Book+Club

Book Club Welcome to Book Club! You will be reading a new book once every five weeks with you classmates. It's fun and easy!

Step 1: Find a club! At the beginning of each session, you will be given a topic by the teacher (ie. fiction, biography...). You will then get with a group of AT LEAST four people and select a book to read.

Step 2: Break up the book! From the first day of each new session, you will have about five weeks to read your book and prepare a book talk. On the first day, you need to figure out how each of you will get a hold of a copy of the book, how you will break up the reading (you all need to read the ENTIRE book) and when you will meet (you must meet at least ONE A WEEK- schedule your meeting in your agenda NOW).

Step 3: Make your group official! Once you and your group have decided on your book and broke it up, you need to start a new wiki discussion. Title the discussion: TITLE OF THE BOOK by AUTHOR. In your very first post, provide me with the following details: who is in your group, when your group plans to meet and three sentences explaining why you selected the book that you did.

Step 4: Read your book and attend your meetings! It is your responsibility to read your required readings BEFORE your book club meets. You may find yourself reading aloud A LOT during lunch and after school if you don't attend your meetings prepared. If you do read ahead, don't spoil the ending for the rest of your group.

At you meeting you will need to appoint a meeting leader and recorder for that session. You do not need to select the same two people every time. In fact, you may want to create a schedule or rotation when you break up the book.

Role of the leader: IT IS ESSENTIAL that the leader is up to date with his/her reading! The leader will begin the meeting by asking each group member a knowledge question to recap the story. (ie. you may ask a person why the main character decided to run away or what the main character's grandma's name is). Once everyone has recapped, the leader will start the discussion with a thought provoking question. The rest of the group members are expected to contribute to the conversation and pose more questions. The goal of your meetings is to really get into the book on a deeper level.

Role of the recorder: You will start a new post under your book's discussion at the beginning of the meeting. You will let me know who the leader is, who the recorder is, who is in attendance at the meeting and whether or not they are up to date on their reading. As the discussion progresses, you will record some of the better questions and answers. This will help your group tremendously when you are preparing your book talk.

Step 5: Book Talk! Once your group is done reading the book and has had at least four meetings, you are ready to prepare for your book talk. The talk should be about 5-7 minutes long. In your talk your group will need to: introduce the book, give a brief introduction to the author (other books they have written, life experiences... DON'T READ THE ABOUT THE AUTHOR PAGE) give a short summary of the book (don't give away the ending and don't read the back cover!), focus on a few key things that interested you and introduce your classmates to them (maybe you learned about life in France, WWII, character development, mental illness, ANYTHING!). Your book talk is not a summary of the book! Be sure to come to the talk prepared- let me know if you need a projector and do your printing BEFORE it is your turn to present.

Step 6: Learn something! Listen to other people's book talks. This is not a time for last minute preparations or practicing. Be a good audience- participate and laugh at their jokes!

THEN START AGAIN!!!!!