Students were encouraged to use their creativity to show their understanding and report on a book given the following three choices. All students presented their book reports and gave a book talk in front of the class.

Make a Popplet or Prezi to represent a book of your choice. Use the
website www.popplet.com, or www.prezi.com.

This is a fun activity for students that collect trading cards. It takes a bit of work, but it is well worth it. Visit readwritethink to create the cards. You will have to be patient, and use screen captures and cropping to print the cards and have students glue them together (unless the site has changed since I last used it!). Train one tech-smart student how to do this, and let them be in charge of helping everyone else that selects this activity if possible. You will probably be restricted to printing your cards in black and white, but then you can always have your students colour them and glue them onto coloured paper to add some colour.
If fussing with the web site does not appeal to you - you could always make your own template as an MSWord document, or have the kids make them by hand instead as well.
An example of a Grade 5 level assignment is included below as well as an example.

Students love games, so why not get them to make a trivia game about the play or novel? (Or maybe they have an even better idea than a trivia game!) This activity is great because it hits many multiple intelligences, and is really engaging for the kids. When the games are done you can have a celebration and invite people in to play the games with your students.

This is a great assignment if you are trying to tap into procedural knowledge. You can provide a few choices for the manual or let students select their own. Some examples may be How to Graduate Hogwarts, How to Rule the World, How to Stay Calm in Any Situation - any theme related to the novel that students have read!

This is one of my new favourite activities, because it really gets students thinking, and it has them referencing the script as well as using their own knowledge and preferences. In the version of the assignment below, the students were asked to select 10 songs (you can of course adjust this number) and for each song they had to provide the title, artist, mood of the song, reference the act and scene the character would listen to it with a page number, and defend why the song is a good choice for that character at that point in the play/novel.

This is a fantastic assignment, and if you have access to iPads or other devices it can be done easily using the "Book Creator" app. Students should write a rough draft first, and start by sequencing the ten most important events of the play (all of the details are included in the assignment below). When the books are done, the students should take them to classes with younger children and share them. These books can be very impressive and you may want to feature them in the school library.

This is a good assignment for younger students, or students that struggle with large amounts of writing. Students create a 3D cube and each side of the cube contains information about the play. This can be a smaller cube or a really big one! It is all up to you and your students. There is a template included below as well to give you the general idea of what they could look like. (If anyone makes a better template, I'd love to see it! I think they should be bigger than this for sure.)

"ThingLink is an award-winning education technology platform that makes it easy to augment images, videos, and virtual tours with additional information and links. Over 4 million teachers and students use ThingLink for creating accessible, visual learning experiences in the cloud."

Students choose a novel that is appropriate to their reading level (teacher-approved). They read it in ELA/during DEAR time. I set a date that they needed to be finished reading by so they could estimate where they needed to be at by the end of each week. When they finished reading, they used Bristol board to create a “puzzle” for their novel. Each piece of the puzzle contained a written description of information. On the opposite side, students draw a different cover for their novel that shows an important event or setting. You can upload the picture to a website to create it as an online puzzle for friends to complete! After, I had them cut the actual Bristol board into the 6 puzzle shapes, as you can see in the examples I included on the subsequent pages.

We decided it would be fun to make a creative diorama book report. A diorama is the three dimensional re-creation of a scene. They are created inside of a box. The student was to choose a book he/she had recently read and create a diorama using a shoe box. A written report was also part of the book report.

This site will give you a quick run down of how to use Figjam and then it provides 20 great ideas for using Figjam in the classroom - including the templates to get started!

There is even a video to keep it very easy!

Tutorials are linked at the bottom of the site as well.

This is another of my students' favourite assignments. The students create a container that matches one of the characters and fill it with items (or pictures of the items) that character would have or use. Tags are attached to the items that include descriptive writing, page references, and the reasons the item is important to the play.

This is another favourite student assignment. They get to pretend they are making a movie about the play or novel, and cast actors they feel suit the different roles. The assignment includes a plot summary, casting choices, artwork, and biographical information. The assignment below was given to Grade 4 and 6 Classes, and I have used it with Grade 7 and 8 as well.

This is a collection of book report ideas or activities to do at the end of the novel. This a collection of my students' favourite product choices in my classroom experience in grades 4 to 8.

This is a focused activity on comparing a novel or play to the movie. Students complete a copy in rough as they watch the movie then complete a good copy in full sentences or use it as a planner to write an essay.

This resource is full of activities to be done before, during and after reading a play (at grade level!).

Shakespeare was meant to be seen and celebrated! The approach should be fun and engaging - and open to even our young students.

All activities can be edited to suit your grade level and meet your needs. Many of these would also make excellent book reports for any novel!

Is someone in the class really unhappy with how the novel ends? Does someone want to extend the story or modernize it, or make fun of it? Challenge him or her to write an alternate ending, sequel to, modern version or parody of the story. Be sure you give them your expectations clearly before they begin, and have them follow the writing process. This assignment could even be turned into a video.
An example of an Alternate Ending Planner that was used with Grade 5-8 students is included below.