As our winter break comes to and end, I always have a mix of feelings of anguish and excitement.  I feel sad that the alarm has to go back to being set early, but extremely happy at the thought of seeing all the kids and catching up with them!   Plus January also means it’s time to start thinking about setting New Year’s Reading Goals!  This is actually something I look forward to doing with my students every year!  But this year, I’m even MORE excited because of some changes to Destiny, our library catalog system!

In the past, I’ve spent hours printing out copies of each students’ check-out history in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades.  I showed them how to use this information to look for patterns in the genres they had been reading, and then use it to find some new genres to try in the new year.  Then, when we have our New Year New Book Tasting Event, they use their New Year’s Reading Goals to find some new books to try.

The exciting news is that over the break, I found out that Destiny now allows students to log into their own accounts, and view their own history!  This saves me SOOO much time, and they were super excited to go through their lists!  I’ve had many kids since Kindergarten, so it was fun hearing them shout out their first book they ever checked out from our school, and reminiscing about all the fun books they had read!  My only wish is that Destiny would add the call number for each book that has been checked out as kids could use that information to easily spot different types of books or track their genres. Maybe it’ll be in their next update!  In the meantime, I told them to think about the book and if they couldn’t remember the genre to ask me and I’d help them. It was a little crazy at times, but we were able to get it done.

I updated the bookmark I had created for their New Year’s Reading Goals and ended up creating several different versions.  These first two version I used with 4th and 5th graders who had already become familiar with the different genres in my Fiction Chapter Book section.  They went through their checkout history, and put a tally mark under each genre for each book that they had read this school year.  They quickly began to see patterns of genres they tended to read, and genres they had never tried before.  I gave them time to select a new genre to try, and then go select a book to check out from that new genre.  It made my heart happy to see them get so excited to find a new book to try!

The other version I created was for my 3rd graders who have either never read chapter books before or have just started but weren’t as familiar with the different genres.  I had them go through their checkout history and write down 2 books they would recommend.  After that, they went around and asked 3 other students for recommendations. Then I had them walk through the chapter book section and find a genre and book that they wanted to try out.

I absolutely LOVE the conversations I get to have with the kids about the books they have read, and the news ones they decide to try.  I always save a good part of our next visit to let them share how their new books worked out, and whether they will be willing to give that genre another try.  If you’d like to do a New Year’s Reading Goals activity with your kids, you can find it here at my TpT store.  If you want to see what I do with my younger kids in Kinder, 1st, and 2nd grade, you can read about that here!

Happy Reading!