Teen+Book+Club+Suggestions

These posts were on YALSA-bk today (Jan 27) about Teen Book Clubs

Heather Loy to yalsa-bk show details 12:54 PM (4 hours ago) I partner with another high school in my district and we read books on a theme - for example, this month's theme is "books in a series."

Students self-select their own books and we get together (each school individually) and discuss the books we read - similar to booktalking - sharing just enough to peak others interest and why we liked/disliked the books. We meet during student lunches - my school has two lunches and my partner school has three.

We have a blog (http://2readornot2read.edublogs.org) where the kids are encouraged to share, but it hasn't really taken off yet. This is the first year we've tried it as it took me a LONG time to get the blog proposal passed through the powers that be.

This month we actually have approval to Skype together, so our kids will get to share "face-to-face" with the kids from the other school. We hope to be able to Skype for the remainder of the school year. We also hope that by seeing the kids they may be more inclined to begin communicating with each other via the blog.

Heather Loy, Media Specialist Wagener-Salley High School Wagener, SC hloy@mac.com hloy@aiken.k12.sc.us

--

Hi Alison and Carol,

I ran my high school book club for quite a few years and have learned some tips that I think, or at least hope, are helpful.

1. Pick a time where students are able to join the club without interfering other activities. For my students, the mornings worked best. We began 7:15 am and ended 7:40 amish so that they had enough time to go to their first class (7:50 am).

2. If you are doing lunch, either let the kids eat their lunch during the meeting or if you have a budget, buy some snacks. Bring food and they will come motto has never let me down.

3. Contact your english/ la teachers and let them know that you are starting a club. Most of our teachers assign extra credit and even participate in the discussion. If you are doing the bookclub at lunch hours, I would check to see if the kids need a pass to come to the library. If so, create a special pass for them to use only.

4. I would not suggest to purchase every book for each student. I would use the public library and the ILL system as much as you can. Advise the students ahead of time that the material needs to be handed in. I use have seen librarians use an excel spreadsheet to keep track of which library the book was received and given to which child. It has worked fabulously with them. I, personally, have not tried it.

5. I would advise not to pick a book like Matched now, mainly because it is in hardcover only and very hard to ILL it. However, if it is popular and kids have already read it, then I think it would be okay to proceed. I generally stick to a book that is readily available and in paperback format. I've had lively discussions on Twilight (before the movie came out) by Meyer and Elsewhere by Zevin because there was a wide range of opinons. I also assigned Alexie's "Part-time Indian" and didnt' have much of a discussion because everyone seemed to love it.

6. Search for discussion questions and/or different activites to do if the discussion comes to a stand still. Some kids take time to warm up to you while others dive right in. There is nothing worse than award silence so just be prepared to dig a little further and not be afraid to veer off track. Hope this helps!

Rummanah Aasi

My book clubs meet during lunch. I provide the books for the students, but they do not keep them. I get them via Interlibrary Loan, and if I have to purchase a title, I make sure it is something that could be used in a literature circle in one of our other classes. I do purchase pizza for the group. Then we just organically discuss what we loved or hated about the selection. For the second part of the meeting, I booktalk a new selection of books that I think the students might like and they suggest possible titles. Then they vote on which book to select for the next month. We have read everything from Revolution, which every student LOVED, to The Monstrumologist to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The set up has been so popular for me that in five years I have went from 1 group with 8 students to 4 groups with nearly 60 students, boys and girls, participating.

Kerri Smith WHS Librarian 501 N Sycamore Ave. Sioux Falls, SD 57104 605-367-7980 kerri.smith@k12.sd.us