First Chapter Friday for High School Students
Trying to make high school students excited about reading often feels like a Sisyphean task. When we started recommending books on our “First Chapter Friday” for high school students, we put a lot of effort into finding books we had read and enjoyed or that we thought our students would like.
Lots of times, it felt like these recommendations seemed to go in one ear and out the other of our high schoolers, but a few titles seem to always capture the interest of a noticeably larger number of students, so we’re sharing in the hopes that they motivate a reader or two in your classroom as well!
First Chapter Friday for High School Students
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson
In what is essentially Serial (Remember that podcast phenom?) for teens, Pip decides to investigate the murder of her former classmate Andie Bell, a murder Andie’s boyfriend, Sal Singh, took the blame for. Steph LOVES mysteries and has long been disappointed by the lack of quality YA in the genre, but it’s finally a growing genre, and this trilogy is a lot of fun.
This was probably our most popular First Chapter Friday recommendation for students and is especially useful because it appeals to a variety of grade and reading levels. If you have students who enjoy listening to audiobooks, they will appreciate the creative dramatization of this production.
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han
We may not have ever gotten to actually recommend this super-cute rom-com (of the fake boyfriend becomes real boyfriend variety) on a First Chapter Friday because we COULD. NOT. keep it in stock in our classrooms. The Netflix movies certainly helped us out here, but we had waiting lists for books 2 and 3, and one senior hid a copy in a cupboard so she could read it before it disappeared again.
Chatting through preferences between the book and Netflix series is always a fun way to engage students about this book. They have strong opinions and are eager to share them.
Scythe by Neal Shusterman
After Steph watched two freshmen plow through this trilogy in a manner of weeks, we figured we should add it to our list of recommendations. In this dystopian world, humans have finally conquered death, but in order to keep the population in check, scythes are appointed to randomly permanently (as opposed to temporarily) end lives.
We follow Citra and Rowan, apprentices to a scythe, as the scythe world undergoes changes and as they battle between old and new ideas. While the focus is primarily on Citra, there’s enough attention devoted to Rowan to keep the attention of boys who may be reluctant to read female-focused (or narrated) books.
Tweet Cute by Emma Lord
We’ll preface this by saying this book appealed to our AP seniors more than our standard-level sophomores. But those AP students really enjoyed this rom-com about Pepper and Jack, AP seniors and the children of rival food chains, who get into a very public social media fight over a stolen grilled cheese recipe while also managing school and falling for one another on an anonymous chat app.
The premise may sound a little twee, but there is some substance here and it held great appeal to our students (of all levels) who tended not to be interested in catapulting into adult relationships (and all that accompanies them) IRL or in their reading material.
Dear Martin by Nic Stone
We initially recommended this novel in a First Chapter Friday for our 10th grade students, but later ended up teaching it as part of our curriculum when we were desperately trying to keep students engaged during distance learning.
Justyce McAllister, a high school senior, writes letters to Martin Luther King, Jr. to help him grapple with the harsh realities of being a young Black man in America. Students loved it, and the majority of them kept up with the reading, even during distance learning.
It’s Trevor Noah: Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
The original version of this book, about the former The Daily Show host’s experience growing up during apartheid in South Africa, is fantastic. Students especially enjoy the audio version narrated by Noah; although based on the adult version, it’s close enough, students can follow along in the YA adaptation.
We had a hard time keeping copies in stock after we introduced it on a First Chapter Friday, and a couple years later, our school assigned it as the schoolwide summer read. Schoolwide reads are always a tough sell, but we saw more students than usual reading and enjoying the book, even if it was only on independent reading days in class (we’re fine with small victories ?).
Cinder by Marissa Meyer
This page-turning sci-fi novel is another one students actually requested copies of after we read it during First Chapter Friday in class, and we had a few freshman honors students tackle this series after finishing the Scythe trilogy.
The first in a series of four, Cinder tells the story of Linh Cinder, part human and part cyborg, as New Beijing faces a deadly pandemic and Prince Kai attempts to appease Queen Levana, a Lunar.
If you’d like to hear more about the trials and errors we navigated in efforts to make Independent Reading part of our classroom, check out our Answers May Vary podcast episode, “Finding an Independent Reading Program that Works for You,” and related YouTube video.
If you’d like to see how we hold our students accountable for paying attention during First Chapter Friday, we’re sharing our First Chapter Friday Nearpod activities. You can sign up for just one Nearpod or you can choose to join our monthly subscription email list and get five First Chapter Friday Nearpod activities sent straight to your inbox for free! We hope you’ll give it a try. We’d love to have you!
Looking for more titles to recommend during your First Chapter Fridays? Check out our YA Books section for our suggestions.
