Book clubs motivate students to read through social pressure, help them learn to think and speak more thoughtfully about their books, and develop a variety of 21st century collaboration skills. I love using them during and in between our reader’s workshop units. Yet book clubs wouldn’t be this powerful if our readers already had an innate understanding of how to do all these things. I wrote about managing book clubs as a teacher a few posts ago, but what about our readers?How do we ensure that students can be successful and come to love book clubs just as much? Seven answers follow…
Give students a choice. I understand how tempting it is to just hand out books and get started. Yet this book is going to be a student’s companion for several weeks. To build students as readers, we need to give them agency as readers. Plan for time (15 minutes) a few days before your clubs will launch to have a “book tasting.” Students fill out a book tasting form for me about their top choices. This is also when I collect information about how much students will want to read each night (more on this shortly). I tell students that I expect them to pick books that they are interested in but that will be appropriately challenging, but it is more important that a student wants to read the book than that it will challenge them as long as they will stay with the club. More on smart grouping in my post on making book clubs easier for teachers.
Choose relevant texts. Students will succeed in book clubs where they feel some connection to the topic or characters. Some books in our book closets are timeless- If I come to a year in teaching where kids don’t like The Westing Game or The Outsiders, it may be time to retire. But others have lost their zeal and there are so many better, more diverse books available now. Last year my goal was to add more AAPI representation to my books. How to Win a Slime War was so appealing to kids that I had three clubs reading it. The Bridge Home was also a winner that many kids who hadn’t been in the club asked to borrow after the unit.
Group clubs by speed. The largest number of conflicts that come up in Book Clubs are related to someone not keeping up with the club or someone speeding ahead. When I do my book tastings, I have students tell me how much they will read a night honestly, and this is a major factor in which clubs I put them into. When I have students who are voracious readers put as their first choice a shorter book that is popular with kids who are steadier readers, I have a chat with them. Very often we agree that they will borrow their first choice over a weekend to read and then be in a club with a book/ club members who will be more suited to their pace. Every time I’ve done this the kid has admitted on Monday Morning that they wouldn’t have been able to stay back with the club. For more popular books, I may have two clubs- the steady reading club and the blast through it club. The latter knows they will be given a second book to read when they finish the first.
Offer an audio option. Book clubs are much more about analysis and discussion than decoding. I give some struggling readers, and all of my dyslexic students, the option to listen to the book WHILE reading. This helps them to read books that would otherwise not be accessible to them. Often these students become some of the most valuable members of their book club’s discussions and they find a new confidence in themselves as readers as a result. For reluctant readers I sometimes offer the option to listen to every other chapter, but they still have to be reading along in the text.
Have practice Clubs. At the start of the year, I form practice book clubs. These are really guided reading groups, but the kids get much more excited for “practice book clubs.” We use these practice clubs to practice reading an agreed to amount and coming ready to discuss what we read. This is also a chance to practice seeing what kinds of stop & jots bet support conversation. I meet with clubs for their practice meetings- this means that unlike a regular book club unit where all clubs meet at once, clubs have set time during the week that each of them meet while everyone else is doing independent work. For some practice clubs I use longer short stories, whether from CommonLit or my book room, and for others I use full length chapter books. Practice clubs do NOT need to finish the book together- after a week or two, we have gotten our guided practice, I give students the choice of finishing the book on their own or returning it to me while we move on as a class. Take note of who chooses to continue or not with what books- this is important information about what appeals to them as a reader.
6. Give students a format for notes. During our practice clubs I mentioned we work on stopping and jotting. For formal book clubs, I give students a notebook to keep track of their thinking and noticing. These student book club notebooks have pages for chapter summaries, characters, and vocabulary. They also have pages for specific reading skills to be covered in the unit. Having the notebook gives students something to bring to club meetings with their books to spur discussion and record discussions. I encourage students to add to their notebooks with their clubs because it is a format for sharing ideas that some of them are more comfortable with and students who are not as vocal but have great recorded ideas are more likely to be represented in the conversation.
7. Co-Create Norms. One of the best things about the practice book clubs is it helps students see what does and doesn’t work in book clubs. After the practice book clubs but before our first book club meeting, we co-create class norms specifically for club meetings. We discuss what we expect from each other in terms of participation and preparedness. During distance learning we went so far as to create a rubric based on our norms. Students self reflect on the norms after each book club meeting and we discuss goals for next time. This supports our other work on self management and gives students language if there are conflicts within the clubs. And of course, it’s so much easier for us to hold students accountable to norms they’ve set for themselves.
Book Clubs can be daunting for students and teachers, but when managed well, they can be the source of so much growth and learning. I hope these tips help your students succeed.
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