Excellent genre exploration tool for students to find and discuss their next good read!

Submitted 8 years ago

Community Review for Goodreads

Ashley D.
Ashley D.
My Rating
Pedagogy
Supports

My Take

I honestly love using goodreads both in my classroom and in my personal life as well. Goodreads is very similar to a discovery process that many of my students are familiar with: Netflix. When students first sign up for a free account on the site, they go through a guided "quiz" to find out what kind of books they might be interested in. If a reluctant reader has only liked one book that he has ever read, he can choose that one book, and the site will give recommendations based on the style of the book. Teaching in a very low SES area, I find that many of my students are not exposed to a wide variety of literature at home and have no experience choosing books to read for themselves. When I take these students to the library to check out books for silent reading time, they are totally lost. If they are able to use a tool like goodreads to explore genres that they may be interested in, they can make a more informed decisions about what types of books to consider reading. Though there is a social media aspect of goodreads where students can have discussion about books that could be useful as well, I feel that the discovery portion of the site would be the most useful portion for my 10th grade students.

How I Use It

Goodreads is an awesome book discovery tool to use before a visit to the library to check out books. Because library time is not easily accessible at my school and the visits are scheduled few and far between, I do everything I can to make our visits successful. I am a huge advocate for SSR (Sustained Silent Reading) time. A big part of SSR being successful is for students to have interesting reading materials available. I use this tool for students to "browse" genres and books that interest them so that they will at least have some direction when they go to the library. Though some students just click through the app without much thought, most of them enjoy the self-discovery that the goodreads app provides.

More community reviews for Goodreads

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Benjamin M.
Benjamin M. Brentwood, PA
February 8, 2019

More than a tool, a community

I am personally, a HUGE advocate of Goodreads. I use it almost daily, looking up recommendations and opinions about books on all sorts of topics. I love that Goodreads will recommend books based off of things that you've read, and I've found a tremendous number of new materials based off of those recommendations. I would say that perhaps the one negative is that it is a community where people are free to post whatever they wish, so there are occasions where you see some language or personal opinions that can get a bit jarring. However, I believe that its benefits GREATLY outweigh any negatives. And as a classroom tool, the students seem to enjoy it as well, as they can read real life reviews of potential books and resources. We are living in the Amazon age, where people base much of their shopping off of the reviews of others. Goodreads is no different in now that we can base our reading resources off of the review of a community of like minded readers. And what's also great about it, is once you set up an account, there are means of keeping track of what you've read and what you've reviewed. It's really just a great resource. I love Goodreads and it gets my highest recommendation!!!
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Linda O.
Linda O. Rundlett Middle School Concord, NH
January 1, 2019

Not as great as I thought it would be

It was not everything I hoped and dreamed it would be, unfortunately. The kids loved looking through the books and adding them to their shelves. It was just very difficult to manage as a teacher. Ideally, teachers could create classes and students could join those classes (like Google Classroom). That would allow for easier monitoring of book choices, as well as students' posts. There is not enough teacher control in regards to privacy and accessibility to the public. I can't believe Goodreads hasn't created an educator platform yet. I have found I have been able to have the kids do on paper everything I wanted them to do on the site.
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Amanda H.
Amanda H. Yelm, WA
October 27, 2018

Great Source!!!!

For independent use, this would work much better for older grades. I also think though, that this source can be great for teachers to experience new books, find titles they have never heard of, check the reviews, and decide if this is a book that they want to bring into the classroom. If you have a student that is reluctant to read but you know of a title that they really love, then this website could give you options based off that title. I would use this website more in the way of accessing new titles and information, as much as I try to read, I am not going to know every book available but I need to know of an array of books that individually meet all my students interests. I believe that this is a great tool to help you do that!
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