Middle School Book Report Options
Choose from these options to make your book reports.
Make a movie trailer for your book focused on the characters and how they change throughout.
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Make up a soundtrack for the book. List key moments in the story, describe what’s going on, why it’s important, and then explain what song should be the soundtrack to each moment.
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Write a series of newspaper articles that explain what’s happening in the story and why it’s important.
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Make a comic book adaptation of the beginning, middle and end focusing on point of view. Who sees what?
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Turn your book into a musical or opera-- write three songs that are about key moments when the plot is moved forward.
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Talk back to the author. Write a long and detailed letter to the author asking questions about their writing process, about their books, and making connections to your own life.
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Make a board game that allows the players to act out the plot of the book.
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Create a Prezi about the author, plot, characters, setting, theme, and quotes.
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Create a photo collage illustrating the theme of the book, and explain in a short essay how the images show they way the theme develops throughout.
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Book Report Rubric
Skill
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Score
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Ideas: Ideas are original, ideas are clear. Good evidence.
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Tidiness & Conventions: be careful, double check, fix mistakes
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Voice: Engaging, appropriate to audience, self-revealing
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Creativity: Go beyond the obvious, push limits, make with pride
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High School Book Report Options
SELECT four of the following essay options for your four book reports. These essays will be graded based on the 6 Traits rubric.
Key Ideas and Details
1. What is this book REALLY about? Think about the theme, think about the deeper message. Cite strong evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.
2. Provide an objective summary of the text. Determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account.
3. Analyze the impact of the author's choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed). What do you imagine the author’s thinking was? Did they make effective choices to accomplish their goal?
Craft and Structure
1. How does the author use language in this book? Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g. how the language evokes a sense of time and place; how it sets a formal or informal tone).
2. Analyze how an author's choices concerning how to structure a text, order events within it (e.g., parallel plots), and manipulate time (e.g. pacing, flashbacks) create such effects as mystery, tension, or surprise. Were the choices effective for the genre?
3. Analyze a particular point of view or cultural experience reflected in a work of literature from outside the United States, drawing on a wide reading of world literature. How does this point of view relate to Hawaii and Hawaiian culture?
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas.
7. Analyze the representation of a subject or a key scene in two different artistic mediums, including what is emphasized or absent in each treatment (e.g. The Hobbit the book compared with The Hobbit the movies.)
8. Analyze how an author draws on and transforms source material in a specific work (e.g. how Beauty the novel uses the source material of The Brothers’ Grimm Beauty and the Beast).
Six Traits Essay Rubric
Each essay will need to demonstrate mastery of the following literary skills. Use this chart as a checklist for each of your essays. This is how I will grade your essays as well.
Skill
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What I will look for:
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Score
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Sentence Fluency
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Varied sentence lengths
natural sounding sentences
connecting words (aka subordinating conjunctions) like although, after, because, before, if, since, though, unless, until, when, whenever, where, wherever, and while
Active voice, not passive voice (not “the pizza was eaten by him” but “he ate the pizza”
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Voice
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Risks self-revelation
appropriate tone to task
passionate
respectful of audience
engage reader
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Ideas
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main idea is clear
relevant evidence
topic is narrow and focused
support is accurate
go beyond the obvious
fresh ideas
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Word Choice
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Powerful vocabulary
use imagery and figurative language
natural word choice
Use precise words and phrases;
sensory details
strong nouns specific verbs
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Organization
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Each essay has a clear Thesis
Each paragraph has a clear topic sentence
Showcase the central idea
inviting lead or hook
logical sequence
good pacing
satisfying conclusion
thoughtful transitions
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Conventions
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Formatting
Spelling
Grammar
Punctuation
Clear meaning
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