Video ideas for promoting LYRC:

All About the Louisiana Readers' Choice Program, YouTube Video: 33 Minutes Long, https://youtu.be/l0PiKtpT79A. This video explains what the Louisiana Young Readers' Choice Program and Louisiana Teen Readers' Choice Program are and how to participate. 

You can engage students in the literature found through the Louisiana Young Readers' Choice program by using multiple technology tools, curating your resources, and offering them multiple lenses to analyze their world. Margret Atkinson, English Language Arts teacher at Northwestern Middle School, ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) shares this video on incorporating literature with technology. https://youtu.be/XucqJb-HzJc

• Canva
• Flipagrams
• Flipgrid main site and Our LYRC Flipgrid to discuss LYRC Building your PLN through Vedchat
• Booksnaps
• Sustainable Development Goals
  • @TeachSDGs
  • @TheWorldsLesson
• Educator Collaborative
• International Literacy Association
• International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)
• The Upstander Brand

• Take advantage of Book Taco. Book Taco is a free online resource designed to support the administration, assessment, and motivation of student participation in the LYRC program while providing educators a dynamic, interactive platform where they can monitor student reading progress (quiz results, book reviews, surveys), assign activities, and reward effort. Click the logo to access the site and create your free account, https://booktaco.com. 
• Make a Bulletin Board or other display featuring the cover art of nominated titles (You can use the art from the PowerPoint’s on the website.)
• Have the students participate in some of the activities listed in the Study Guides
• Have a “book of the week” for each week to remind students to be reading, announce it on the PA system each week. They could read short excerpts from the book of the week.
• Set up the library up like a cafe' and hold a book tasting program. Look online for examples. 
• Offer a special prize or incentive for kids who participate and or meet the goal of reading 3 books (2 for teens). Incentives could be pens, pencils, fancy erasers, special pizza party, etc.
• See if any of the authors will do free Skype visits for book clubs
• Book Pass Reading Activity: You can use a Book Pass to acquaint students with the books on the Louisiana Readers’ Choice list. A copy of each of the titles (multiple copies if needed) is placed in the center of each for students. Use the first 20 minutes of the class to give quick 2 minute book talks for each book. Pass out a preprinted list of the titles you will be using, in alphabetical order, with a 1, 2, or 3 next to each title. A legend at the top should say: 1 = Sounds great, I want to read it. 2 = It seems ok, I’ll try it. 3 = Not interested at all. Instruct the students to select a book from the center of the table. Everyone will then read for 3-5 minutes. Call “time” after three minutes. Instruct students to find the title on the sheet and rate it. Repeat as many times as your class time allows.
• If your school has a newsletter be sure to mention your school’s participation in the LYRC program
• Include information about LYRC on your library web site and link to the State Library’s web site
• Have a Read-In after school.  You could make up a permission slip for them to stay after school and serve light snacks.  Each student must bring his/her LYRC book to the Read-In.  Students could read for 45 minutes – 1 hour and maybe have one fun ice breaker game.
• Closer to Election Day have the students create posters and fliers to campaign for their favorite book
• Have a voting party – students who read their 3 books (2 books for teens) could vote and enjoy snacks and a break from class
• Incorporate the LYRC titles with Web 2.0 tools as student projects, for example:
• Have students create an Animoto video slide show for a LYRC book or books. http://animoto.com/
• Have students make an interactive digital LYRC poster with Glogster. http://www.glogster.com/
• Use a digital video recorder like a Flip Camera (http://support.theflip.com/en-us/home/) or even their smart phone to make book talk videos and load them on the school library webpage
• If you can’t get a real voting machine for your school consider having the students vote online by creating a Survey Money for them to vote with.
• Set the LYRC PowerPoint Presentations to be the screensaver to computers in your library
• Once your students vote, let them know which books won for their school and be ready to compare those results to whichever titles wins for the state. Comparing and discussing the winners is a great activity.  
• Save all the book trailers to a thumb drive (they are embedded in the PowerPoints) and loop them on a monitor in the library or a computer.

Incorporating Writing Exercises

• Create a display or bulletin board with short reviews by the students
• Have students start a LYRC journal or Blog for the student to write notes about each book that he/she reads. The students can refer to their notes before they vote.
• For older students, have them give booktalks or make a book report on their title and present it to the class, this could be a group project
• If you have a school library club or book discussion group at your library, encourage those students to promote the program, read the books and write reviews for the student newspaper, newsletter, or website.

Tracking Reading:

• Have each student put their name on a ballot (ballots are available on the website, they print 2 per page). Each time she/he reads a book, check off that title. Students who have read at least 3 titles are eligible to vote. The librarian or teacher may want to keep the ballots in a file or binder.
• If your students take AR tests on the books you will know which students have read LYRC titles
• If you have a display or bulletin board of the LYRC books, you can have students put their names next to the titles they have read.
• The ideas are endless, just be creative and use what works for your particular situation

***Remind students that if they read every single title on their LYRC list we can send a certificate signed by the State Librarian that they can be given at their school’s end of the year award ceremony.