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My wonderful teaching assistant came into school a few weeks ago with handfuls of book sneak peeks.  These are small promotional booklets to draw attention to an upcoming release.  They often contain the first two or three chapters of the new book.  My students could NOT get enough of poring through those pages!  After a few days, the newness wore off, and those goodies sat untouched on my whiteboard tray.  Would you throw them out?  Teachers are known for their hoarding ways, and I’m not immune to a little bit of hoarding.  Here are 5 ways I use book sneak peeks to get kids to read! 

1.  Read the sneak peek out loud.  When the first few chapters of a book are given as a sample, read them aloud to your children or students.  The sample ends, but the intrigue won’t. It’s like putting a toy mouse under a newspaper to tease a cat….the cat can’t resist!  Kids won’t be able to, either. Some of them are bound to check out that new book.
2.  Make sure you have the first titles in the series.  Some kids will want to pick up that new book based on the sneak peek, but they’re hesitant because they haven’t read the first (or second, etc) title. They’re afraid to try something new.  Have the first or second book available so that kids can catch up to the story.
3. Put the sneak peeks on display.  Sometimes books become more like wallpaper — the kids don’t even notice them after a while.  I used the sneak peeks to dress up this snowman bulletin board. The snowman idea was from Pinterest.   I was trying to find a way to make it unique, and decided to staple the books’ back covers to his open hands.  This not only provided a cool 3-D effect, it also helped those books look new again!   Have students put up book recommendations around the snowman, or ask them to cut out paper snowflakes.
4. Create some fun bookmarks with pages and/or covers from the sneak peeks.   Lucky Cricut users can easily add some great embellishments.  If  not, just put out some stickers or clip art.  Even better, let your students choose.  Wouldn’t this be a fun project for your students to do on an inside-recess day?
5.  Use the book sneak peeks as part of your literature lesson.  Working on figurative language?  Analyzing sentence structure?  Finding cause/effect relationships?  Instead of downloading a boring worksheet, use these freebies.  You won’t feel bad about letting kids write in them, but you also don’t have to make dozens of copies.

It’s exciting to think of new ways to use freebies in the classroom or at home, isn’t it?  If you have other ideas for using sneak peeks like these, please share below!