Seasonal Spotlight: Establish Student Independence With Book Clubs

Hey, friends, this is Sara Marye, and we are back for another episode of the podcast. Okay, so before we jump in today, we’re actually going to be talking about book clubs. I’m going to share two little two little fun facts with you.

First of all, it took me probably five minutes to record the intro of this podcast because every time I sit down to record an episode, I cannot help it. I want to start by saying, I am so excited for this episode. And I’m like, they’re probably tired of hearing me say how excited I am for this episode. But it’s true. I get excited every time I record the podcast.

The second thing is, is we’re going to start talking about book clubs on the podcast today, and I’m super excited about helping you guys get book clubs up and running in your classroom. Because book clubs have been such an important part of my personal life. And just my reading experience,

I have kind of always been in a book club. And my friends refer to me as a serial book club starter, because I have had this I don’t wanna say it’s a bad habit. I think it’s a great habit. But I have moved around a lot as an adult. And every time I move, I end up starting a book club.

But every time I started a book club, it’s like a year later, I end up moving out of state and leaving that book club, which I kind of feel like the book clubs have been my legacy. But I started a book club in Louisiana and a year later, I moved back to Minnesota and I started a book club in Minnesota. And then a year later, I moved actually back to Louisiana. And when I lived in Chicago, that was actually the only state that I didn’t have a book club in.

But when I moved to Texas, we started a book club at some point, we actually started to book clubs in Texas. But a year after I started, my last book club is when we moved to Florida. And so recently, we’ve been making a lot more friends in Florida, which has been nice. But I was talking with one of my friends out here in Florida. And I was saying we should start a book club out here.

And I had told her about my bad habit of starting a book club and then moving and she’s like, No, she’s like, I refuse to be in a book club with you. She’s like, because it sounds like every time you start a book club, you end up moving. So I’m currently only in an online virtual book club with some of my friends back in Houston.

I don’t know about you if you’re in a book club or not. But book clubs in the classroom, I think are such a great way to give students an authentic experience of what reading looks like in their real lives. You know, as a reader outside of the classroom, we don’t always read and respond in a journal, we don’t have to take reading tests, we don’t have reading homework, we just read because we love reading.

And I think sometimes too often we can look past the joy that reading brings in school because we’re tied to standards and assessments. And anytime that we can give students just an experience of what reading can look like in the real world as an adult, I think it’s so important. And so book clubs, I think are one of the most authentic ways to give students real life reading experiences that also have an academic benefit.

Anyways, this week, we’re talking about book clubs. And let me just give another shout out to my podcast listener Grace. This episode was actually a request from one of my listeners. Last episode where I talked about book talks, and this one, she had sent me an email saying I’m wanting to help with these two areas or wanting to learn more, would you be willing to do a podcast episode? So that’s where the idea for this one came from.

And let me just tell you, if you have anything that you would love to hear me talk about, reading related ,writing related, literacy related, or really just anything engagement, management, whatever you want to know more about, please send me an email or reach out to me on Instagram. I love planning episodes with my listeners in mind. And so if there’s something specific you want to know more about, just reach out and let me know and I’ll put together an episode on that.

Let’s go ahead and talk all about book clubs. So I feel like book clubs for a while were referred to as literature circles. Now I think they’re called more book clubs in schools. But when we talk about a book club, I usually think of it as a student led book club. So this is a form of you could call it small group instruction, but really, the students should be the ones if you want to get the most bang for your buck out of it, the students should be the ones that are leading the book club.

So it is student initiated student led, it’s a chance for a small group of students to have a shared reading experience around a common book and they get to discuss the book. And I think it’s great because while there are definitely lots of academic benefits, especially in the areas of listening and speaking and practicing applying those independent reading skills that we’re teaching them, it’s also really fun because it’s led by the students.

So it’s not like they’re having to come and learn a new strategy during the guided reading table or take a quiz or have any sort of assessment, it can really just be an organic reading experience.

