Running head: RAISING THE BAR BOOK CLUBTAKING IT TO THE MAX

Raising the Bar Book ClubTake it to the Max!

Tina M. Schumacher
University of Nebraska, Kearney

Abstract

RAISING THE BAR BOOK CLUBTAKE IT TO THE MAX!

Encouraging an expansion of mind-power through reading is the goal of the

Raising the Bar Book ClubTaking it to the Max at St. Francis Catholic
Schools in Humphrey, Nebraska. Many students in upper elementary
acquire an aversion for reading and Tina Schumacher, junior high English
teacher and soon to be media specialist, wants to do something about it. It
is her hope that through the book club, student participants will gain a new
understanding of the written word, not as punishment but pleasure. She also
hopes to encourage students to develop positive relationships with their
peers and the adult professionals around them along with a penchant for
critical thinking that will last for a lifetime.

RAISING THE BAR BOOK CLUBTAKE IT TO THE MAX!

The Onset of Thought

When I was attending Wayne State College for my B.A. in English
Education, I took a class called Critical Approaches to Literature with a
notoriously tough professor, Dr. Katherine Butler. I participated in class
discussion, but I was often told I was wrong. At midterm, we had a paper to
write, a critique of a specific piece of literature. Due to her lack of impress
with me during class discussion, I was a little nervous. I got an A+ on my
paperliterally that is what she wrotea great big A+ in red. Then, for a
full, hand-written page, she explained the many ways she disagreed with my
assessmentbut she gave me an A+ for my well-thought, well-reasoned,
well-written argument. I learned from her on that day that a student doesnt
have to think what the teacher thinks to be learning. A student simply has to
think.
I am a firm believer that reading, and reading a lot, from many
different genres leads to stronger thinking skills by creating connections
between synapses in the brain. Reading is, in fact, strength-training for the
brain and this is the origin from which my motivational strategy stems.
The Action PlanA Work in Progress
Name:
Logo:

Raising the Bar Book ClubTake it to the Max!

Max, a weight-lifting brain dressed in exercise shorts, athletic

shoes, and a sweatband is the book club mascot. Hes raising the bar
over his head, but on the ends of the bar, rather than weights, are
books. (Ive already drawn him and hes pretty darn cute!)

RAISING THE BAR BOOK CLUBTAKE IT TO THE MAX!

Schedule: Bi-monthly meetings during access time, a 20 minute space in

the day set aside for
meetings and silent study. The first monthly meeting would be for book
selection. The
second monthly meeting would be for book discussion or presentation,
depending on the number of members in the book club. Students
would not be required to be in the club each month. They could pick
and choose the books/topics they are interested in joining.
Format: This would change from month to month, as I am willing to test the
waters to see what
works best for those involved. It might depend on how many people
show up to take
part. If we have a very small group, we can all be one group. If we
have a larger amount one month, we might separate into small groups,
each selecting their own topic. At the beginning, I believe it will be a
one group project, and the books will focus on genre. The students will
then get a say in what we do down the road and I will put ownership
into their hands, perhaps by creating a book club board.
Motivation: At St. Francis, we have a wide range of ages of students because
it is a K-12 school.
I want to catch them young and encourage lifetime reading, so Im
looking at starting

RAISING THE BAR BOOK CLUBTAKE IT TO THE MAX!

with 7th and 8th grades and then moving up, and perhaps down, from
there. Acceptance is a huge motivator for middle-school students. The
atmosphere of the book club will be one of acceptanceof
personalities and exchange of ideas.
Incentives: Incentives would not be earnedthey would simply be a
part of the club, in the words of American Express, Membership has
its privileges. Since our name is Raising the Bar Book Club, I can
easily see us munching on candy bars, ice cream bars, or cookie bars
during our club meetings. We could go to the movie theater when
opportunity arises to attend a movie (based on a book we read), and
since we have a dress code at our school wearing the book club t-shirt
(with Max, the bar-raising brain, on the front) to school the day of a
book club meeting would be an added plus for the kids. I also like two
ideas suggested by Suzanne Hall (2009): taking a book club field trip
(directly related to a book we read) and having a book club school
sleepover.
Goals and Professional Support for School Book Clubs
I know from experience that many of my seventh grade students enter
junior high with a strong distaste for reading. From what I can tell, this
comes mostly from the accelerated reader requirements in fourth sixth
grades; for whatever reason, the students resent taking the AR test over
each book as well as reading levels and point goals. They also have a
general distaste for reading worksheets from their reading classes. This

