Book+Clubs

Professional Book Club Tool Kit!

Welcome to the book club toolkit! This kit is designed to help motivated educators and parents form book clubs. Book clubs often form because there is a question that people have, or a topic that a small group of people would like to learn more about.

Facilitator’s Responsibilities After gathering a group of like-minded individuals, peruse the book list in order to choose a book your group would like to study. After choosing a book, you can use surveymonkey.com in order to create a schedule or determine specific interests. Book club participants can choose to set a schedule that will be most convenient for the members and conducive to the topic being studied. Meetings can be in person or on discussion boards. This is something that can be determined by the participants.

Preparing for Study Sessions As a facilitator it is vital to keep the participants engaged and energized. It’s important to not simply quiz each other, but to facilitate deep and meaningful discussion that can be applied in the real world. After all, that is the entire purpose of participating in a book study. In the classroom, we use Bloom’s Taxonomy question stems. It would be meaningful for book club participants to base their questions and conversations on these question stems as well. 

Celebration Time It is absolutely imperative that successes are celebrated during the book study and at the end of the book study! It is important to honor the significant accomplishment studying a book in order to enhance understanding and impact the work we are doing with children. The knowledge acquired deserves to be recognized and celebrated in a very meaningful way!

Suggested Book Club Titles: __Great Literacy Reads __ //The Art of Teaching Writing// by Lucy Calkins //The Art of Teaching Reading// by Lucy Calkins <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">//Pathways to the Common Core// by Lucy Calkins <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">//Growing Readers// by Kathy Collins

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">__Behavior & Management__ <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">//Conscious Discipline// by Dr. Becky Bailey <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">//Hear Our Cry: Boys in Crisis// by Paul D. Slocumb <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">//Odd Girl Out// by Rachel Simmons

__<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">General Education __ <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">//Teaching to Transgress// by Bell Hooks <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">//The End of Education// by Neil Postman <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">//The Death and Life of the American School System// by Diane Ravitch <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">//Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire// by Rafe Esquith <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">//No More Molasses Classes// by Ron Clark

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Suggested Articles on Book Clubs <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">