We’re going to be starting a book club at school! My principal and assistant principal came to me a little while back and we talked about starting book clubs with some of our students. They came upon the idea after reading about Lit Blitz, a competitive reading incentive book club. After some of the articles that I’ve been reading about students needing to get away from being rewarded for being “smart” and the overuse of incentive programs (I’ve been reading the November/December edition of Knowledge Quest, FYI), I’m really thinking hard about the direction we should take this. I don’t think we’ll be going with the Lit Blitz model, but I am thankful that it planted the seed for our club.

I’m still in the brainstorming/idea bouncing stages, but here’s my direction so far:

• Incorporate an online discussion board (perhaps BlackBoard, since our district has the program) that students access from home during their reading process.
• Pull in nonfiction passages that pertain to fiction that we’re reading.
• Have some type of hands-on/creative activity for the discussion meeting.
• Really address teaching students how to participate in a discussion, not just answer questions.

This should be lots of fun and I can’t wait to get this thing started!