotcha” moment was already played out. Nevertheless, it is a fantastic short film. Below is the Vimeo link to the movie.
In today’s Author Spotlight, Jo Hackl chats with award-winning author John Claude Bemis about his new graphic novel, Rodeo Hawkins & the Daughters of Mayhem. John Claude Bemis is the...
From the Mixed-Up Files is the group blog of middle-grade authors celebrating books for middle-grade readers. For anyone with a passion for children’s literature—teachers, librarians, parents, kids, writers, industry professionals— we offer regularly updated book lists organized by unique categories, author interviews, market news, and a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a children's book from writing to publishing to promoting.
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As a classroom teacher, I am always looking for new ways to reach readers. Here at From the Mixed-Up Files, our From the Classroom series has a wide-range of tools and book lists geared towards teachers and librarians. Some of my favorites include weekly read-alouds for First Chapter Friday, If You Like … posters, and End of Year Best Book Lists.
The bookmarks were a big hit. I keep them in a container near our book return basket so that students who have just finished a book can instantly find something new. Some of my voracious readers like to use the bookmarks like a checklist, keeping track of which books they’ve read. Other students spend time browsing through the selections to get exactly the theme they want, and some students simply grab whichever one is on top and go with it!
