Sending Book Recommendations with Epic

This year my focus has been on creating reading rituals with my students.  Ultimate goal...engage, excite, entice young readers to READ!  Book recommendations is one of the ways that I have tried to connect with my students this year.  But this time it was through EPIC.

If you are not using Epic in your classroom, then you should check it out! It is a website/app that has thousands of engaging books for students to read.  And it is free for teachers to use in their classrooms.  Now...I am a HUGE fan of in-your-hand books, but this is a great tool to sneak in, as well, because it is engaging and helps to broaden student book choice.

You can create "collections" within your Epic account.  So if your students are reading books about characters that persevere, you could find books on the same topic in Epic and group them together in a "collection."  Then you can actually assign this collection to your class, a small group, or an individual.

This is exactly what I have been trying to do this year, except I like to think of it as RECOMMENDING a book to my students instead of assigning.  I am not going to take away points if they don't read the book or assign an activity to the book that I recommend to them.  My purpose is to excite, entice, and broaden their interest in books.  For example, my students completed research reports on an animal of their choice.  I sent book recommendations to each student with a collection of books and videos about their individual animals.  They were so excited!

So here is what you do to assign or RECOMMEND books to your students:

Step 1:
Decide what books you are looking for and search.

Step 2:
Decide on the books that you would like to add to a "collection" (to assign a book(s) to a student, they must be part of a collection).  Click "add to" on the right of the screen and choose "collection."

Step 3:
Choose the collection.  If you do not have any collections or would like to create a new collection, a small screen will pop up for you to do so.

Step 4:
Complete this process for each book that you would like to add into a collection.  Once you feel that your collection is complete, it is time to recommend it to your students!!  Head back up to the tabs at the top of the page and click "my library."  Then click on "collections."  You will see an "assign" button under the name of the collection.  Click on it!

Step 5:
A small screen will pop up.  You can choose to assign your collection to all your students, a group of students, or an individual student.  Then click "assign."

That's it!  You have recommended a collection of books to your students!  Now how do they access it?  Once they log in, they will see a small number pop up on their mailbox.  Ruby has 1 new collection in her mailbox.

This is just one way to engage our readers to try out some new books or even to reread some old, forgotten favorites!  Could you see yourself using this tool in your classroom?  I would love to hear your thoughts.

Happy reading and recommending!

Em

For more engaging posts this month: Please check out the calendar below!