So student led book clubs is literally what it sounds like. It’s a club for students to read and discuss a book. Now, if we think about how these help our students it, book clubs have many, many benefits, I just listed some of them. But really, if you think about it, anytime, that we can give students a reading experience that they get excited about, it’s just going to help their engagement, it’s going to help their comprehension, it’s going to help their confidence as a reader.

And I definitely did book clubs wrong for many, many years before I learned how to do them. I don’t want to say right, because there’s not always a right way. But before I learned how to do them better, and one of one of the things that I would often do is I would roll out my book clubs very, very slowly. And I hate to admit this, but oftentimes, I would start my book clubs with my highest, most independent students, because I knew that they could read a book on their own and have a conversation.

And if I’m being truthful, I just didn’t trust my lower readers to use that time meaningfully. But honestly, that was a disservice to those students, because I realized that even students who struggle and actually maybe even students who do struggle with reading, need to have the experience of a book club.

So when I started my book clubs, I, you know, would tell students, okay, we’re going to be rolling out book clubs slowly over the next couple of months, and everybody will get a chance to be in them. But I would always start with my high students, but it never, like every single year, whenever I would start my book clubs, my students got so excited.

And once one group got going with their book club, and kids saw the meeting, and especially if they got to, like go out into the hallway and have their discussion, or they had something extra special, the rest of my class would beg me, when do I get to be in a book club? When is it my turn? When are you going to put me in a book club.

And so it’s just something that students get excited about. I don’t know if it’s just this idea, because it’s a club, and it seems exclusive. But students get excited about this idea of book clubs. And so if there is something that is going to help your students be excited about reading, we definitely want to incorporate it into our classroom.

I also think that, like I said, book clubs are a great opportunity for students to have an authentic practice with the reading skills that we are teaching them. Again, we ultimately want our students to be independent and confident readers, which means they have to have opportunities to practice that independence. And the book club is great, because there’s structure, there is routine, while you might not be directly facilitating it, you are overseeing the clubs and you get to kind of manage them to some degree.

But it really is a great opportunity for you to see are your students able to apply the things that I’ve been teaching them all throughout the year. So a great way for them to practice all of the comprehension skills and strategies you’ve been teaching them, and it also gets them excited about reading.

So if you have not started book clubs in your classroom, it is never too late to start, you could start a book club now. And you could have book clubs running until the end of the year. Or you could also just start to plan them for back to school next year. But definitely consider making them a regular part of your reading block.

Now one of the things and again, like I said, I did book clubs wrong for a lot of times, but one of the I think common mistakes that I see and hear and things that I did is that I would spend time facilitating my students book clubs. And for a couple reasons.

One, I didn’t always trust them to use that time wisely. And a lot of times if I did try to let them be independent, I would hear them arguing across the room. Well, you didn’t read that page. Well, I disagree with you, you don’t have your homework done, well, what should we read next? And they just, they would waste the time and I didn’t see the benefit of them running their groups independently.

And so I decided I still want to have book clubs. But that meant that I was sitting in and facilitating every single book club. My advice to you is let students run their own book club, because your time is better spent teaching than facilitating. And let’s be honest, we have a limited amount of instructional time in our day, and your students, even in upper elementary, still need your small group instructional time, where you are teaching them new strategies, not facilitating a discussion.

And so we want to set up our book clubs in such a way to where students can be independent, and facilitate a conversation amongst themselves without your help. And maybe you’re thinking my students can never get there. Trust me, I felt the same way. And they can.

So in order for us to do this, it really all depends on how we really start and kick off our book clubs from the beginning and the expectations we set for our set for our students. It’s like anything else. Anytime we want our students to be independent in some capacity, we just have to make sure that we are extremely clear with our expectations. We spend time modeling and practices expectations, and then we just reinforce them. The same thing is with book clubs.

So I have five tips that I’m going to share with you today about how you can get book clubs up and running in such a way that will help your students really be independent to where they can facilitate their own book club on their own. So that way, you can use your small group time to actually teach them and help them continue to grow as readers.

