Book Clubs

The success of our book clubs at Lamar has been noted in the district. The students in my clubs are asked constantly for reading suggestions by their peers. Below is a more detailed description of each of the different clubs at Lamar. Check out the bulletin board in the 7^th grade hallway for titles we’ll be reading and signs about meeting dates. Meetings also get advertised on the morning broadcast, my Blackboard class, and on the website.

R.E.A.D. Book Club (Read Everything And Discuss)

This is my longest standing and most dedicated group. This club is open to all Lamar students, male and female. We have our meetings once every three weeks. The reading selections alternate between novels and graphic novels. This club has had the privilege the past two years of being able to communicate with some of the authors they are reading. Meetings consist of discussions, arguments, surveys, game shows and writing, among other activities. Membership usually maxes out at 25, and the meetings average about 15 students.

Guys Read Book Club

This club is a place for sixth grade boys to come and be themselves, while discovering hidden treasures in books. The two sixth grade reading teachers help me sponsor this group of active boys. We were extremely lucky to form a partnership with the public library specifically for the benefit of these boys. Debbie Vaden of IPL is very knowledgeable in running programs to interest tween boys, and her ideas worked great for us this year. She even recruited a young male library employee to come and help us run the meetings and to serve as a positive role model for these readers. Membership was also about 25 boys but the average meeting was about 12 boys. After co-writing an application, we received a grant to buy additional books for the public library to use in support of this program. We are very excited about some of the fiction and non-fiction titles we purchased already to use for this upcoming year with our new group of boys.

Bilingual Book Club

This book club was a result of a visit by author Rene Saldana, who was promoting this idea as a way of encouraging literacy for the whole family. In the beginning, we invited the students and their parents to attend, and a few parents did. Their attendance dropped off towards the end of the year, but the students kept coming. Meetings began as discussions centered around study guide questions, but this unique group of students always found a way to make every meeting a fiesta. Books are available to the students in English or in Spanish. One planned adaptation for this next year is to read books that are not only available in English and Spanish, but also have been made into movies. This should help these students as they are acclimated into our culture, as well as our language. Meeting frequency varies.

African American Book Club

New for this year, we will be starting a club of African American students reading literature centered around characters they can relate to. We have two very special teachers to serve as club sponsors, and a list of novel selections to get us started. From my experience, that and the students are all you need to get started.