6 Fun Book Project Ideas

Ah, novel units and book projects are the bread and butter of English teacher life and planning. We want students to appreciate a good story arc, to see themselves in characters, to resonate with the theme and message, to reflect and learn more about themselves and the world around them. Reading shapes us. It’s essential.

But so often, we teachers may find a gap between what we WANT students to get out of the book or book project and what students WANT: less reading and more video games / social media.

We find ourselves questioning how to get students to read. How can we help students demonstrate reading comprehension and analyze complex texts without asking them to writing yet another CER paragraph or literary analysis essay and completely kill the love of reading?

Don’t get me wrong – these academic writing assessments have their place in the world of ELA for sure…but there are other more engaging, rigorous forms of assessment, book projects that ask students to use multiple skills (reading, writing, speaking, listening) to make connections and synthesize information while engaging in higher-level thinking.

6 Fun Book Project Ideas

Hexagonal thinking. This book project is one of those multi-skill wonders. It’s hands-on. It’s student-led. It’s not one-size fits all. It’s a book project that will never go out of style. After you read this blog post, if you haven’t heard of hexagonal thinking as a book project before, you’ll want to hop over to this post where I explain allllll about this amazing retrieval and connection strategy in more detail.

Create a Game. Have students create a game that demonstrates understanding of the text. Key components of the game should be symbolic. Have an educational play day to allow students to be “game testers.”

Book Project Bento Box. My son is doing this right now in his 8th grade class for his independent reading book, Ready Player One. When the project was first introduced, he hated the idea. This weekend, though, he was working on it (willingly) and writing pages-worth of explanations. Have students select 5-7 objects to symbolize important ideas from the text and explain them in writing or a brief presentation / gallery walk. Sneaky way to assess knowledge of a text AND practice abstract thinking. 😉

What Thinks I Do. Have students choose a character and represent their story arc through different perspectives. This is a deceptively simple book project that requires thoughtful responses and textual evidence to support thinking.

Independent Reading Journal. Novel study accountability notebook with response slides that allow students to tell you and their classmates about the books they’re reading, and the book index on slide one allows students to track books completed over the course of a semester.

Humans of _______________ (Name of the Book). I usually use this resource as a getting to know you activity at the beginning of the school year, but the concept works just as well to create HONY posts for characters in a novel. Unit ending assessment could be completed individually for a certain number of characters, published digitally (maybe even on a website) or in print, or worked on collaboratively with a literature circle group for a culminating book project.

Planning a Book Project

When planning, it’s important to start with the end in mind. Use the lists below as inspiration to plan your next literature circles or novel study unit.

To streamline your planning, in the sections below, I have listed texts that I have already created hexagonal thinking book project activities for.

I’ll also provide a link to each book list on Amazon so that you can read more about each text and purchase if you wish. I do receive a small affiliate income from Amazon purchases, so thank you for helping me help you!

Before we get into the list, I love a good deal, but creating a bundle that fits unique teacher needs and texts can be challenging. If you plan to purchase any 4 of these texts on Teachers Pay Teachers, you’ll want to do so via this custom product bundle to receive 40% off ($12 instead of $20)! The process for this is a bit different. In the PDF you download, you’ll be asked to email me your order ID and desired titles, and I’ll personally send you a zip file of the hexagonal thinking activities for your chosen texts.

>> Here’s the link to buy 4 hexagonal thinking activities for 40% off! <<

Middle School Books

The following novel unit texts are typically taught at the middle school level. Try a hexagonal thinking book project for the texts you teach OR grab all of these texts in a bundle for an amazing discount.

*See Amazon List Here

A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
Counting by 7’s by Holly Goldberg Sloan
Divergent by Veronica Roth
Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan
Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick
Ghost by Jason Reynolds
Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes
Ground Zero by Alan Gratz
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
Holes by Louis Sachar
Hoot by Carl Hiaasen
Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes
Monster by Walter Dean Myers
Orbiting Jupiter by Gary D. Schmidt
Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper
Refugee by Alan Gratz
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
Tangerine by Edward Bloor
The Benefits of Being an Octopus by Ann Braden
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
The Crossover by Kwame Alexander
The Diary of Anne Frank (Diary of a Young Girl) by Anne Frank
The Giver by Lois Lowry
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
When Stars Are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed
Wonder by R.J. Palacio

High School Novel Study

As I started to make this list of book projects, it made the most sense to categorize these book lists young adult readers would enjoy by genre / topic. Though many of these texts could fit in multiple categories, I put each title / activity in ONE category to simplify things. If you’re looking to create literature circles, these are great recommendation lists to choose from!

Growing Up & Finding One’s Self

*See Amazon List Here

Beartown by Fredrik Backman
Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram
Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak
Not So Pure and Simple by Lamar Giles
Paper Towns by John Green
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
Stolen by Lucy Christopher
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon
This Is How it Always Is by Laurie Frankl
Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Diverse Perspectives in Fiction

I recently ran literature circles in my English 10 classes that were focused on diverse experiences. Students explored character development, thematic development over the course of the text, diverse perspectives, and cultural criticism / big picture questions and ideas raised by the text.

*See Amazon List Here