Book Clubs

My 8th grade language arts students participate in "Book Clubs" twice a week by reading and discussing novels in small groups. The students are grouped heterogeneously according to the book they have chosen to read, which keeps them motivated and engaged. Because they only meet twice a week, the students decide how much reading will be done in between sessions at home to prepare for the next Book Club session. Not only do they read individually up to the page number they have decided upon, they must come to class prepared with a discussion topic. Discussion topics can include various ideas such as themes, questions, comments, real-life connections, etc.

To keep up the “momentum” on non-Book Club days, I am devising a plan to incorporate a Book Club Blog as well. Students would be required to complete a certain number of posts per week, much like my experience with online classes (responses to prompts as well as responses to classmates’ posts).

Forums would have the following titles:

Discussion Topics - Students would post suggestions for discussion topics during Book Club sessions.  

Help! - Students could post any questions that came to mind, like, "I don't understand why this character..." or "I'm confused about..." Other classmates (and I) would answer these questions on a weekly basis.

Literary Device of the Week - Students would be asked to focus on a different literary device each week. For example, one week students would be asked to find an example of foreshadowing, provide the sentence and page number, and discuss its significance.