The book report project is a classic summative assessment to measure students’ understanding of their assigned reading. While the book report has good intentions and certainly can be a good stepping stone for beginning students, book reports tend only to measure basic thinking skills. In fact, according to Bloom’s Taxonomy, “report” is a lower-level thinking skill in the Understanding Domain. My goal is to take students from those lower-level thinking skills to higher-level thinking skills. In order to do this, students engage in creative thinking project based learning (PBL) as a book report alternative. The goal of this project based assessment (PBA) is to get students to use their extended thinking skills (connect, critique, analyze, create, prove, design, etc.) to provide the class with a meaningful new perspective on their books, a takeaway. I’ve been doing this project for a few years now, and I am always impressed by the creativity and variety of the projects. You can check out my creative thinking project here.

In order to get buy in, your students must be passionate about the topic. Give them an overarching theme or book list for structure, but within that structure, allow them the opportunity to find a topic interesting to them. You can read about how I make choice reading work in my classroom here.

One of the biggest issues that I found with my students is that when given such autonomy, they know where to start. When this happens, students usually end up exhibiting basic thinking skills, like summarizing, reciting, or defining. I like to explain higher-order thinking skills with an iceberg analogy. I show them this image and explain that what we see from the surface is similar to the literal meaning of the author’s writing. Understanding this part only requires surface-level thinking. However, when we dive under the water, we can discover something amazing beneath the surface. I challenge students to see their books under the surface, to explore the deeper, complex, and beautiful meanings of a work.

For projects like these, students need to reflect on their reasoning. After my first year assigning this project, I noticed that students tended to jump right into an idea without thinking through their reasoning. To combat that situation, I ask students to complete a metacognitive proposal. The idea is to get them to reflect on their own thinking related to how they want to complete their creative writing projects before they start creating. Not only does this help the students brainstorm, but it also gives me something to focus on during our conferences, which leads me to the next point.

After students complete their meta-cognitive proposal, we conference. This is the first of several conferences during the project, so I can guide them to use higher-order thinking skills. I’ve found that often times students just need to talk it out. During this project, I give ample time in class to work on their projects. I do this mainly so I can monitor their work and informally meet with each student during the project. This helps me to know that they are on the track to higher-order thinking.

Looking at the beautiful projects are certainly awesome, but the real magic happens when we get to hear why and how they did it. It’s important for the student to have the chance to explain his/her thinking. This type of reflection is how I determine their level of thinking about the meaning of the text. I recommend using a detailed rubric to give students guidance for their presentation material. I grade these projects in real-time as they are presenting with a rubric. This saves me a lot of grading time, of course, but it also helps so that I don’t forget their reasoning.

Here are some examples of my students’ projects from the past. Keep in mind these projects were paired with presentations in which the students explained all sorts of deeper meanings and literary significance, such as symbolism, allusion, theme, and more. This first project was created digitally using Google Slides and recorded with a screencast. The student created an “app” to analyze characters in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.