Digital Book Club Kit

Most of the work to prepare for the book club meeting can be done in the week before groups meet. Here are some things to consider.

Book Club Groups

We’ve had the most success with groups between 5 and 10 students. It's good to mix up students' typical class groupings so that the book club meeting feels less like "school".

Inevitably, some students will have read the book, some will have merely started it and others won't have read past the first page. All of these students can benefit from participating in the book club meeting! When making groups, try to evenly distribute students that are likely to be at these various points in their reading  throughout the groups.

Book clubs tend to be most successful with at least two adult participants (who have read the book!), but the adult to student ratio can be as high as 1:1, as long as the adults in the room are able to step back and elevate student voices. Book clubs are a unique opportunity for students to have a discussion on an equal playing field with adults.

It is extremely important that while teachers maintain their role as classroom managers, they do not control the discussion as they might in a traditional classroom setting. They may gently guide the discussion at times, but students need to feel ownership over the experience.

Book Club Meeting Agenda

The agenda for the book club meeting does not need to be complicated. Generally, our book clubs run a class period (between 50 minutes and an hour) and it's always good to leave participants wanting more.

Usually a book club agenda consists of 4 elements:

• A warm-up game
• Snacks
• Discussion
• Wrap up

Games

A warm up game helps relax everyone, helps the group gel and refreshes everyone's memory of the book. Here are some games we've played at past book clubs:

• The Alphabet Game
  

• Working around the room, have each member name a character, event, place, or object from the book—the first letter of which starts with A, the next with B, the next C, and so forth through the alphabet. Anyone who can’t come up with a word is out. Play until you run out of letters or people.

  
  
• Roll and Retell
  
• Working around the room, have each member roll a 6 sided die and answer the corresponding question on the laminated sheet.

• Who said it?
  
• A good game for books with lots of important characters. Pull out a significant quote from each of the major characters and list them all on sheet of paper. Print two copies of this sheet for each group. Keep one copy intact as a master. Cut out the quotes and discard the character names from the second copy. Pass out a quote to each person. Have them identify the character from the book and explain WHY they thought that person said it.

• Put it in order
  
• To Prepare the Game: Make 2 copies of the "plot point strips" (below) for each discussion group. Cut them into strips, being careful not to mix up the sets. Paper clip them or put them in an envelope.
• How to Play: In your book club kit, you will find two sets of slips with events from the book on them. Divide the group in half (if your group is really small or struggling, you can choose to keep them all together). Have the two groups race to see which one can put the slips in order first. Remember, the first group to put the slips in order might not get them all correct, so keep going until both groups are done. 

  Note: The discussion around the plot points is much more important than getting it right!

Some of these games come from LitLovers. Their website has additional games for book clubs that we haven't tried yet.

Snacks

Snacks help to make the book club meeting feel like a special event. Some ways to approach snacks at a book club:

• Cheap and Tasty
• Cheap crowd-pleasing snacks like chips and cookies can be purchased at Costco or other big-box stores. Powdered lemonade or Kool-Aid costs next to nothing and can be mixed up for large groups.
• Classy and Grown Up
• Some student groups love attention to detail. A tablecloth, some cupcakes and a selection of herbal teas can make a book club meeting feel really special.
• 
• Thematic Snacks
• Assembling snacks that fit the themes and imagery of the book can be a lot of work, but students will be blown away. Retha Kraay (rkraay@district287.org) put together the following spectacular spreads of thematic snacks for book clubs at Headway South
• The Living: Thematic Snacks
• I Am Number Four: Thematic Snacks
• 
  

Discussion Questions

In a perfect world, all of the questions discussed during a book club meeting would be generated by the participants. In reality, groups usually need some prepared questions to help them keep the conversation moving. We generally prepare about half a dozen questions for each group. If possible, we like to adapt them from the discussion guide provided by the publisher or author, if there is one. This serves two purposes. It saves time, but more importantly, it prevents the teacher’s thoughts and feelings about the book from significantly coloring the conversation. We then print these discussion questions in 3x5 index card format so that they can be shuffled in with questions written by the participants and used to keep the conversation moving. If the questions written by participants are rich enough, using those over the teacher generated questions will lead to a much more successful book club. While sometimes our teacher instincts tell us that we need to “cover” all prepared questions, the community driven nature of a book club is more important.

Physical Kits

For the day of the book club meeting, create one physical book club kit for each discussion group. This way, you can ensure that each group gets all of the supplies they need. The kit should contain:

• Printed copy of the book club agenda
  
• Copy of the book club book
• Snacks
  
• Paper cups and napkins
• Any materials needed for games
  
• Index cards with prepared discussion questions printed on them
  
• Blank index cards (for participants to write their questions on)
  
• Writing utensils