A Book Trailer

The past few weeks I have been very stressed out about working on and completing our book trailer project. I am very much an amateur at technology, and I was apprehensive about having to do something like this all on my own. I will admit that I was not looking forward to the project at all. The project really took me a long time, and I would have been lost if it was not for google images. The project probably took me longer than most to complete, but I feel like I got an understanding for a teaching tool that I had not previously had before. I ended up writing a script for my book trailer and having a friend narrate it with a bit of an accent (sort of Reading Rainbow-ish),and that got me thinking about collaboration and doing something like this in my classroom one day. I think, for middle schoolers, a book trailer might be just the thing to get them excited about reading. They can read their book and then do a book trailer for it instead of a typical book talk or report. Yet, a teacher will be able to tell if they read the book based on what is included in the trailer. Student could also work in pairs and create book trailers for a book that the class has read as a whole, just pick and choose different scenes/chapters. I ended up showing my book trailer to the reading specialist at my school, and she is going to use it this coming week after she has the kids write about what they think might happen in the book. I am interested to see how the students respond to the trailer. One thing I would do differently for next time is I would try to figure out how to incorporate my own video footage (maybe) or at least my own pictures. I really enjoyed finding the music for the end credits, and I think students will enjoy that as well. I think one important thing to do with students when they are working on the book trailers is to make sure that they are given a specific amount of time to complete it – otherwise I could see them taking an excess amount of time.