Book Projects for Independent Reading

Book Projects for Independent Reading:

Directions: You must choose one of the writing activities to complete and then you may choose one other activity of your choice to receive full credit on the assignment (each assignment is worth 30 points). All of these projects should be taken seriously. Spelling and grammar will be evaluated as well as the aesthetic (visual) quality and content. All writing assignments need to be at least one full page minimum.

1. Mapmaker: draw a map of the book’s setting, be sure to include all the major locations from the book. You also need to be sure to label the locations correctly.

2. Moviemaker: write a one-page “pitch” to a producer explaining why the story would make a great movie. You need to include specific events from the story and details that will be enticing to potential movie-goers.

3. Billboard: as in the movies, take what seems the most compelling image(s) and create an ad. You need to make sure to include the title and author on your poster. You may even want to add what people would

4. Collage: create a collage on poster board or on the computer that is based on themes, characters, setting, and other elements of the plot from the story.

5. Dear Author: write the author of the book via the publisher. Make sure to include specific elements or parts of the book that you liked the most as well as any questions you may have for the author. This needs to be one full page and written in letter format.

6. Time Line: create a time line that includes both the events in the novel and historical information of the time. You can illustrate your time line for a little extra touch.

7. Mandala: create a mandala with many levels to connect the different aspects of a book including its historical time and culture. (if you don’t know what this is, look it up)

8. Gender-Bender: rewrite a scene and change the gender of the characters to show how they might act differently. This needs to be at least one-page in length.

9. Draw!: translate chapters into storyboards and cartoons. Draw the most important scene in each chapter or if your book has too many chapters, choose the main events that make up the plot of the story. Explain the importance of your choices. This would be easily done with PowerPoint.

10. Dear Diary: keep a diary as if you were a character in the story. Write down events that happen during the story and reflect on how and why they affect the character. 11. 13 Views: inspired by Stevens’ poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”: each stanza offers a different view of a character or chapter.

12. Personal Ad: What would a particular character write in a personal ad for the newspaper? After the advertisement, explain why you wrote the ad in the way you did.

13. Character Analysis: describe a character as a psychologist or recruiting officer might: what are they like? Examples? Why are they like that?

14. Time Machine: instead of traveling into the book, write a scene or story in which the character(s) travel out of their book into today. If your story is set in the present, take your characters to the past or future.

15. Biography: write a biography of one of the characters that most interests you.

16. Board Game: design a board game based on your novel. You need to incorporate elements of the story in your game.

17. Life Graph: plot the events in at least one character’s life during the story and evaluate their importance.

18. Second Chance: How would it change a certain character in the story if a certain character had made a different decision earlier in the story?

19. Sing Me a Song: write a song/ballad about the story, a character, or an event in the book.

20. Create a Diorama: create a diorama of a particularly scene from the novel. Make sure to write an explanation of the material as well as why this scene was important.

21. Open Mind: draw an empty head and inside of it draw any symbols or words or images that are bouncing around in the mind of a character from the story. Write an explanation of your choices.

22. Daily Edition: use the novel to write parts of a newspaper. You will need stories and headlines as well and editorials. You can also do this in magazine format.

23. Make Your Own Test: create your own test complete with an answer key. There should be at least 30 questions on your test.

24. That Was Then, This is Now: create a before and after list to compare the ways in which the characters or settings changed over the course of the story. 25. Who’s That: create a poster that tells about the author of your book. This needs to have a lot of information about him or her and list some of their novels (you can even include information about your book).

26. Plot It: draw out a plot diagram of your novel. You will need to make this a poster to display in the halls.