How to Use Literary Food Trucks to Boost Your Independent Reading Programs in High School

High school English teachers know how challenging it can be to get students engaged in independent reading. With busy schedules and endless distractions, it can be tough to get students excited about cracking open a book. However, what if you could combine reading with an exciting activity that students will love? We’re talking about literary food trucks. In this blog post, I’ll walk you through how I used literary food trucks to boost my independent reading program in high school and keep students engaged

How it Started

If you know me or have been reading along for a while, you know that I have taught intervention level and at-risk English. With that in mind, just about everyday I would walk into class and ask students to take out their novels for silent reading I would get groans and questions of if reading the captions on TikTok would count as reading.

And I was doing everything I could think of. Giving them access to books in my room, throwing up my First Chapter Friday slides to expose them to a variety of texts, modeling independent reading, taking everyone to the library frequently so that they could check out books.

But nothing was really improving.

And then the idea struck. What if I finally implemented a literary food truck festival?

I had always been reticent to try it out, just because I teach older kids. And I was worried I wouldn’t get the buy in from them on reading and completing the activity.

But when the days started leading up to our food truck festival, I found students in the library working on their posters, bragging to their friends about what food they were going to bring, and even receiving emails from parents thanking me for this activity.

On the day of, students were excited to present to their peers. We had classes of all levels and disciplines coming to the library and completing an optional scavenger hunt, with praise all around for the students.

So how do you actually conduct a literary food truck festival?

Step 1: Getting Started

The first thing I did was brief my students that we would be completing a literary food truck project and that we were going to pick books from the library with this in mind. I had asked our school librarians to give students a brief on selecting independent reading books, and they set off from there. The biggest thing I emphasized to my student is that the book they chose needed to be something they could get into and write extensively and creatively on. We had a variety of choices, ranging from The Maze Runner to The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers.

Step 2: Designing the Food Trucks

Once students read the book and explored its themes and characters, they can start planning their literary food trucks. I provided my students with handouts detailing what their poster could look like: you can access them here. Encourage students to get creative with the food truck name, menu items, and décor. I tried to encourage students to think creatively about the dynamics of the staff for the food truck and the intentional choices they made for the menu and overall design. This would pay off later for them when they would explain their choices and how they connected to their books in a written portion of the project.

Step 3: Hosting the Food Truck Festival

I hosted our food truck festival at our school’s library. We set up tables and chairs and posted the posters on the walls. Students who brought food to share were given tables. We had students drop off their posters before the festival so that we could set them up, and then I sent out a school wide email with scavenger hunt forms inviting teachers to come through and see the food trucks. Students then presented their concepts to teachers, admin, and other students.

Step 5: The Power of Follow-Up

The real power of the Literary Food Truck Festival comes from the follow-up. Continue to encourage students to read independently and use the food truck festival as a launching pad to an ongoing engagement initiative. Display the book list prominently in the classroom and encourage students to continue exploring themes and characters from the books even after the festival.

There you have it, a step-by-step guide to using literary food trucks to boost your independent reading programs. By tapping into students’ creativity, engaging with the themes and characters of the books, and making it fun, you can see student’s excitement about reading, enhance critical thinking skills, and promote independent study habits. Remember, it is essential to follow up with reading exercises, talks, and book sharing, even after the festival is over. So, gather your resources, and building upon your literary food trucks’ excitement, foster lifelong learning in your students.