“I don’t know why he wanted to close the restaurant,” said Chloe. “The whole family works there, and everyone in the community loves it.” Zach leapt in quickly with his response: “Well, the new development was going to have restaurants, too, and it was going to make more money! Why should they keep the old restaurant if it wasn’t as successful?” These two fifth-grade students were eagerly discussing a book they had read for a school book club. The conversation was lively, as the group drew on textual evidence to support their opinions about the characters and debated the larger social issues raised by the author. But not enough kids are given opportunities to engage with literature so deeply.
The Atlantic and Forbes are just two mainstream publications that have drawn attention to troubling trends about how school-age children read. In our era of high-stakes testing, there is a risk of hyperfocus on the use of short excerpts in the classroom at the expense of time spent with rich, complex novels and informational texts. Teachers often feel tremendous pressure to mirror standardized tests by using test-style passages for instruction. However, limiting students to reading only passages limits how they interact with texts and can even create barriers to them becoming lifelong readers. Multiple studies, including by the Pew Research Center and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), have found a decrease in the number of students who read for pleasure. While reading for pleasure has its own intrinsic value, there is also evidence that it improves learning outcomes, supports socio-emotional learning, and helps people develop empathy.
To help their students reap the many benefits of reading, teachers need ways to promote engagement in reading. A school book club is a fun and powerful tool for doing so.
Why book clubs?
In a school book club, sometimes called a literature circle, students read self-selected novels, record their thoughts, and discuss their reading with a group of peers who chose the same book. Because students read full novels, they increase their time spent reading, which is credited with higher scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) administered by the NCES. Research has also found that engaging students in discussing books for even ten minutes a day has a positive effect on standardized test scores.
Additionally, school book clubs can help students develop social, speaking, and listening skills and increase their engagement and motivation to read. It is also easier to teach students who are proficient with full-length books to apply their knowledge to test passages than it is to prepare students who have focused on short passages for the literacy demands of college and careers. For more on these benefits, see “Book clubs: Conversations inspiring community”and “Influence of book clubs on reading motivation for third through fifth grade students.”
School book club how-tos
Implementing book clubs doesn’t magically lead to higher test scores. Teachers still need to do a lot of work to support students in participating meaningfully in their groups. If you’re considering using book clubs to promote engagement in reading, here are some important things to think about.
Finding time
Fitting all the required instruction into a single school day is one of the biggest challenges facing teachers, so you might need to be creative in finding time for a book club. The first consideration is how to schedule it across the course of a year. Book clubs don’t have to be occurring constantly in your classroom. If you can squeeze in even one book club per grading period or even one each semester, kids will still have the opportunity to engage with books in meaningful ways. Once you have the book club on your calendar, you’ll need to plan a time for book clubs to meet. It may be easier to have a dedicated meeting time, perhaps once a week.
Children, especially younger ones, will also need protected time for reading their book club books. It doesn’t have to be long, and it doesn’t have to be every day, but it’s worth it to find a specific time for book club reading. Consider small chunks of time that are difficult to use for other instruction, such as that awkward 20-minute break between recess and art. Your students could also read their book club books at a time that’s otherwise chaotic. Giving kids ten minutes to read right after recess, for example, can make that transition easier.
Choosing books and setting up groups
When planning for book clubs, keep in mind that the ideal group size is small enough so that everyone can be heard, but not so small that a single absence will sink the discussion. Many teachers find that four to six students is a good number, although with younger children or when first introducing book clubs, smaller groups might be optimal. This means that you will need four to six copies of each title. In some cases, this need may dictate what books you use. If you have options, however, you can choose a selection of books based on a certain theme, such as friendship; from a particular genre, such as fantasy; or tied to something in your subject area curriculum. You should select books at a variety of different levels of difficulty to meet the needs of all your students. It’s not cheating to offer audio books as an option for students who need more support. The goals of the book club are to promote engagement in reading and meaningful discussion; there are other times during the day to help students learn to read grade-level texts independently.
While a key feature of school book clubs is students reading self-selected books, this is not always practical. You might not have enough copies of a book, for example, or you might have students who don’t work well together. One effective way to group students is through modified student choice. You can hold a “book tasting” where students do a quick preview of each title and rank their choices. If there’s a reason you don’t want a student in their top choice group, you can assign that student to their second choice. Keep tabs on this so that everyone gets their first choice at least once or twice. If there are too many students interested in the same book, consider having two or three groups reading the same book, or try bringing the title back later in the year for the students who didn’t get to read it the first time.
