Reading Adventures:  Engaging Activities to Inspire Middle Grade Readers, a guest post by Alice Reinert

Fostering a love of reading in students is one of the most rewarding roles for me as a school librarian. However, in today’s fast-paced, tech-savvy world, it can be challenging to keep young readers engaged. In this post, I will explore a variety of strategies school librarians can use to captivate students’ interest in reading. From highlighting author visits and Battle of the Books to creating themed book displays and promoting student choice, these activities can help librarians connect with young students and inspire a love for reading. 

One of the activities that help our upper elementary students (grades 4-6) get excited about middle grade books is our annual Battle of the Books competition.  Our district uses our state award nominees (approximately 17-22 books) in the competition.   The students divide into teams of 4-6 members and decide at our first meeting which team member will be responsible for which books (I read all the books ahead of time so I can help with this process.)  Of course, we emphasize that the more books they read, the more valuable team members they will be! 

We have monthly lunch meetings in the library to track progress and prepare for the competition. It’s a special treat to eat in the library, and it’s fun to watch the team members bond over books.  We also use practice questions and model the competition procedure at this time.  Teams earn 5 bonus points in the competition if they can name a book’s author, so we work on this as well.  One of my favorite tools for learning correct pronunciations for the author names is the TeachingBooks Author and Illustrator Pronunciation Guide.

I firmly believe that it is much easier to build a reading culture when the entire school community is involved.  Therefore, several years ago we started incorporating staff teams into our Battle of the Books.  Last year we had 3 staff teams for a total of 21 staff members involved.  There’s nothing like competing against the staff to motivate the students to do well in the competition!

Students create their team names and decorate their posters for the competition. Our principal plays the part of emcee, and all students in grades 3-6 watch the competition.  We arrive at a winning student team and a winning staff team, with them squaring off in the final round.  The stakes are high with the winners gaining bragging rights!  The students have always come out on top, but not without a battle—it’s always extremely close, sometimes with the win being decided by a single question!  

Another activity extending beyond our four walls involves Alan Gratz¹’s novel Ground Zero.  Alan Gratz is a favorite among our middle grade readers, and Ground Zero was the winner of our state award list in 2023-24.  

Another activity extending beyond our four walls involves Alan Gratz’s novel Ground Zero.  Alan Gratz is a favorite among our middle grade readers, and Ground Zero was the winner of our state award list in 2023-24.  

As they were all born well after 2001, our 6th grade students have no personal connection or recollection of the 9/11 tragedy.  Collaborating with the 6th grade social studies teacher, we familiarize the students with 9/11 with activities such as reading Gratz’s novel (and other 9/11 novels, such as Lauren Tarshis’s I Survived the Attacks of September 11, 2001).  Students are encouraged to talk with the adults in their lives about their own experiences during that difficult time in our nation’s history.  The unit culminates in a skype with a 9/11 survivor who graciously shares his story of that fateful day in an age-appropriate presentation.  This connection, along with Brandon and Rashina in Ground Zero, helps our students to understand the impact that 9/11 had on our nation and its people.  

Author/illustrator visits, both in-person and virtual, have also played an important part in reaching our middle grade readers.  Through the years we have welcomed into our library such authors/illustrators as Kate Messner, Leisl Shurtliff, Candace Fleming (World Read Aloud Day), Kate Klise and M. Sarah Klise, and Bridget Heos.  Most recently, our 5th graders had the pleasure of learning from Angela Cervantes (The Cursed Moon; Lety Out Loud; Gaby, Lost and Found; Allie, First at Last) who was in town to present at the Kansas Book Festival the next day.  Meeting and learning from  real-life authors/illustrators has been a very effective way to introduce middle grade literature to our students.  

Our 5th and 6th grade book club has provided members with additional opportunities to experience middle grade literature.  The first book that our club read this fall was A Rover’s Story by Jasmine Warga. What a great story to inspire discussions and STEM activities!  After reading the book, one student emailed me that the story inspired her to research Mars rovers.  She put together a slideshow of what she learned and shared it at our next book club meeting.  What a confidence booster that was for that student—and all because she read a middle grade novel that inspired her!

Our book club chose A Rover’s Story as our first book of the year in preparation for the club’s recent attendance at the Heartland Literature Festival, featuring Jasmine Warga. Her keynote presentation gave the students a peek into her world of being an author and why she made some of the choices she did while writing her stories.  She shared the inspiration behind her stories and gave students advice, such as “Pay attention.  Be curious.  And tell your stories!”  She emphasized that being a reader is important in many ways—it helps us in our journey of discovering who we are and where we fit in.  Reading also helps us become better writers.  

The festival provided our students with the opportunity to engage in discussions and activities with other students, such as writing poetry based on the book, watching videos of actual Mars rovers and learning some of the science behind them, and a Question and Answer session with the author herself.  Events such as these serve as excellent ways to get students excited about their next reading venture!

Students themselves are the best way to get their peers excited about reading!  Besides giving students the opportunity to give book talks in class or be part of hallway displays, we have provided them with other methods of sharing their book recommendations.  One way we do this is having a special section in the library for students to place their favorite books after inserting bookmarks in them containing their names and the reasons why they loved that particular book.  Students love seeing what their peers are reading, and those books are often heavily circulated.    

Another way that students have the opportunity to share their middle-grade favorites is being chosen as the Featured Mustang (our mascot) Reader for the month.  The featured reader is spotlighted with a personalized poster in the hallway and book display in the library of their favorite titles.  It has been an effective method of recognizing our middle-grade readers and getting their peers excited about reading! 

Additional activities used to motivate readers include the Global Read Aloud; Mystery Staff Reader (each week the students try to determine the spotlighted staff member based on their elementary school picture, favorite book titles, and reading memories); Book Character Ornament Decorating Contest; Book Character Pumpkin Decorating Contest and our Annual Bookmark Contest.  These activities have been used with all grade levels but can be tweaked to include only middle-grade readers if desired. 

As Frank Serafini said, “There is no such thing as a child who hates to read; there are only children who have not found the right book.” Reading opportunities such as Battle of the Books competitions, author visits, and peer recommendations can help connect students to stories in meaningful ways.  These experiences empower students to explore new genres, share their favorites, and help build a community of readers.  By using these tools, school librarians can help young readers to find the right book and to cultivate in them a life-long love of reading.

Alice Reinert is a Pre-K – 6 teacher-librarian in Kansas and loves that she gets to spend her days with two of her favorite things– people and books!  She keeps the library community informed with a monthly newsletter and enjoys presenting on various topics at the district, regional, and state level. 

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