My first tip, and this is really something that you need to think about before you start teaching your students or before you start book clubs in your classroom. And, again, I don’t know if this is encouraging or discouraging, but I am going to remind you that there is not necessarily just one right way for you to do a book club. And so if you see other teachers talking about book clubs and the way they have them scheduled and structured, and you’re thinking, that’s not going to work for me, that’s great. That just means that you get to figure out what is going to work for you and your students.

So before you start and introduce book clubs, you want to make sure that you spend time thinking about what is the agenda, or routine that you want your students to engage in, during their book club. Because hint, what’s coming next is we’re going to introduce book clubs to our students. So before you’re going to introduce the book clubs, you have to know what you’re introducing.

I suggest coming up with an agenda. I typically had my book clubs run for about 20 minutes. And I literally would break down what happens during this 20 minutes. Well, there’s one minute, and I’ve done we’re going to talk about this a little bit later on. But I’ve done book clubs, both where there are specific student roles and where there’s book clubs where there’s not, but in either case, break up what happens.

What happens in the first minute? Okay, well, they’re going to review for one minute, what happened in the previous text. Okay, and then what happens next? Well, we’re going to take two minutes to summarize the most recent chapter or the most recent discussion, then they’re gonna take five to 10 minutes, and they’re going to each ask their questions and answer it. And then they’re going to take two minutes, and they’re going to share the visuals that they’re created.

And then they’re going to take whatever it is, whatever you’re having them do, give them a very specific agenda and routine. So that way, when they’re independent, and if it’s a timer, or whatever it is, they know, okay, we are on track for our book club, or we are off track.

So what we want to avoid is telling students, you have 20 minutes discuss this book, because that’s when the that’s when the arguing comes in, that’s when they get off track, that’s when they start telling each other well, you didn’t read this right, or you didn’t do your homework. So if they know exactly what they’re supposed to do during every minute of the book club, they are much more likely to be successful.

So take some time to figure that out. I do have a agenda for both a book club with roles and a book club without roles. So if you just want to be more organic, and I will link to that in the show notes. So if you’re not sure where to start, I will include that agenda as well.

So the next thing, once you have a very clear structure for how you want the actual book club to go, then you need to introduce it to your students. And again, this is where I realized I had made a mistake, because what I was doing is I was introducing book clubs, one club at a time. So I would meet with a book club, I would teach them how to do it, we would spend a week learning how to, you know, learning the roles, or we’d spend two weeks and I’d sit with them. And then eventually, after maybe a month, they were independent.

Well, this was a bad use of time for a couple of reasons. One, it took me a long time, probably like three or four months to get all of my book clubs up and running. Which means that not all of my students are engaged in book clubs. But two, it was also eating up my small group time. So I wasn’t able to pull as many guided reading or strategy groups.

I don’t know where I read this, but somewhere along the way, someone gave the suggestion to introduce book clubs whole group with a read aloud, and I read that and I was like, okay, my mind is blown. This is brilliant. Because here’s the thing, when you’re introducing the book club structure, whole group, first of all you are providing your students with the common reading experience.

So whether it is a picture book, or a whole group novel, you are doing the reading for them, so you can guarantee your students will come to their book club prepared. And all they have to focus on is learning how to have a conversation with their classmates.

What this looks like is again, either pick a short chapter book, something that you could probably get done in a week, or a series of picture books. And you read the book to your students whole group, and then divide them into small groups and those are their book clubs. And so during your read aloud, you read, and then afterwards, they have their book club, where they break up into their small groups and they’re all discussing the same book that they heard the read aloud book.

So again, all they’re doing with this sort of routine is they’re practicing the discussion, they’re practicing asking questions, they’re practicing their homework, whatever it is you’re doing, and you can easily walk around and monitor because your whole class is practicing book clubs at the same time. So within a week, all of your students know the routine for book club, and they’ve practiced it and you’ve monitored.

