Mission: Student Led Summer Book Club

Back in April, Misti Bell (my partner SLMS) and I decided to encourage two students to lead our final book club for 2013-2014. They chose the novel, Divergent by Veronica Roth.
They came to me with ideas and activities for each of the meetings. I gave input as needed and served as a facilitator. We had nearly 20 participants (including a teacher)! One of the meetings was even on webcam (via Google Hangouts) with another school in Northwest Arkansas (Lakeside Junior High in Springdale). There is a blog entry on that session here!

Due to the success of the student led sessions, I decided to try a summer book club on the novel Insurgent (continuing the Divergent series). I had a student offer to take the lead. Together we brainstormed ideas for the club and decided to have three meetings.

We had five students participate during the month of July. The first two meetings were mostly discussions led by our student leader. We also experimented with Twitter as a way to have mini discussions and comments among all of us while off campus. I'll write an entry on this successful initial use of Twitter (in a book club format) later!

Mr. John Terry demonstrating the art of Karate to summer book club students. (They loved it!)

We had a martial arts instructor (Mr. John Terry- pictured above) visit the final club meeting to share some basic self defense techniques. We thought this would help the club members better connect with the characters (in the Dauntless faction) of the series since they train to be fighters. This was a suggestion by our lead student! The kids enjoyed it so much they can't wait to start an Allegiant book club (to complete the trilogy) when school starts.

Misti and I were excited that five students made their way to the library media center during the summer. We think the students were excited because one of them was in charge of the sessions. We can't wait to see how this concept evolves in the 2014-2015 school year!

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