Find ways to use picture books to enhance the middle school curriculum. For example, science teachers might use the Dr. Seuss book "The Lorax" as a way to examine issues surrounding environmental conservation, and history teachers might use "The Butter Battle Book" to examine the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Students remember these stories from their childhood, and using them to explain classroom concepts may help them process new information.
Have students select a book and create a product such as a podcast or a digital video to showcase what they learned. A podcast is an audio recording that can be syndicated over the Internet and is a good way to consolidate audio reports from all of your students. Students may also tape and edit visual reports or reenactments of the story to post on a class website or to show to the class or the school.
Encourage students to plan and execute a Read Across America party for a local elementary school. Students might be in charge of reading stories to classrooms, acting out scenes, parodies or extensions of stories for groups of students, leading reenactments with children, planning other games or distributing snacks or drinks. Students may be motivated by interacting with younger siblings or friends or by showing off what they get to do in middle school. This could also be a way to introduce upcoming students to the middle school environment.
Engage students in activities such as readers theater to encourage them to see literature as more than just words on a page. Students might be assigned characters from a book and asked to read for the whole class, or they could be broken up into groups to read sections from the work to ensure whole-class participation. Students may also be asked to write their own skits or plays that parody or extend the story.