And that means that anytime you want a book club to be up and running in your classroom, your students know the routine. So make sure you introduce your whole your book club structure, whole group.

Now there’s two sort of things that you want to make sure you’re doing during this time. So whether you’re taking a week or two weeks, during this introduction, like I said, you’re reading a book, whole group and then students are breaking up into small groups to discuss it. You want to make sure that you both model to your students, which means that maybe you and two or three other students are a book club and the rest of the class can watch you model having conversations.

So this is where you might want to identify some students who are really good at asking questions, really good at having conversation and they just kind of have some of those natural skills.

And then that’s a group where you get to model what a book club discussion looks like to the rest of your class. And once you’ve modeled it, and then students are actually practicing in your group, you also want to incorporate at some point, what I call a fishbowl.

And this is where you pick one book club group that you are not a part of. So it’s a completely student led group, and one that you’ve probably observed is on tracking, doing the right things, and you put them in the center of the room or on your carpet, and everybody else sits around and the whole class gets to watch that club have their discussion.

And while they’re having their discussion, you know, you want to prep them for this and kind of let them know what’s going to happen. You really want to narrate what they’re doing well, so if students are making eye contact, if they’re asking good questions, if they’re engaging everybody in the discussion, point that out to the rest of your class. Because this is an opportunity for you to really reinforce the expectations that you want to see in all of the groups.

Tip number two, introduce your book club structure, whole group, that is the quickest way to teach your students the expectations, make sure you model and make sure you also include time for a fishbowl for students to observe other groups having a book club discussion.

Now, this is another tip that I have. My third tip, I guess, is to regularly use picture books for your book clubs. And this is great if you are just getting started with book clubs. Again, when we are introducing a structure or a routine to our students for the first time, we want to make sure that we are setting them up to be successful.

And if your students aren’t used to discussing or even independently reading a text for, you know, for a discussion with a group, then giving them a long chapter book, a really big novel as their first book might be overwhelming, and especially if they don’t really enjoy that book.

So if you use a picture book, it is short, it is something that students can usually read and be prepared for the discussion, which means then that they’re going to build some success with a book club. And the other thing that I love about picture books as book clubs is, first of all, I don’t think we use enough picture books and upper elementary. And so it’s just another great way for students to be exposed to picture books in different genres.

But also it means that your book clubs aren’t going on for months at a time now, not that there’s anything wrong with that. But sometimes kids get bored. Sometimes the book club groups don’t always work together. And if it is a picture book, maybe they meet two or three times and then that book club is over. And they can pick another book club to be a part of.

So if you have never used picture books for your book club, I would definitely encourage you to do so. You could use picture books, you can use articles, really, you can create a reading club around any shared common text, you could have a poetry club, if your students love specific, you know poems, you could have different genre clubs.

However you want to set it up that give your students a variety of texts, do not limit your book clubs to just chapter books. But any exciting text that is going to engage your students can be used for a book club book.

Now my fourth tip, and I know sometimes that this is scary for teachers, but let students choose their book club. And I know a lot of times we think well, I need to have book clubs that are based off of students that can read at the same level. And so if I let my students choose their book clubs, what happens if one of my struggling readers picks a book that’s too difficult for them?

Okay, so what does happen if a struggling reader picks a book that’s too difficult for them? This is actually a great opportunity for them to experience a challenge in text because they’re going to have the support of their peers, to discuss it to understand it. So even if they can’t fully read it independently, they’re probably more likely to understand it because of the support of their peers during the book club.

And maybe they realized, you know what, that book was too challenging for me this time, I’m going to pick an easier one. But let them figure that out. I think too often we limit our students to reading levels, which prevents them from having reading experiences, let our students decide what is too difficult, or what is too easy for them. And one of the easiest ways to do that is to let your students choose their book club.

So what I would do and look, let me be the first to say it took me many, many years to get to this point, I was for a long time, that teacher who grouped my students, according to levels, picked a book for them, assign them to a specific book. And a lot of times my low students didn’t even get to be a part of a book club. But like I said, I learned that that was not always the best approach and that there was a better way to get all of my students in book clubs.

