Another Monday
Greetings from chilly Brooklyn. As the school year winds down, I like to make life easier for my students and myself. After the long school year of reading groups, homework assignments, test prep and the actual tests. I like to finish off the school year on a high note. What I've done for the past 8 years now is to find a hot YA book and use it as a read aloud book club.
End of Year Book Clubs
After the tests are over, I like to introduce our final novel of the year. It's always a little too hard for the kids but a popular book they know and love. In the past, I have done Twilight, The Hunger Games and Divergent. This year we're reading Cinder, a sci-fi fairy tale about a cyborg Cinderella in a futuristic New Beijing.
I let the kids choose their own groups (4-6 kids in each groups depending on class size) and the games begin. This is a little different than traditional books clubs in that everyone reads, or listens to, the same book. Since the book is more difficult than most of my students could read independently, I also get the audio version. We read along as the CD reads the story aloud to us for about 20-25 minutes a day, and then the kids have a list of book questions that they have 15-20 minutes to discuss and then write a summary of for me to review their classwork. They can choose the direction of where their group goes.
It's always a big hit and I'm looking forward to getting started on a brand new book (for me too!). I'll keep you updated about how it's going.
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