Exploring Theme and Mood with a Book Trailer

Before you begin this instructional activity, note that it revolves around learners reading and finishing personal novels. If that's what your class is preparing to do, this is a great way to get creative and technological with literature analysis. Readers learn about theme and mood concepts in novels, and then choose a novel to read. Then, they create book trailers using the online program Animoto (linked), convincing classmates to read the novel. Use this as an opportunity to review copyright policies as young scholars include visuals and sound in their trailers. There are no worksheets, so you may want to create a guideline. Also, it would make a good independent reading response project to present to the class.