We have officially launched into our book clubs now and the students have been working hard to share insights, questions, inferences, connections, and more when discussing their book. Most groups have 3-4 students in them and there is quite a bit of choice when it comes to picking their just-right book. Students collaborate to choose how many pages to read before the next meeting–usually there’s 3 days in between meetings.

What’s a Book Club? Here are some of the basics:

• Readers gather to read the SAME book, accessible to all readers so groups are as ability‐based as possible
• Readers read the book independently and gather to talk and grow ideas together across the book
• Book club meetings are scheduled and routine. Ours are 2 times/week
• Students learn from each other and the teacher
• There are mini-lessons given by the teacher several times per week which are to be applied within the book-club structure

Meetings–What are book club meetings for?

1. Comprehension help: when you talk about what’s going on in the story, you can gain a deeper understanding and clarify any misunderstandings
2. Pushing your thinking: when you explain your interpretations and inferences to others, as well as hear other people’s explanations, you begin to think more deeply about the big ideas in the story, and you get better at using evidence from the text to support your thinking
3. Lively discussion: book clubs are meant to be enjoyable; it can be entertaining to have a friendly disagreement about what you think the author is trying to say, or about why a character acts the way he or she does.

A Quality Book Club…

• Allows for diversity of ideas—debate is encouraged!
• Requires compromise
• Teaches empathy and seeing things from other people’s perspectives
• Helps students read outside of their ‘comfort zone’
• Has members that come prepared with questions and ideas
• Supports development of listening and speaking skills

Have a look at a few of our book clubs in action!