I love book clubs. This may be an offshoot of my love for books, but I get giddy with the launch of a new book club unit. My book club sets have reached the point that I keep the “off-season” sets in my own shed because there isn’t enough storage in my classroom. But the first few times I kicked them off, I’m not sure I was as excited. I think I may have actually been terrified.
When I had been a long term substitute while finishing my Master’s program I had covered a classroom that launched a successful book club unit in my month there, but in my mind all credit went to their regular teacher. Making sure things went that well on my own? Intimidating to say the least. But now I love book clubs, and a few simple tweaks to how I run them on my side have made them much more enjoyable for me.
Know the books you are making clubs for. It’s not impossible but much more difficult to facilitate understanding of a book you yourself have not read. It is impossible to accurately access kids on a book you haven’t read or listened to. Bless my public library for their audiobooks. If there is a book you will want to make available for book clubs, try listening to it while cleaning and driving rather than making time to read it. Yes, there are lots of great new books every year. Resist shiny object syndrome and try to only add a few new ones each year. Ideally you want to know what they are in advance so you can ask your school librarian to help you gather copies.
Make smart groups. It was tempting at times to put all my off task kids together and tell myself I would just spend more time with their group during book club time, but that never worked out. Kids who can’t work on-task together generally can’t be in a book club together either. Beyond that though, it’s important to make sure that each group has a leader built in- someone who is going to keep their peers on task. Often I put someone who has leadership potential reading a book they will understand really well to help them slide into that role. I also leverage who will have a para-professional during reader’s workshop and sometimes take advantage of that to put an extra kid who might otherwise be prone to daydreaming into the club.
Keep yourself organized. I use one sheet to keep track of who is in which club, which copy of the book they have, and how they are doing in book clubs in terms of preparedness and participation. During book club time, this sheet is on a clipboard that doesn’t leave my side. Not only does this help me grade at the end of the unit, but It helps me keep track of which groups I’ve conferenced with. As a bonus, when student books are “lost” in the hall or around the classroom I can quickly figure out who’s they are.
Have a plan for assessment beyond their individual books. The goal of book clubs is for students to learn to grow one another’s thinking about their reading. This is a wonderful social experience that develops students as readers, learners, and members of a community. But that means they are feeding off of one another’s ideas, so if you ask a student to tell you about a theme in their book club book, there is no way to know how much of their thinking is their own and how much of it has been guided by their book club peers. Instead, I look at the work with their club books as great formal assessment, but I use picture books for formative assessment. Picture books can be approachable for all my clubs and using them for assessment allows me to evaluate their independent skills.
Don’t ask students to do more than they are ready for. Depending on your grade level and the culture of book clubs at lower grades at your school, book clubs may be really hard for one kid or a couple. Instead of setting up a kid for failure, consider alternatives. Some kids might benefit from using the class read-aloud as their book club book to discuss with one another. Others are better off doing a different picture book that is aligned to your standards each week with a partner. When you have a larger group of students who isn’t quite ready, you can pick an achievable book for them to read independently and then give them comprehension questions to work on in pairs or triads during book club time for the early weeks until you think they are ready to try coming prepared for discussion. The goal is to build these kids up to chapter book book clubs, not to write them off.
Make students accountable for their learning.
Giving students something to complete alongside their book helps them come to their book club meetings prepared and helps me to see who is on track and who might need more support. At a basic level, I tell students to make at least 2-3 stop & jots per chapter. Then I just look for post-its (and check that they are actually written on). Personally, I want students to have more scaffolding. For every book club, students complete a notebook to accompany their book which is a part of their grade for the unit. The notebook includes places for them to record their noticing and demonstrate progress on the standards we are working on for that unit. It also gives me something to peruse while I’m observing a club’s meeting to note the preparation of all group members not just the ones who speak up in those moments. The novel study notebook I use is available in my TPT store.
Book Clubs help students develop 21st century collaboration skills in addition to helping them develop as readers. They also spur new friendships and are just fun. I hope these tips make managing them simpler for your classroom.
For more tips on running book clubs, focussed on supporting the students, check out part 2 of this post: Set Students up for Success in Book Clubs.
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