Student book clubs are a concept dear to my heart. I’ve sponsored them in an after school context, I took a graduate class at UGA on book clubs, and I even did an action research project on student book clubs in my graduate studies at UGA. The graduate book club class–once known as ELAN 7700 with Dr. Mark Faust–was the very first one I took on campus in Athens way back in 2002, and the experience set in motion a new course of study that shifted my professional life in a new and positive direction. Until this year, though, I have not had an opportunity to incorporate book clubs into my own classroom.
In a recent post, I recently shared how seniors participated in a book tasting in my classroom and how I organized students into book club groups. With one final tweak to avoid having a small group of three students, the book club rosters were finalized around topics and themes.
Groups established meeting norms, roles, and how many pages they needed to read each week for their book on Wednesday, February 21. These are published on our bulletin board.
On Friday, February 23, we reviewed our guidelines for the book club experience and our calendar for March the following Friday (we meet alternate days on our modified block).
As you can see from the embedded handout above, Mondays (our “skinny” day in our schedule) is an “acceleration” day to boost students and give them in class time to read with the understanding reading must be done outside of class to meet their self-determined weekly targets. However, the Monday date provides students an opportunity to annotate and work on marking up passages as they read as they enjoy utilizing my Post-It note stash of many sizes and colors to meet everyone’s needs, plus I’m available to conference with students about their reading as needed. We are working on argumentative writing and text structures on Wednesdays, and Fridays are our days (four total) devoted to book club meetings.
Since most of my students have never been in a book club, I have tried to build in structures to support their book club talk. Our goal is to have 30 minutes of sustained and rich conversation about our books. Students are required to bring the following to each meeting:
- A one page written reflection on the week’s reading with a focus on a specific passage for discussion.
- Annotations and marked passages with questions or talking points for discussion.
- A current event article or reference article from any of our library databases related to their book in some way.
- Prep work for their role in the group that week (inspired by my work with Sarah Rust a few years ago, we are using the College Board’s version of book club roles here).
Students reported directly to the media center this past Friday for our first meeting. As students arrived, we moved tables (LOVE tables and chairs with WHEELS!), got our butcher paper for our visual notes, and distributed Sharpies and markers to each group. Students put their phones on the designated parking lot so that they would not be a temptation for distraction and got out their meeting materials and books as we listened to the morning announcements. After reviewing some reminders for our meeting participation and etiquette as well as tips for contributing to the visual storyboard the groups would create as an artifact of their meeting, we jumped in and students began their discussions. I walked around the four groups with my AV cart and laptop, listening to student talk and typing notes for what I heard and observed with each group. I made four rounds so that I could have notes on different points of book club observations during the 30 minute period.
When the meetings concluded after 30 minutes, each group received a “debrief” handout and took about 12-15 minutes to come to a consensus on their thoughts.
We then gathered to another area of the media center and groups presented their collaborative reflections from the meeting and visual notes. As we transitioned to the meeting time, students turned in their individual work; as groups finished, they turned in their debrief notes and “posters”/visual notes of their meeting talk.
After the large group share from each book club, book clubs completed the planner sheet for meeting #2 coming up on March 9 to set roles for next week and share any notes for things I might need to know to help them prepare for the second meeting. I made copies of these, and students received copies of their planning sheets in class today Monday (March 5).
We then ended our day with individual reflections:
After reviewing my notes with my observations as well as the student reflections completed at the end of the day Friday, I felt my students–even those in the strongest groups– needed some additional scaffolding to help them with their book club talk. We’ll talk through these ideas on Monday before having in-class reading time, and I am eager to see if these glows/grows + scaffolding for richer talk will help students take their discussion to the next level.
As expected, the most prepared groups seemed to thrive this past Friday while the groups not as equally prepared struggled. In the spirit of the growth mindset, I want to help students “grow” the depth an richness of their conversations, and I think those who didn’t come prepared found it difficult to fully engage in the discussions—hopefully, this teachable moment will stay with them and motivate them to be better prepared for our second meeting.
Overall, I think my students did well in their first meeting. I know that students need time, modeling, and experience to grow their book club discussion skills, and most truly made a heartfelt effort to engage with their club members and books.a
I’d like to give special thanks to these friends and fellow Language Arts teachers who have been so incredibly supportive of my independent reading projects with all my classes and the senior book clubs:
- Sarah Rust, Norcross High
- Sean O’Connor, former Norcross High teacher and now Gwinnett County Literacy Instructional Specialist
- Darrell Cicchetti, Norcross High
- Kyle Jones, Lanier High
- Julie Swinehart, Amman, Jordan
- Harvey “Smokey” Daniels, godfather of literature circles and all things wonderful related to inquiry and literacy
Last but not least, a heartfelt thank you to our media specialist Suzanne Gordon at Lanier High (and fellow UGA alum) for pulling all the books I needed for the book tasting and for graciously providing us space with mobile tables and butcher paper in the media center for our weekly meetings!
How do you support student book clubs and how do you help your students grow their conversations? How are you incorporating them into your curriculum? Though I sadly did not get to attend their session in Atlanta a few weeks ago, I’m excited to read the forthcoming book by Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle because I know from friend who did attend that Gallagher and Kittle shared their ideas and strategies for book clubs as part of a year of reading and writing studies in their new workshop about the ideas in the new book. I also hope to book clubs in American Literature with my juniors like Julie Swineheart–check out her blog post for super ideas and inspiration!
Living in the Layers 