My Genre Challenge (with printables)
challenge your kids, your students, or yourself to read across genres
Hi friends!
I love to challenge readers to read across different genres.
I wanted to share with you the genre challenge I’ve been doing with my 5th grade book club students (I briefly mentioned it on here a while back). As you can imagine, some can’t be bothered to record their books, either because of ahem, laziness, or because they read too many too fast to stop and write them down. I don’t require this challenge, and even those who don’t keep up with it seem to enjoy the discussions when we share about books we’ve read. There are, of course, also students who are super into it, asking me for a new page for tracking every week. You can probably guess what kind of reader I was when I was young (and frankly, still am). I am brainstorming bringing this challenge to a broader group of students at some point, too.
Read on for how the challenge works, PDFs of the printables, and a little background info.
When I introduce the challenge, the first thing we do is talk about what a genre is, and then we brainstorm titles for each genre with a worksheet. The information below is how I introduce genres with my students.
What's a genre?
A genre is a category or type of book. This is different than age category and book format (is the book a picture book, chapter book, middle grade (upper fiction) book, graphic novel, etc?). Every format of books also has genres within its format.
Here are genres I talk about with students, and some of our examples:1
Fantasy/Sci-Fi-- these books contains something magical/unreal, or something scientific or futuristic (like a setting in space or a dystopian (an important subgenre we mention here!) book where the author imagines a future where the world has changed). Examples: Harry Potter, Land of Stories, Moon Base Alpha, Aru Shah, Keeper of the Lost Cities, Wings of Fire, Magic Tree House. For dystopian examples I always mention The Hunger Games and Alone.
Nonfiction-- Nonfiction is something true/informational/explanatory (not a made-up story)-- animals, dinosaurs, history, sports. Kids usually mention some random ones here (“a book about dogs!”) and then I point out some popular titles like Who Would Win?, Weird but True, and Guinness Book of World Records.
Realistic Fiction-- these are books with a story that could be true/set in the real world, and are usually set in our generally current time period. You can decide whether you think a book is "realistic" or not. 😉 Some popular ideas: Front Desk, The Penderwicks, Because of Winn-Dixie, The Vanderbeekers, Holes, The Babysitters Club.
Humor-- any book that makes you laugh! Examples: Frindle, Sideways Stories from Wayside School, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Big Nate, Timmy Failure, 13-Story Treehouse, Mercy Watson.
Mystery-- any book where characters have a puzzle or something unknown to figure out. This could include spy books like City Spies and Spy School. More examples: A to Z Mysteries, Greenglass House, Book Scavenger, Masterpiece, Ali Cross.
Historical Fiction-- a book that takes place in the past. Sorry parents, I hate to say it, but books set in the 1980s or 1990s now qualify as "historical fiction" for our kids. 😂 I do point out that technically HF books are set in a different period than they are written, but we go by what feels historical to the kids. A few examples: FunJungle, Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales, Island of the Blue Dolphins, By the Great Horned Spoon, The Black Stallion, The Bletchley Riddle.
Classics-- books that have stood the test of time because they’re so good, and/or are popular/respected for more than one generation. I tell them that if their teachers or parents read it and now they still do, that it has spanned generations. Anne of Green Gables, Sherlock Holmes, Charlotte’s Web, Island of the Blue Dolphins. Harry Potter always comes up here, too—I tell them it’s becoming a modern classic, now that it almost spans generations (since I was a teenager when the first book published).
Poetry/Novel in Verse-- a book of separate poems, or a novel/chapter book written in the form of poetry/poems (with its own subgenre possibly). Alone, Inside and Back Again, Shel Silverstein’s poetry books.
Biography-- information/story about a real person, including the subgenre of autobiography or memoir: a biography/story that the person wrote about themselves either about their whole life or a particular chapter/theme. Who/What Was books are great for the biography category! There are some graphic novels that are actually memoirs like Smile, When Stars Are Scattered, and El Deafo.
Graphic Novels can be from any genre (have fun!) and include comic books and longer graphic novels or graphic adaptations. While I, of course, believe graphic novels are real books, this challenge was originally designed with narrative novels in mind (partly because that makes it more of a challenge). So when we track, we include our GNs in the Free Choice section.
**Many books fit in more than one genre-- if that's the case, you get to decide where to put it!**
Once they understand genres, I explain the challenge.
The Challenge
Read as many books as you can and record the title and author on the completed books log.
Choose an appropriate genre for each book.
If you want, record the page number (or I write audio in that space), and give it a rating. I briefly teach them how I rate books. I tell them audio books count.
Color/shade in (color-coding is optional, but fun!) a star for each completed book. I put a checkmark by the book when I’ve added it to the star sheet and also write the book number into the star to help keep track.
If you fill a category, add more of those color stars in Free Choice. That’s where graphic novels go, too (color-coded if desired).
Enjoy seeing what genres you gravitate toward naturally and consider trying something in a new genre!
Some More Background Info
The following information was originally written to go with a summer reading genre challenge I created. This mini challenge was inspired by one of my favorite books about reading and literacy, called The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller. I highly recommend this book if you would like to learn more about the benefits of choice and reading widely across genres for children's literacy and love of reading. Reading across genres helps kids find what they like and actually stick with reading books that aren't just assigned. Ms. Miller cites research which states that students who simply read more outperform students who don't read as much.
Ms. Miller's book describes a philosophy and reading challenge called “The 40 Book Challenge.” My own kids participated in this challenge during their upper elementary school years, and grew immensely as readers through it. I originally adapted my challenge from my kids’ school challenge.
Here are a few applicable notes from Ms. Miller (source):
"The 40 Book Challenge is a personal challenge for each student, not a contest or competition between students or classes. In every competition or contest there are winners and losers. Why would we communicate to our students that they are reading losers?"
"Honestly, I don’t care if all of my students read 40 books or not. What matters is that students stretch themselves as readers and increase their competence, confidence, and reading motivation through their daily participation in our reading community."
"Students who haven’t read much may not have found the books that speak to them. Reading buffet-style—tasting all types of books—students can discover what the world of reading has to offer."
"Developing students’ positive reading identities and development as lifelong readers—these must remain our priorities every day, all year long." YES!
As I challenge kids to record books on their completed books log and their star tracker, I show them how I do the same thing too with all my middle grade (including some lower chapter books) and YA books I read. I leave the grown-up books off this tracker. It’s fun to play along and have mine as an example since I tend to read a lot in these age categories but still can get stuck in certain genres, too.
Feel free to use these handouts (but please don’t sell them) or create your own versions of them for your own kids/students/library patrons/yourself to use.
I’d love to hear if you do use them and how it goes. Happy reading (and tracking)!
xo,
Nicole
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We discuss how there are other genres as well, and we also discuss some subgenres as they come up. These genres listed just happen to be the ones I chose for the challenge.
These are so fun!