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applies more often to the poor readers, who through the AR program seem to
become the reluctant readers. By the time they get to junior high, they are
tired reading requirements and I meet with entire groups of students asking,
Why do we have to read? and statements like, This class is a waste of
time. I work hard to turn this attitude into gratitude for the printed word,
but I am not always successful.
My goal is that book clubs would promote a positive energy
throughout the school regarding readingespecially in the upper elementary
and junior high gradesthat will translate into a life-long desire to read. A
study on the effect of book clubs on the reading attitudes of middle school
students was done by Jeff Wittingham, Ph.D. and Stephanie Huffman, Ed.D.
The authors came to some very positive conclusions about the inclusion of
book clubs in a school setting. Book clubs that emphasize reading as an
experience rather than an academic task can attract students, even
reluctant ones, to participate because they view the club as a social event
rather than the typical demands of daily classroom assignments (Mitchell
and Harris as cited in Wittingham and Huffman, 2009.) I am certain that
reluctant readers do not see reading as an experience; they see it as a chore
and they limit themselves to the number of pages they have to read a
night to meet their goal. I want reluctant readers to make a transformation
into ravenous readersreaders who do not read only until they can stop, but
stop reading only when they are finished.

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I am making some positive changes already in my junior high
classroom. One specific example of this is a book we read together titled
Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror written by Steve Alten. This book is about a
prehistoric shark, the megalodon, which has survived in the deepest waters
of the ocean, the Marianas Trench. It escapes from the depths to terrorize
mankind and the search and destroy mission is on. From the first chapter,
where a battle takes place between a tyrannosaurus rex and a megalodon,
they are hooked. I read aloud daily, then I simply tell students how far they
should read to participate in class discussion the next day. I put no
requirements or limitations on them. When I ask for comments on the book
in class, numerous hands go up and the kids fight to tell me first what they
know. I often have to wait for sidebar conversations to end before we can
have whole class discussion. The students are excited to share. Cool. Many
are 50 or more pages ahead, and dont want to put the book down. Others
are behind, but we catch them up in class discussion and they can simply
begin on the page where we leave off with discussion or they can go back
and read what weve discussed. During the time I give students to read in
class, they are silent and I notice most finish the 20+ pages I assign and
there are about five who read beyond the assigned pages every day.
I have created PowerPoint and Prezi presentations that include video
and still shots from National Geographic of the deepest parts of the ocean
and the creatures that live there; they also contain whimsical clips from The
Little Mermaid and Finding Nemo and we point out animated creatures that

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weve seen in the documentary footage. The students have also created
presentations on vocabulary from the book and we review vocabulary on a
daily basis. If students have questions, either they or I find the answers and
present them in class. We are taken into an entirely different world as these
students live in the middle of the United States and are land-locked in their
view of the world around them. These ideas I can easily include in a book
clubthe point is to encourage thinking, questioning, and exploration first
through literature and then beyond. "Good exchanges and discussions help
build feelings of competency, acceptance, and motivation that provide an
entry point for less able readers to the literate world" (Rollar and Beed as
cited in Wittingham and Huffman, 2009).
Collaboration
The idea of inviting faculty and staff at the school to join in the book
club comes from an article titled Book Haters No More published in
Educational Leadership (Meskinis, et. al., Oct. 2010). They wanted to create
readers so they tapped into the social nature of teenagers by forming book
clubs (p. 64). They also invited only the most reluctant readers to join the
clubs as they were working in a school with a very large population (1,800
students). I am working with a total population of about 220 students in
grades K 12, so I need not hand select students, rather, all students will be
welcome to opt in, although I will encourage the more reluctant readers to
join. Also, Meskenis and her cohorts invited teachers, coaches, and
paraprofessionals to join as well. They then put struggling readers and

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adults together in small groups of four to five students and two adults and
the groups formed around the student book choices (p. 64 - 65).
I really like the idea of including the adults in the school as they are
terrific leaders for the students. I already informed the faculty and staff, the
principal, and the school president of my plan to start a book club and invited
them to join. I had a good response from the faculty, with seven definite
yesses. After receiving the invite, one teacher, who teaches a class called
careers and leadership, stopped in to tell me about her recent experience
with her students in that class. At the beginning of the quarter, she
instructed them to all select a book to read since leaders read and the
final day of the quarter, they would spend all of class time sharing and
discussing their books. She was excited at how eager the students were in
discussion the books. She also marveled at the quality of the book choices.
She shared this with me because she wanted to encourage the book club as
this experience showed her there was a place for it in our school, and I
couldnt agree more wholeheartedly.
Then, just last week, the president of our school, Father John, stopped
by my room and asked me what book we would be reading. He seemed
disappointed when I told him the club wouldnt start until second semester.
He is anxious to get started, and so am I as I know this will give the adults
and students in the school an opportunity to better know one another, on a
different level.

