“Divergent” help!

August 13, 2013 Heidi Uncategorized 0

Okay. If you’ve been around my blog before you probably know that I’m a middle school librarian. A few quick facts:

*We have 7th and 8th grades.

*There are just over 500 students.

*There are about 50 staff members.

*All students and staff have iPads.

Why do I tell you this? I want to try something new this year and I need your help! Each year I want to pick a book to “feature” throughout the year. Obviously I’ll still be booktalking and doing activities with other books but this would be the book I hit hard. I want to kick off this program with Divergent by Veronica Roth.

I’ve been talking this book up since it came out but if finally took off in my LMC last year. Plus, we’re about two hours from Chicago so that makes it even more fun!

So, after that longwinded intro here’s what I want to do. I’d love any feedback or ideas you have!

1. This is a big dream because of cost and having a very limited budget but I would love to provide each of the 50 teachers with a copy of Divergent. I know not everyone would read it but this way they all have access to the book and they can all put it in their classroom libraries so there are more copies for students to. Win/win! (I want to do this each year with whatever book I feature!) I plan to buy a couple more library copies as well.

2. I plan to hold a book club type meeting for any interested students and staff. I’d actually like to do it a few times throughout the year since I’m sure some people would read the book after hearing how much everyone else loved it 🙂

3. There are some fun “find your faction” type quizzes out there. I was thinking of using this one from Divergent Fans. I want all staff to take the quiz whether or not they have read the book. (My principal rocks and said she would have them do this as part of our back to school meeting! Like, an icebreaker type thing. She is totally behind this idea!) Once staff know their faction I would give them something with that faction’s symbol on it to display in their room. I’m not sure what yet. Probably just a piece of cardstock. They could tape it to their door or by their computer or wherever.

4. I also want students to take the quiz. In a world where money grows on trees I could get a button maker like this and make faction pins. Students would come to the LMC to take the quiz and they’d get a button they could put on their backpack. I’ll probably just end up making stickers instead since sticker paper is way cheaper.

5. I’m going to the Allegiant event put on by Anderson’s Bookshop on Oct. 26th. I was thinking of purchasing a second ticket and going through the line twice so I can get a signed copy to have as a prize for some Divergent inspired contest/drawing. This I would donate so it wouldn’t use any school funds I might be able to get.

6. With the movie coming out I am betting there will be cool stuff I can come up with. Again, the major issue is funding. But I’m sure I can figure something out! We have a great parent group that might donate some money to buy giveaways and such. I do have a super awesome Allegiant bag that I got at ALA but I think I’m too selfish to donate that! It has velcro. Fancy. I have a couple temporary tattoos and stickers from the times I’ve went to Veronica Roth signings. Those I’ll part with 🙂

7. I’d love to find posters or something like that to display around the library as well. I really want Divergent to be visible throughout the LMC to get students talking about it. Perhaps I should have a contest where students design a Divergent poster! And bookmarks! My students love bookmarks!

8. Speaking of contests… I was trying to come up with some as well as activities students and staff could be engaged in throughout the year. I loved that Veronica Roth joked that the third book would be titled “Detergent.” I thought it’d be fun to hang up a big piece of paper and have students and staff come up with other one word titles that could fit if there were going to be more books. Just fun and silly stuff like that. Maybe another one asking what would be in their fearscape? What else?

9. I’d also love to plan a trip to see the movie. Maybe not leaving school but picking a time when a group of teachers would go and students could meet us if they wanted to. I know the super awesome @MsDittmar did a really cool trip to see The Hunger Games. Check out her post about it here. I might totally steal her idea and do the same for Divergent (with credit of course!)

10. I thought I’d have a little display area where I would have info about the author, interviews movie news, etc… Oh! And I could keep a binder of student reviews there too.

***Update*** The super awesome @flamingo1325 (Kari) had the great idea of including parents as well in the faction quiz. I love that! I can have it out during my open house and conferences. That’d be a fun activity for parents and their kids to do and compare!

Basically I just want to do as many cool thinks related to the book as I can throughout the year. Then next year I’ll pick a different book and so on. What do you think? Thoughts? Ideas?

8/16: I thought up a few more ideas:

* Slogans: Have students create slogans for the different factions. For example: “Candor: Truth hurts” or something way better that actually makes sense! See why I have my students do it and not me?

* T-Shirts: I’d provide decorating supplies (again, if I can get donations/funds from parent group) and students could bring in a plain t-shirt to decorate Divergent style. I’d do this near movie release.

* Historical FIgures: Have student decide which factions they think famous historical figures would have been in. I’d give a list of names to start them off but they could come up with their own as well. You could do this with celebrities too. I’d want to know why they put people in certain factions as well. Could be fun to debate 🙂