So if you want to let your students choose their book club, there’s a couple different ways that you could do this. First of all, you could select the books, and I always think it can be fun, like, maybe you can do book clubs around the holidays. Or maybe you want to do book clubs based off of certain genres or different themes for the month. But however frequently you want to run them or how you want to do them, you could choose the titles.

And you could say there are no more than, you know, five, I think six is kind of the max. So five to six students can sign up for a book and just have, you know, six or seven titles and let your students pick the title that they want to have.

The other way that you could do it is you could let your students pick their group. And I know sometimes we think okay, well if students pick their groups, they’re going to be with their friends. Okay, so what happens, so what if students pick their friends, and they get to have a shared reading experience that they enjoy with their friends? That’s what we do as adults, I got to pick my friends to be in my book club. And so not that we necessarily want our students always to be working with their same group of friends, because we want them to get to work with all of the students in the class.

And we always know that sometimes there are those students that don’t have that close group of friends. But if you have a group of close friends in your class, let them have one book club experience, where they all get to have a book together.

So another way that you can let students choose is let them form a group and then let that group pick the book that they want to read. Now, there’s always ways if you are letting your students choose, I always say there’s ways that you can provide controlled choice. So again, if you’re worried about your students, I don’t know taking their choice freedom too far, you can always, you know, give them some limits.

So it could be one of those things where pick a friend, you know, students have one friend in their book club, and then you know, something like, pick a friend, somebody that is new to the class or somebody that you’ve never been in a group with before, you know, have somebody in your in your book club that you’ve been in a past book club with, and then some new people come that you’ve never been in a book club with.

So there’s ways that you can set up sort of boundaries that will encourage your students to work with a wide range of students or read a wide range of books. But still, because they have a little bit of choice, they are going to be so much more excited about the book club than if you just told them, here’s your book, and here’s your group.

So then my last tip for making sure that students are super independent, is minimizing and simplifying book club homework. And again, this is something I learned through experience.

I started to notice that a lot of my book clubs weren’t getting their homework done, like their book club homework, you know, they’d say, Well, so and so didn’t read the chapters or so and so didn’t get their homework done. And so then we would say, Okay, fine, we’ll meet next week, when everybody has it done. And then next week, somebody else wouldn’t have it done.

So I realized that what was happening is, first of all, my students had too many texts that they were trying to manage. They had books from my guided reading groups, they had books for their independent reading, they had homework, and then they had their book club, and it was just too much. And so I realized that I needed if I wanted the book clubs to be successful, I needed to make sure that my students could manage the reading and the homework requirements for the book club.

So this could happen in a variety of ways. One, you could assign students to read, you know, a certain number of minutes or a chapter, you could give them very basic homework.

One of the formulas that I like to use for book club is a three, two, one. Their book club homework could simply be write down three comments, two connections, and one question that you have that’s super manageable for a book club.

The other thing that I realized is that sometimes it’s helpful not to have book clubs running all year long meaning if my students are in a guided reading group, and if I’m pulling strategy groups, and I want them to be reading independent reading texts, and all of these things that can be difficult for them to manage.

What I started doing is we would have, you know, book clubs going on for like a week or two weeks. And that is basically all we were doing during our small group time. So they wouldn’t have to manage both a guided reading book and a book club book. But it was just the book club homework was their focus for that time. So however, you want to set it up for your students, just be aware that if we want them to be successful with their book club homework, then we have to make sure that it is manageable.

So keep it as simple and minimal as possible. Because the most important part of the book club actually isn’t the reading. It is the discussion that happens between the students during the book club.

So those are my five tips. Let me go ahead and review them real quick. First of all, make sure that you have figured out what you want your agenda or routine to look like for your book club. Tip number two is introduce your book clubs whole group, so everybody learns the routine at once. Regularly incorporate picture books into your book club, because that’s a quick win for students. Tip number four is let students choose their book clubs. And then tip number five is to minimize and simplify book club homework.

