Joyce Valenza writes: "My friend Jennifer LaGarde (@jenniferlagarde) recently introduced me, and our Young Adults Reading and Literacy students at Rutgers, to the idea of Book Bentos.
Highly visual, creative and interactive the book bento strategy invites book lovers to create, hyperlink and share book titles in an artfully arranged interactive collage."
Before I even get to the fabulousness of this post, let's acknowledge this perfect example of the school library world: Joyce sharing an idea from Jennifer that built on a HyperDoc from Lisa and Rachel...and we can all use it with our students next week! School library people are the best people when it comes to sharing, giving credit, remixing ideas, etc.
This essentially is the digital version of book report boxes (which I always thought were student versions of Joseph Cornell's boxes.) I loved displaying those in the library, and we'd often host a gallery walk, in which students stood by their box and explained why each item was included. But book bento boxes can explain themselves! Making them interactive expands their audience and allows students to link to their own reflections on the book as well as book trailers, author interviews, and more.
In order to make this equitable, I will suggest to teachers that students brainstorm what items they'd like to include in their book bento, then create a class list of needed items. Make it more like a scavenger hunt, so no students are left out, and no parents are buying items for these photos! Then the design, photographing and editing of the boxes can be done in class, too.
I can't wait to share this next week with ELA teachers!