Stick-It Notes & Reading

I have two loves (besides my husband and beautiful children) - stick-it notes (I go through them like nobody's business) and reading.  Feeling inspired by Principal Jessica Johnson's Twitter posts (@PrincipalJ), I have merged these two loves.

Principal Johnson recently tweeted pictures of how she decorated her door to show her students what books she was reading.  Since my office door is tucked away, this didn't work for me.  However, our awesome librarian allowed me to use some space in our library instead.  I created the poster below to show students what I finished reading, what I am currently reading, and to get their suggestions of what I should read next (enter the stick-it notes).  Here's a look at my poster.  On the finished reading section, I included a summary of the book.  On the now I am reading section, I put some information about why I picked the book.

Then the most awesome thing happened.  Just a few hours after the poster went up, our librarian told me the kids were loving writing recommendations.

After two weeks, I have received over 130 book recommendations.  I'm not really sure how I'm going to read that many books, but I'm really excited that the kids are talking about reading.  Many of the stick-it notes have explanations of why I should pick their recommendation, and often kids are working with friends to write recommendations together.  Which means they are talking about the books together.  Awesome!

Enough typing.  Time to get back to my reading.  I have quite a long list.