By: Lauren Hepp, Renee Budden, Meghan Pepper, Nicole DiPaolo

What is goodreads? Goodreads is a social networking site for readers; this site helps people find and share books that they love. Goodreads allows you to see what your friends are reading, and you can also keep track of what you are reading and what you are interested in reading next. If you can't decide what book to read next, that's alright goodreads will recommend a book for you, or you can read reviews that have been posted by the goodreads community. This site contains many book lists, so you can browse through every genre. You can also explore book trivia, take quizzes, or add your favorite book quotes. Creating different groups or book clubs, posting your next big event, and practicing and uploading your own writing for people to read are a few more possibilities.

How to Start? Hooked and want to create your own free account? Go to goodreads.com, and create an account, or log in with your Facebook or Twitter account. Find your friends, and start rating books. Need help navigating the site? Here is a tour of goodreads. It is a long video, but to simply watch the general overview you can view the first 13 minutes of the video. To learn how to add books and shelves watch from minute 13 to minute 21, and finally if you want to learn about how to find groups and people on goodreads watch the last ten minutes of the video. click here to access the video.  Happy reading! 

Application to Teaching 

Goodreads offers several great ways to teach literacy. One of the great ways is by creating groups of literature studies. Through the group board, students can rate, and write reviews on the books they have read. They can also create discussions of the book and have in-depth conversations. All of the students can get on and read the reviews and discussions written by and/or with their classmates.

Goodreads is also a great way to have the students participate in book talks. This can be done either as a whole class or in small groups. Like in the literature studies, when they are finished reading a book they can write reviews and have discussions about the book.

Students can also do creative writing through goodreads. They can create their own writing or search through different genres of writing that are already on goodreads. 

URl's for future teaching with Goodreads

• http://newyorkersread.wikispaces.com/Goodreads

This website gives a good break down of the components on goodreads. It helps people get started, and helps them see the different elements. It also has tips for students to remember when working with goodreads. It really emphasizes the social network concerns that need to be addressed with all students so students are aware of the dangers. Aside from describing the benefits of goodreads, this website also contains book lists for different grade levels from elementary to high school. 

• http://literary-buss.blogspot.com/2008/12/goodreadscom-in-classroom-slam-dunk.html

This site discusses some things to remember when using goodreads with students. It is a blog so other people have shared some ideas and concerns that they have had with their goodreads experiences. Along with chats about goodreads, this site also has a lot of other literary tools that teachers can use to help find tools and books to build off when using goodreads.

• http://whatdoyouteach.blogspot.com/2012/06/goodreads-in-classroom-reprise.html

This is the blog from the goodreads site itself. In it, the author of the blog tells about how she uses the goodreads site with her students. It explains how she grades students’ work and how she interacts with her friends and her students on the site. She explains that she has kept past students as friends on the site because it is interesting to see what they are reading. This can also help encourage current students to look at different books and writings that former students have posted. There are also many comments from other bloggers on goodreads on others’ personal interactions and experiences they had on the site.

• http://digitalteachingtools.blogspot.com/2011/10/six-ways-to-use-goodreads-in-classroom.html

This is a blog that contain six ideas on how to use goodreads in the classroom.  Some of these six ideas may be challenging for younger readers, but as for all teaching, that is up to the discretion of the teacher.  A couple of the ideas include creating a reading challenge for students and creating criteria for meaningful book reviews based on the ratings that some books have been given. 

• http://literary-buss.blogspot.com/2009/12/setting-up-goodreadscom-classroom-how.html

 This a site that discusses how to set up a classroom that uses goodreads.  The author is a fourth grade teacher who has discovered how to easily implement goodreads into her instruction.  She discusses how to set up accounts safely for all of the children in your classroom as well as providing detailed instructions on how to create a group in goodreads for your students.