Throughout the year, I do book talks and my middle school students share book talks with the whole class. On Friday, my middle school classes visit our school library, where our librarian shares book talks. It’s a nice change of scenery for us, and students get access to different books from what I have in my classroom library. After book talks, they have time to check out and plan their next reads.
I recently introduced a structure for book talks where students take turns sharing their book talks and then either respond with something that sounds interesting, make a connection, or ask a question. Having a structure to guide their discussions has worked really well, and students have found success in meeting in small groups to share their books. They know they’ll each have a turn to share, and they know that they are responsible for listening to each other and actively engaging in a discussion.
But then we had a short week and many students were absent for a field trip, leaving me with smaller classes and looking for a way to switch things up a bit. I remembered seeing emoji puzzles on the Disney Channel (back when my own kids still watched the Disney Channel) and decided to put a fun spin on our book talks using emojis.
Preparing for Emoji Book Talks
I was able to find a few examples of emojis used to represent Disney movies, and from there I had ideas for how to create my own examples for our emoji book talks. I found a website called emojitranslate.com where I could type in words and it would translate them into emojis. Despite it seeming simple, I still had to get a little creative with the words I put in to get emojis that matched what I was looking for. It turned out to accidentally be a great word choice/synonym activity.
I knew students would probably know how to access the emoji keyboard on their Chromebooks, but I wanted to make sure to have a way for them to create their emoji book talks in case they weren’t able to access an emoji keyboard on their devices.
I created a few sample slides to show them what I expected and then posted a blank slideshow and the Emoji Translate website to Google Classroom for them to make their own.
My Examples
Student Emoji Book Talks
My students got to work right away. They found out that it works best if they share the emojis at the top of the slide and then their book cover underneath it. I used transitions so the book cover would appear after students guessed the book, but they realized they could not only animate but cover the book cover with a shape so no one would see it until it was time. They amaze me with their skills! Everyone was able to create a slide in less than 10 minutes. While they worked, I shared the video of Disney movie emojis and they had fun guessing as they worked or when they were finished.
Once students finished creating their own slides with their emoji book talk, I displayed them on the board and they took turns guessing the title of the book. If they were able to guess, I started a 30-second timer for the student to give a quick book talk about their book. If they weren’t able to guess, the student gave them the answer, I revealed the book cover, and then they still had 30 seconds to share their book talk. It turned out to be a lot of fun!
The Future of Emoji Book Talks
I thought switching it up and adding emojis would be an exciting twist on book talks, but I didn’t realize how engaged the students would be. All of them were engaged in trying to guess the book titles, and then they listened quietly while the person shared their 30-second book talk. We moved so quickly from guessing to the book talk and then back to guessing that students didn’t have a chance to be off task. Of course, they loved seeing whether their guesses were right and offering feedback on each other’s emoji choices.
This worked great as a way to enhance our book talks since we had already been practicing book talks all year. At the beginning of the year, I give students templates to write their own book talks and examples of what a book talk consists of. Our emoji book talks were very impromptu, and students did a great job sharing their 30-second talks, but next time, I would plan to do these after students are familiar with what a book talk entails. I won’t do this every time, but this twist on our book talks helped me see that there are different ways to do them. It was definitely energizing. I can see doing these before a break to encourage kids to check out books to read over break or even after a break when we are resetting our habits, and I’ll do them for sure in the future if I know many kids will be absent.
I can imagine an opportunity to display our emoji book talks. Maybe students have to walk up to the display and lift a flap to see if they can guess the book. Kids could also turn this into a digital display and record their book talks and share a QR code for people to scan and hear their book talk.
Now that we have this as part of our repertoire, I can offer students a choice and add other options for book talks such as creating a book trailer, a stop motion video, or a playlist for their book. I’m happy to add emoji book talks as a way to engage students while also sharing book talks and growing our culture of reading.
