10 Reasons You Should Use Bookroo in Your Classrooms

By Amanda Clark-Rudolph

Looking for a fun and easy way to get your students excited about reading? Bookroo is it!

Our exciting, new reading platform saves you time and brainpower while enhancing your reading programs AND improving student engagement. Another bonus: You can collaborate with students to create reading quizzes, too.

In fact, Bookroo has so much to offer teachers that we've put together this handy guide about 10 ways Bookroo helps teachers to help you understand why you should use Bookroo in your classroom. Enjoy!

But first, what is Bookroo?

Bookroo provides teachers with an online learning platform that accompanies the physical books they already have in their classroom or their school or local library. This platform allows teachers to track students' reading progress, create and monitor reading challenges, design and take online reading quizzes, and more!

Bookroo also offers a subscription service that sends curated books to teachers, parents, and librarians. Every month, Bookroo ships recipients a personalized gift box with

• Two to three books, and
• An insert highlighting each book and exclusive details about the readings.

But we're only getting started. Let's delve deeper into why you should use Bookroo in your classroom.

Table of Contents

1. Bookroo creates online reading quizzes and features pre-made quizzes
2. Bookroo creates and tracks reading challenges
3. Bookroo blends intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
4. Bookroo offers a digital reading journey through automated book logs and more
5. Bookroo combines technology and physical books
6. Bookroo encourages students to engage with each other and the books they read
7. Bookroo integrates the Common Core Standards
8. Bookroo allows you to shop for books in one convenient location
9. Bookroo lets you search for books by category, genre, author, etc. to create/plan units
10. Bookroo provides access to book clubs

1. Bookroo’s dynamic quiz system offers an innovative solution to verifying reading

Online book quizzes have been around for decades. But some services are extremely expensive, others are time consuming for teachers, and none offer the innovative reading verification system Bookroo does.

Unlike other educational digital quiz services, Bookroo combines traditional multiple choice style quiz questions with opportunities for critical reasoning. This is done through a combination of prompting students to verify their reading by answering existing questions and using their reasoning skills to create new questions.

Worried about the kids creating inaccurate or low-quality questions? Don't be! After teachers or students submit quiz questions, Bookroo reviews them for appropriateness and accuracy before publishing.

Another bonus: After quiz takers answer a quiz question, they can provide constructive feedback on the question. They’re asked to rate the difficulty of the question, and they’re asked to analyze whether the question is a good question for assessing whether someone has actually read the book.

Why does this matter? Encouraging kids to formulate their own questions promotes critical thinking and learning. Plus, creating and evaluating questions enhances metacognition skills (thinking about thinking).

And, the TEAL Center Fact sheet on Metacognition explains that "individuals with well-developed metacognitive skills can think through a problem or approach a learning task, select appropriate strategies, and make decisions about a course of action to resolve the problem or successfully perform the task."

Score!

As with everything else on the platform, the quiz interface is very easy to use. Quizzes become a fulfilling, satisfying experience that gets incorporated into their reading journey.

Why should you use Bookroo in your classroom? Its dynamic quiz system stands out from the rest.

2. Bookroo creates and tracks reading challenges

Many educators are familiar with sixth grade LA teacher and author of The Book Whisperer, Donalyn Miller, who believes in reading based on student choice and challenges. She’s been a successful reading advocate, with her students reading an average of 40-50 books a year!

For teachers interested in creating reading challenges like Miller’s 40 Book Challenge to increase student motivation, Bookroo offers a digital reading challenge tool that makes it simple and easy to create tailored challenges for your students.

Here’s how it works:

• Teachers can create customized reading challenges based on the number of books, pages, or minutes read.
• Challenges can be tailored to each individual to accommodate their reading capabilities, so teachers can meet the student where they are.
• Teachers can also set up class challenges where each individual contributes to the class reaching a collective goal.
• As students record their reading, the challenge is automatically updated.
• Interactive charts and summaries make observing challenge progress easy for teachers and fun for students.

Want to learn more? Learn the step-by-step process of how to create a Bookroo reading challenge here.

3. Bookroo blends intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

While readers who are intrinsically motivated—that is, they recognize that reading itself is the reward—is the goal, extrinsic motivation can help students get there.

To review —

1. Extrinsic motivation involves completing a task or exhibiting a behavior because of external causes such as avoiding punishment or receiving a reward.
2. Intrinsic motivation involves performing a task because it's personally rewarding to you.

As research has shown, external reading rewards can create the very circumstances in which a reader can experience the joy of reading by incentivizing them to start reading. If I give you a slice of pizza for trying a slice of cake, you might just realize you like cake.

That’s why Bookroo integrates both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation in its platform.

There are various ways to offer extrinsic motivation to students. The platform allows students to earn points for reading books. These points can then be used in a digital shop to polish gems, update avatars, and unlock collectibles. Teachers can also set custom rewards for classroom or individual student reading challenges that they know will be motivating to students.

As these extrinsic motivators help students experience the positive impact of reading and their intrinsic motivation to read develops, Bookroo makes it easy for teachers to suggest a range of reading material and let students choose specific titles, including even non-traditional reading, like newspapers and magazines, which can be logged by students with custom reading entries. This control is important because research shows that students read more when they choose based on their interests.

Bookroo also “grades” quizzes as pass/fail instead of by numerical value. This helps students feel more relaxed about verifying they’ve read a book, rather than the added stress of a testing situation.

4. Bookroo offers a digital reading journey through book logs and more

With Bookroo’s platform, teachers can finally ditch paper and pencil reading logs and replace them with an automated digital one. This saves both teacher and students from the tedious task of recording and reviewing reading, and extra time for other activities (like more reading!)

