If you have been a member of a book club as an adult, you know how invigorating it can be to gather with other readers for a bite or drink while gabbing about your favorite characters, wild plot twists, and moments that just made your jaws drop. Imagine this magic happening within your classroom! If you're looking for engaging and interactive ways to foster a love for reading and stimulate meaningful discussions in your classroom, look no further. Book clubs are a fantastic way to do just that.
When I started facilitating book clubs earlier in my teaching career, I used the traditional Literary Circle Roles I had learned about in college: Discussion Leader, Reporter, Character Tracker, Artist... Students would be responsible for completing a role sheet before their book club meeting, and then "playing" that role in their group discussion. As a high school teacher, I tried to stay away from role names that sounded too grade-school (like Diction Detective), but what I didn't consider was the fact that the roles themselves felt artificial. When I meet with my book club as an adult, nobody is in charge of leading the discussion or focusing on a single element --like finding new vocabulary words-- but instead the conversation happens naturally and is focused on what interests us the most.
Recently, I've shifted my focus toward more meaningful and collaborative book club meetings, and I've seen student engagement skyrocket. I'd like to share with you what's working in my classroom!
The Big Picture
Here's a typical week in my classroom when we are running book clubs:
Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |
Mini-lesson on an element of fiction or our genre of focus | Book club meeting- group works together on an activity related to yesterday's lesson | Reading day (focusing on using an active reading strategy as they read) | Book club meeting- group works together on an activity to preview tomorrow's lesson | Mini-lesson on an element of fiction or our genre of focus |
15 minutes to read | 15 minutes to read | Exit slip: students answer a question on a post-it | 15 minutes to read | 15 minutes to read |
As you can see, book clubs meet two times each week. Any more often than that, and my students run out of things to talk about. Not enough has happened in the book yet! I also try to fit in time for my students to read a little bit each day, and in my Modern Novels class, we are able to use most of the day every Wednesday! My students have busy lives and often work jobs outside of school, so very little reading is likely to get done at home.
Strategies for Successful Book Club Meetings
Icebreakers When book clubs meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays in my classroom,
they start with an icebreaker. Why? Well, first of all, because my students are in groups based on the books they preferred, they might not be with people they typically socialize with. Also, I have found that starting with a simple icebreaker question gets rid of the awkwardness they might feel having a conversation about a book.
Conversation guides After the icebreaker, I expect students to spend some time talking about what's happened in the book recently. To make this easier, I post questions on the board and discussion sentence starters to get the ball rolling. ("I agree with you, because ..." or "What did you think about the part when...?") While groups converse, I circulate among them, listening and participating if I can.
Collaborative activities After they discuss what they've been reading, my groups are primed to work together on an activity that practices some of the strategies or text features we've been working on in Monday's and Friday's mini-lessons. For instance, after learning about the four components of setting on Monday, book clubs may work together on Tuesday to fill out a graphic organizer categorizing parts of their novel's setting. On Thursday, they may be working together to create a slideshow sharing these aspects of their setting with the class or using LEGOs to build and analyze one aspect of their setting.
Here are some activities we love to use on book club meeting days
Hexagonal thinking (students can write character names and important words on the hexagons first)
Analyze the first page/first line (Click here for a free resource!)
Create a character diagram
Create and annotate a plot line
Create a character paper doll or LEGO "minifigure" (Click here for a free resource!)
Build the setting out of LEGOs (or Play Doh) (Click here for a free resource!)
Research real-life connections to the novel
Create a slideshow (on conflict, character, setting, theme, symbolism, mood, etc.)
Draw a storyboard for a scene of conflict in the novel
Apply a lens of literary criticism to a passage from the book
Play a game to discuss the novel
Interested in learning more about the games we play? Keep an eye out for our next blog post!
I hope you find some ideas you can try in your own classroom to create a community of readers! My hope is that if students realize now how fun it is to bond over reading, they'll be the ones hosting the book clubs as adults!
Keep clubbing!
~Jamie
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