Introducing and running a school book club
The most crucial step in implementing book clubs is teaching students how to think and talk about books. This is an ongoing process, but there are two things that need to be explicitly taught before the first club begins: how students hold themselves accountable while reading and how to hold a productive conversation.
While reading, students need a way to take note of the things they want to remember. Harvey Daniels, the preeminent expert on book clubs in schools, initially recommended assigning each student in the group a specific role, such as finding interesting words or making connections. Because it turned out that this practice frequently stifled conversations, Daniels now recommends assigning roles only as a temporary means of helping students learn the types of things they should look for while reading. Students can also be taught to use small stick-on flags to mark parts of the book they want to remember or to use a student- or teacher-created graphic organizer. Whatever method you use, the writing required should not be laborious; students should write just enough to help them remember what they want to talk about when they meet with their club.
In addition to practicing speaking and listening skills, such as enunciating clearly, making eye contact, and taking turns, students need explicit instruction in how to have an ongoing conversation in which they respond to their peers’ ideas instead of jumping immediately to their own unrelated thoughts. I’ve had success teaching this by either modeling with a couple of other adults in my school or by giving students colored tokens they can add to a pile when their comment adds on to a discussion. Common sentence starters, such as “I agree/disagree because,” or questions, such as “Why do you think that?” are also helpful. Teaching students to have an ongoing conversation about a book is a long process, but they can be given the initial skills they need to get started fairly easily.
Finally, you will need to establish a schedule for reading and meeting. One important consideration is the volume of reading you expect your students to do. Richard Allington calculated that it would take typical upper-elementary readers about two to four hours of reading time to complete some commonly taught novels. If students at this age are given ten minutes to read their books every day, you can expect them to finish a short novel in a couple of weeks. You might want your students to meet with their groups three times over the two-week period: once near the beginning, again about halfway through, and a final time once they have all finished their reading. Depending on the age and experience of your students, you can set reading goals for them or allow club members to set their own deadlines at the first meeting.
The teacher’s role
Almost all the teacher’s work on bringing a school book club to fruition comes during planning and in frontloading instruction. I’ve already described much of this work: choosing books, setting up groups, creating a schedule, and teaching students to identify good topics for conversation, take notes, and converse about the book. When the club begins, it’s time for you to sit back and let the kids do the rest.
Try not to be overly involved in book club conversations. You can sit in on a club if you want to collect anecdotal evidence of student learning or gently facilitate conversations, but you should not lead the conversation. For example, you might say, “Does someone have a response to what Chloe said?” instead of “That’s a good try, but friendship isn’t really a theme of this book.” Your focus could also be on giving broad guidance. You might say something like “As you’re reading today, see if you notice anything about the themes in your book” or “Remember, if you find a part of the book that’s confusing, it’s probably something good to bring up in your club.”
When it comes to grading book clubs, the best policy is don’t. Book clubs are a way to promote engagement with reading, and nothing kills that engagement faster than requiring a bunch of worksheets and quizzes. Book clubs are about building a love of reading, not about quantifying the mastery of reading standards; there are plenty of other opportunities throughout your day to do that. If you do need some sort of evidence for your gradebook, try to keep it as unobtrusive as possible. You could assign a very short written response after book club meetings, such as having students record what they found most interesting in the conversation, or ask them to turn in the notes they jotted down while preparing for each meeting. Although it’s not necessary for you to sit in on every meeting with every group, you could also cycle through meetings to collect information about preparation and participation, perhaps using a checklist. Finally, you might develop a simple rubric for your own use or for student self-assessment. No matter what you choose, make sure to keep the focus on reading and meaningful discussion, not on extensive evidence of specific required topics.
Take the plunge
Trying something as unstructured as a school book club might seem a little intimidating, even scary. I get it. By their nature, book clubs are student-centered and student-driven, and they require teachers to give up some measure of control. But remember, book clubs are only one small part of teaching reading. There is still time in your day and week to devote to structured literacy, phonics and morphology, spelling, and other more traditional reading instruction. When you hear your students hotly debating the morality of a character in their book club book, I promise you’ll be amazed by their insights and glad you found such a meaningful way to promote engagement in reading.