Students can record a book they’re reading simply by scanning the book barcode with a tablet, computer or laptop, or the book can be searched by title or ISBN. Then, updating reading progress is as easy as the click of a button and is stored in a single, convenient, digital location—where it can’t be misplaced, spilled on, or eaten by a family pet. Students can record when they’ve finished a book or also keep track of pages or time read.

On the teacher’s end, teacher’s see a class reading overview that’s very easy to understand, and they can also click into any student to see detailed logs of their reading.

Bookroo's use of technology saves teachers time (with teacher reports including automated reading logs) while maintaining all of the benefits of having students read physical books.

Another cool tech book feature: Bookroo shows students a visual timeline of which books they've read, offering a priceless record of your reading journey.

5. Bookroo combines technology and physical books

Scientific America states that compared to paper, screens drain our mental resources, making it harder to remember what we read.

Yet, we live in a world of technology, and our students need to continue developing those 21st-century skills. Still, Bookroo firmly believes in physical books and has found a clever way to combine the two, making reading engaging for all students.

For starters, while Bookroo’s platform is delightfully modern and digital, it works hand in hand with the physical books already in a classroom or school library.

This feature saves teachers time on that end-of-the-year book inventory, allowing them to track what books are already part of their library. It also provides kids with a digital visual of the physical books they have available to them.

Another way that Bookroo combines the physical and the digital is by allowing students to use their devices' cameras to scan the barcodes of the books they are reading to log their reading.

Bookroo helps teachers to beautifully combine physical books with technology.

6. Bookroo encourages students to engage with each other and write reviews

Need another reason to use Bookroo in your classroom? Students engage on the platform and can write book reviews (a fun Language Arts assignment). They can also rate books and evaluate other questions in reading quizzes.

For more engagement, students can see what their classmates are reading and show off their visual timelines of books they’ve read.

Pro tip: To write a review, click on the "Rating" tab, rate the book, and click the "Write Review" button.

This interactive Bookroo feature fosters students’ positive attitudes towards reading.

7. Bookroo integrates the Common Core Standards

Another reason why you should use Bookroo in your classroom: The platform seamlessly integrates Common Core standards.

The Common Core asks students to "read stories and literature, as well as more complex texts that provide facts and background knowledge in areas such as science and social studies."

Great news—Bookroo does this in multiple ways!

Bookroo provides students with summaries, genres, and information about books online. It also offers physical book reading subscriptions that can be sent to classrooms, covering various texts.

Furthermore, Bookroo’s online platform allows teachers to monitor students' reading progress and set up reading challenges (and that’s just the beginning).

In a nutshell, Bookrood covers the essential Common Core foundational skills like reading informational text, range quality and complexity, language, literature, and more.

And remember, Bookroo's quiz maker even challenges students to ask questions and recall what they've read -- another standard in the common core. Plus, Bookroo encourages Common Core critical thinking, problem-solving and analytical skills.

8. Bookroo allows you to shop for books in one convenient location

One of the great features of Bookroo is how easy it makes it to discover more great books to enjoy. If a student enjoys something by a certain author, it’s easy to see more books by that author. Students can also browse by specific micro topics, by genre, by reading list recommendations, or by reading lists teachers have curated.

Once a student or teacher finds books they want to read, they can explore in depth details about the book on Bookroo’s platform. These include reading levels, content guides, and reviews. When they’re ready to read, the platform makes it very easy to find the book on a site like Amazon or Bookshop.org.

Also very important is that because of Bookroo’s focus on youth literature, its platform offers a safer and more focused searching experience than Google or Amazon.

Pro tip: Check out Bookroo’s daily book deal tab for extra savings.

9. Bookroo lets you search for books by category, genre, author, etc. to create/plan units

Language Arts Teachers will love Bookroo's online database because they can quickly search for books by category, genre, author, and more. This is a convenient tech tool for teachers that assists with creating units.

Let's say you're putting together a Sci-Fi unit. Easily click on the Sci-fi genre button to discover books that you can add to your classroom library.

Creating an author study on Jane Austen? Sweet, just look up the author inside the Bookroo platform to find a list of her books. From there, you can read the book summaries, view reading levels and quizzes, and buy them too.

10. Bookroo provides access to book clubs

Teachers and students can also take advantage of Bookroo Book Clubs, a subscription service that delivers physical books to your doorstep. Teachers or students can pick a subscription based on book types, such as the Middle Grade Book Club (recommended for ages 9-12), the Junior Chapter Book Club (recommended for ages 7-10), or the Picture Book Club, which caters to younger students.

Some of these subscriptions save up to 50 percent off retail, and each box comes with an insert that summarizes the book and provides exclusive insights.

With Bookroo monthly subscriptions, kids can explore everything from illustrated classics to new releases from authors of diverse backgrounds and cultures - not just through TV or YouTube but by reading it themselves... on paper.

Key Takeaways

• Bookroo gets students excited about reading while improving their problem-solving and metacognition skills.
• Teachers can use Bookroo as a tool in the classroom by creating quizzes or taking pre-made ones.
• Bookroo supports Common Core Standards and encourages reading and discussing diverse texts.
• Teachers and students can find and easily buy books on Bookroo.
• Bookroo provides access to a physical book club with books sent right to students’ homes/classrooms.
• Bookroo provides classrooms with digital reading logs.
• Bookroo motivates readers through student voice, reading challenges, tech rewards, student engagement, and more.
• Bookroo allows students to write book reviews, create/take online quizzes, and research books that interest them.
• Bookroo provides an online platform for teachers that supports reading physical books.

If you’re ready to bring this powerful platform to your classroom, click here to create your very own teacher account now!

(Amanda Clark-Rudolph is a former teacher with over 12 years of teaching experience.)