Picking Their Own Books For Book Club

My Book Fair is winding down this week.  I LOVE to see the Book Fair come but boy do I LOVE to see it go!  It's a long busy week but I love seeing the students excited about buying books.

I have one book club in each grade 2nd-5th.  Normally I use my Scholastic Dollars to purchase sets of 6 books to read with each book club and I pick the books.

This year I thought I'd let the students suggest the books I should purchase.  I've read blogs about other librarians getting the students involved in what books are purchased for circulation and thought I'd apply the same principal with my book clubs.

It did not go well.

And it was my fault.

I didn't explain well enough.  I didn't give examples.  My only instruction was "find something that you'd like to read for book club."

That was too broad.

Way too broad.

I got all kinds of suggestions like books about rocks.  Rocks people.  Or The Star Wars Handbook Guide.  Ha! Bless their little hearts.

So I've learned my lesson.  I will give better instructions next time.  We'll discuss what kinds of books are better for book club.  There's nothing wrong with a book about rocks!  Just a little hard to have a group discussion on... rocks. The Star Wars Handbook Guide is super fun... but again not a book that's easily discussed.

Next time I'll show them examples.  In my defense though, we have been doing book club since October.  I thought they had a good idea of the kinds of books we had been reading.  But I guess not.  Or maybe they just got excited and started writing down everything that looked fun to them.  Who knows?

Now I did have some good suggestions.  I've pulled a couple of books to buy with my Scholastic Dollars based on their lists.

Lesson learned!