Every week I look forward to my book club meeting with all of my friends. My book club has been going strong for almost two years and has grown to 10 solid members. I love the conversations we have about the books and all of the different perspectives everyone brings to the table. The other girls say things I never would have thought of on my own. Sometimes I love a character so much and feel like I could see myself being friends with her only to be surprised that one of my real life friends hates that same character. It’s these conversations that keep our book club interesting and strong. It also keeps me accountable as an adult to continue my own reading.
Book clubs can have the same effect on your students when they are run properly. In my first installment about book clubs we are going to go over setup. If your kids have never participated in book clubs before, you may want to consider running a “practice book club” with a whole class short text. This can be a quick trial run to show kids what the room will look and sounds like and how to talk back and forth in a group setting before moving on to Step 1.
Step 1: Choose Book Sets
Depending on your class size you will most likely have 4-5 kids in each book club, so you need sets of titles. Most of the times we teach book clubs, the students are reading inside a specific genre. Choose a variety of books in that genre for your students to be able to choose from.
Step 2: Book Talks
As the teacher you will do a book talk on each title you have chosen. Think of this as a commercial for the book. It should be short, exciting and “sell” the book to your students. Some of our more tech savvy friends can make book trailer videos for their students to watch!
Step 3: Student Choice
We want students to be able to have some choice as to which book club they are a part of. This follows suit with how workshop is run in that students get to choose what they read. You may be thinking right now, “Well how can I let them choose? They’re likely to choose a book that is way too hard.” There are few considerations to make here. After the book talks, make the students write down a first, second and third choice. This way you can do a little behind the scenes work in pairing students up with more suitable texts they are interested in and you can do a little work in creating groups you know will be productive together. A small justification to the kids like “We can’t all be in the same group.” or “Not everyone is going to be able to get their first choice.” will get them ready to read any of the books on their list.
Step 4: Set Book Club Time
While book clubs are running, the independent work time of workshop may look a little different. You want to be sure you still allow time for independent reading everyday. This allows the kids to get their book club reading done. You will need to set time for book clubs to meet and discuss. Explaining these routines to students and making them predictable will help book clubs get off to a good start and run smoothly.
Once your kids are in their groups they are ready to get together and have some awesome conversations. While book clubs are going on you will want to do a lot of teaching and modeling about how to have conversations in groups. Look out for my next installment for more information about book clubs! To get all of the materials you need to run book clubs and scripted lesson plans visit my Teachers Pay Teachers store and get The Complete Book Club Unit.
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