5th Grade Votes: Favorite Books of 2016-2017



After reading about half of Donnalyn Miller's The Book Whisperer, I decided I wanted to find out what my students truly loved. During the last week of school I had them respond to a completely open-ended anonymous Google form. On the form, I had the students list their top 3 books of the entire school year and what they liked about that book. I had over 100 titles in the responses, but here are the top 11 results results with student comments below.

11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
"It is magical."

10. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days
"They went on a summer vacation it was a funny summer vacation."

9. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe*
"I liked that exciting parts happen right in the beginning!"
"That when things were getting boring new excitement rose."

8. Divergent
"That the action in the book was the best thing since 1989. ;)"
"it had a lot of action and i love the characters!"

7. Holes
"They describe the place in such detail."

6. A Dog's Purpose
"It's about a dog and it is a really sad book but it gets better and I think you would enjoy reading The Dog's Purpose because it's a journey and it's just a very good book for everyone."
"It proves how lucky we are to have dogs. It proves all dogs have a purpose in life. It was a heartstring tugger for sure."

5. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
"The D.A. joins up to fight the Death Eaters."

4. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
"Dumbledore´s Army is created in Hogsmeade."

3. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Double Down
"The pig was really funny."
"I finished it in 2 days."

2. Woods Runner*
"I like this book because he hunts and like to be in the woods. I like to be in the woods and he did whatever it took to find his Mom and Dad and I would do what ever it took to find my mom and dad too."

1. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
"It brought back memories." (This student had read the entire series before.)
"It was life-changing. It brought me to a new and amazing world."

What are your students' all-time favorites?

*I used an asterisk to acknowledge the two books on this list that were taught as class novels, with the understanding that reading a novel together alters a student's perspective- not necessarily in a bad way!

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