Now, I do have a couple other things that I want to point out because I’ve had teachers over the years ask me questions about book clubs. And the first one I kind of already answered, but it’s how often should I have book clubs up and running? Should I have them all the time? Should I always have a book club running? Should students always mean a book club?

And the answer really is what do you prefer and what works for your students. I know everybody has a different length of time for their literacy block. And if you have a two hour literacy block, you are so lucky. And maybe that means that you have time to where you can constantly have a book club going in. Students can always be in book clubs, because you have the time to do it.

Now, if you only have 60 or 70 minutes for your entire literacy block, you might not always have to have to have book clubs. So maybe you pick out you know, one month out of the quarter and let students engage in book clubs. Or maybe you do book clubs seasonally, and when you’re celebrating a holiday, you bring in some book clubs, or maybe you do book clubs, you know one week out of the month, however it works.

You don’t always have to have book clubs running. You could also save them for a second semester or you could save them for me for testing, or you could use them at the start of the year whenever you want to incorporate them. The important thing is not necessarily how often you have them, but the fact that you were actually giving your students the opportunity to engage in them. So how often should you have them really just depends on how often do you want to have them.

And then another question that teachers ask a lot is, do I have to read the book before my students? And I know for the longest time, this prevented me from getting my students in book clubs, because I felt like I had to read every single book for my students. And I guess my question for you is, do you read every single book that your students read independently before they read it? Probably not.

Now, ideally, if you’re going to assign your students a book, you would have some familiarity with it. And I know most books in upper elementary are pretty user friendly, if you will. But of course, there are some books that maybe they have inappropriate content or something that’s just slightly too mature for that students. So just make sure you have an awareness of the book, whether it’s reading a review, or double checking, you know, just what the internet has to say about it.

Or you know, what teachers have said in the past, but don’t feel like you have to read every single book before your students do. Your students can still have a meaningful discussion about a text, even if you have never read it. And to be honest, sometimes I think it’s better if you haven’t read the book, because that just means that students have more of the ownership of being able to read and discuss the book because you’re not there to step in and help them.

And then the last question that I get teachers is asking, should I assign roles for each student in the book club? A lot of times, you’ll see things like, you know, teachers do book clubs, and they teach their students to be the discussion, the director, the summarizer, the note taker, the word wizard, whatever those roles are. And, again, the answer is if that works for you use them.

And if you’re like, you know what, that’s not really my style of teaching, then don’t, you can have successful book clubs, both when you assign roles, and both without the important thing is not if there are roles. But if you are choosing to use roles so that students know the very clear expectation for what their role is that they understand when the roles change, and they know how to fulfill the duties of each assigned role in the book club.

And if you aren’t using roles that students know how to engage everybody in a discussion that they know how to make sure everybody’s participating that they know what the expectations are. So whether you use roles or not, is really up to you. And it just comes down to your preference. And again, the most important thing is not if there is a role, it is giving your students a chance to engage in this very authentic reading experience.

So hopefully, some of these tips are helpful. Hopefully, you’re feeling a little bit more empowered about setting up book clubs in such a way to where students can be independent and confident when it comes to having a discussion about a shared text with their classmates. And trust me, I know it can be really scary to release some of that control. But I said this before you work really hard as a teacher.

And the more times that you can sort of step back and force your students to do the heavy lifting and the hard work, the better. It’s going to be not only for you, because you have less things to plan, but it’s going to be more engaging for your students. So trust your students to be independent when it comes to facilitating book clubs.

And if you have any other topics that you would like to hear me talk about on this podcast, don’t hesitate to reach out to me I have so much fun planning each and every episode with you guys in mind. And I would love to put an episode together that would be very specific to the needs of your students. So reach out to me on Instagram or send me an email. And don’t forget to check the show notes for a couple of links that will help you get started with book clubs.