Book Reports

Book reports help you evaluate comprehension.

Every now and then you need to know what your child got out of a book, which is where book reports come in. Developing your child’s ability to articulate their comprehension of something is very important. Having them demonstrate this through book reports (or reports on movies or other media in other instances), will help you understand areas that need work and how your child is doing in this particular area. Obviously, to write a book report, your child does have to have read a book, though in the beginning or with young children learning to read, these could be done on books that you have read to them. In fact, even an audio book or book read during family reading time could be turned into a book report when you finally close the back cover at the end of your adventure together.

What book reports look like is dependent on various things. They should start small, but over time and with practice they should develop into lengthier, more detailed, better-written documents.  A good way to encourage this is the use of Notebooking pages. The internet is also full of ideas on how reports can look. I’ve used a variety of them, a few of which I printed directly, and with others I created my own that worked for me, often using ideas I saw online. (This creation of what works for me has become a common occurrence. It’s not as hard as it seems.)

Book report pamphlet
A simple tri-fold pamphlet, printed on both sides is one idea. Click on the picture to go to the pdf.
A letter to the author can be a more personal, fun take on a book report, while combining a lesson on letter-writing. Click on the picture to go to the pdf.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book reports should cover a few things. Title and author are common. Genre, information on the beginning, middle and ending, setting of the book, rating and comments are some other additions. I’ve made them as trifold pamphlets, letters to the author, and more generic reports for elementary ages. More complex things like character development, plot and protagonist are other things to add in with increasing ages.

What you put into a book report can depend on you, on what you want to know that your child got out of the book, what book it was, how much time you have or want them to spend on it, how valuable that particular book was, if it’s a detailed study or simply something superficial to have a bit of a record.

Books read by log
Books log. Click on the picture to go to the pdf.

One thing I do with my children is expect them to keep a log of books they’ve read. This takes effort on my part because they don’t think about updating it when they finish the last page of a recent literary adventure. Yet it’s a valuable item for them to keep track of their own work. I also keep a log of books we read as a family in my planner so that I can add them to my end of year reports.

Adding book reports to your school year periodically adds to your language arts studies, your child’s penmanship and your end of year report too. There are so many reasons to incorporate them in. Remember, that reading is very important, and this is simply a way for your child to learn to articulate their comprehension of the book, formulate their ideas on it, and grow in the ability to communicate effectively in a written format.

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Start Somewhere. You never know where it will lead you.