When students want to challenge themselves more in their reading, advanced book clubs are a great way to lend them the support they need to be successful.
My middle school doesn’t offer an honors language arts class, so all students are grouped together in regular classes. The challenge as a teacher is to meet the needs of the ELL and SPED students reading well below grade level as well as the ALP students capable of reading high school literature.
This past year I decided to offer a lunchtime book club for my advanced 8th graders using the novel To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I figured if students were asked to read it again in high school they would benefit from a closer examination, and if they didn’t read it later (my son’s high school skipped it), they would at least have some exposure. I thought the book’s social issues about injustice would be easy to connect with contemporary issues in society.
I began by offering the book club to my three 8th grade classes (about 90 students), and gave a powerful book talk to “sell” the book and the lunchtime club. Since it would mean students would be giving up lunch with friends once a week, my expectations were low. My hope was to recruit 3 to 5 students who might be interested; I was surprised when 15 students signed up! A few students purchased their own copies of the book, and I arranged to borrow the rest from a high school in our district that wasn’t using them.
At the first book club meeting, I checked out novels and gave students background on the time period and characters. I used to begin the unit with this information when I taught the novel to high school students. I wanted my 8th graders to have context for their reading, so they wouldn’t become frustrated too easily. I started off reading aloud the first few pages of the book and discussed them with students since the novel begins slowly with background on Scout’s family and the town of Maycomb. We ended the meeting by deciding how far to read by the next week. I left this entirely in students’ hands, but I reminded them when we would need to finish the book before winter break.
I prepared questions to guide discussion for the rest of the meetings, but I also let students bring up issues to discuss and questions to pose to the group. As students completed more of the novel, I relinquished control of the discussion because they had gained confidence in their reading and comprehension of the more challenging text. I arranged several lunch periods to watch the movie together when we finished the book. Students were excited to see the characters they had envisioned in their minds while reading and enjoyed making comparisons between the book and film.
After we returned from break, students volunteered suggestions for the next book we should read as a group. They loved challenging themselves and having a group format to discuss their reading. I was surprised by many of the students who joined the group because the novel was very advanced for their reading level. Since they had voluntarily decided to join the group, they were motivated to keep reading compared to the reluctant 9th graders I had had in the past who were “forced” to read the novel as part of the curriculum. Similarly, my colleague offered a book club for 7th graders using advanced YA novels. She also had a wide range of students who were highly motivated.
As I prepare for the new school year, I know I’ll start book club with To Kill A Mockingbird again. I even snapped up a bunch of used copies this summer in preparation for next year’s book group. I’ll let students select what we read after that, but I already had a suggestion at the end of the school year for The Handmaid’s Tale to correspond with the Hulu series. I can’t wait to see students challenge themselves this fall while gaining an appreciation for classic literature.
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