Grade 5 Takeover – ES Book Critics on the WAB Podcast

On this week's WAB Podcast, our Grade 5 readers are taking over the mic, doing book reviews of Linda Sue Park’s A Long Walk to Water. Through character debates, setting descriptions, and even a few jokes, you’ll hear students thinking deeply about the book’s plot, themes, vocabulary, and more. 

As they debate the book's pacing, compare favorite characters, or explain new vocabulary like “emaciated” and “arid,” you can hear them practicing the skills we value in ES literacy: questioning, visualizing, inferring, and backing up their opinions with evidence from the text. 

These short book reviews are a fun way for students to communicate their ideas and a great way to show the work they’ve put in: students summarized complex, dual narratives; connected this historical fiction story to real events; and unpacked what they liked and disliked. Through this project, we continued to nurture lifelong readers who read with curiosity and can connect their reading to the real world. 

This project also builds on a broader culture of reading in ES, one that includes our Book Week last month, author visits (like Dr. Martin Maudsley this week), and our ongoing Tigers’ Reading Roar Challenge, where every student’s reading minutes contribute to a shared goal. Whether they’re curled up with a novel during Drop Everything and Read, competing in Battle of the Books, or recording a book review for a real audience, our students are constantly finding new ways to grow their love of books.  

Tune in to hear the book reviews from our Grade 5 podcasters, you will hear them reading and speaking as readers, book critics and podcasters. It is a great example of what literacy looks and sounds like at WAB, and we’re delighted to share this slice of their reading journey with you.