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I know that I can count on the current librarian and the rest of the staff
to support a book club. If they cannot attend, I know they will be happy to
advertise it throughout the school. I also know that they will allow me time
in their classes to talk it up if necessary to get things started. I plan to
make some selections for reading based on what is being studied or will be
studied in various classes, especially social studies, science, geography, and
religion. We could easily bring in teachers who are experts in specific areas
to give a presentation or perhaps simply answer questions during book club,
if that teacher is not already a member. Depending on the number of
students in a class who join the book club, I could also request that teachers
allow students time to read in class or to visit with me in the library (when I
am the media specialist) during any free time they might have.
Currently, I have an access class of my own, which means I am
responsible during access time for a group of 10 20 students. In order to
conduct a book club, I will need to find a stand-in to stay with my access
class while I am with those who join the book club. When I become the
schools media specialist, I will no longer have an access group and I could
run several different book clubs on different days of the week for different
age levels. I want to catch them while they are young, get them reading,
sharing ideas, and loving it as early as possible, and encourage them to be
readers for a lifetime. I have absolutely no doubt that the more our students
read the higher their reading comprehension and vocabulary scores will rise,
but more important than that, our kids will have greater opportunities for

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success as they strengthen their brains through raising the bar on their
reading.
Technology ComponentMoving from Conventional to Contemporary
Students today need to be technologically savvy. The library media
center is a place that should cater to technology, and currently, the library at
St. Francis is behind, but the technology gurus are always ready to hook us
up. It is upon these people that I will depend to develop this part of my
plan.
Link Up: I am planning to add a library link to our Sycamore Education
Systems homepage. On
the library page, I will be able to post news, reviews, and
recommendations. I will also
be able to post a calendar of upcoming events for all interested
parties. This is one way I can promote the book club. I have spoken to
the necessary specialists and have already begun working toward this
goal.
Library Web Page: Once I get the library link on Sycamore, I plan to set up a
library website on
which the book club participants can respond to questions about the
reading and pose
questions of their own. We will have a library blog available only to
book club participants. This website will be a source of information for
all library patrons. I will eventually link up our library catalog and our

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electronic resources. I have spoken to the parish webmaster and he is

ready and willing to work with me on creating a web page for the
library.
Intrinsic Motivation
In the article, Fostering the Curiosity Spark (Crow, 2010, pg. 50),
Intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation is all about being the origin or the
pawn. Speaking from personal experience, I dont appreciate being told
what to do any more than most pre-teen or teenage students who are
searching for autonomy. Having the choice of whether or not to join a book
club, even if they do so because all their friends are doing it, makes the
young person feel he or she has a little bit more control of a world that much
of the time seems out of control with all the changes taking place physically,
hormonally, mentally, and socially in their lives. Rather than read to achieve
an end product, such as an A or completing a point goal, the student can
read because he wants to read or, in other words, reading because a part
of whom the student is, not one more item to cross off on a mundane list of
things to do. Through the book club, I want students to realize, just as I did
with Dr. Butler, they can think for themselves, share their thoughts with
others, and their thoughts have merit, even if others might not have come to
the same conclusions.
Raising the Bar as a Fortification for Reading Instruction
The American Association of School Librarians Position Statement for School
Librarians states, School librarians take a leadership role in organizing and

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promoting literacy projects and events that engage learners and motivate
them to become lifelong readers (AASL). The Raising the Bar Book Club
speaks directly to this; it is a literacy project. Through engagement in the
book club, students and adults will have the opportunity to create
relationships with literature and each other, to strengthen their skills as
readers, thinkers, and life-long learners.

The AASL, also encourages

collaboration among librarians and classroom teachers, and if these groups

of people can come together in a social setting, as a book club, they will
have the opportunity to develop relationships with one another based on
common interest and respect. Through these connections, they will then be
more apt to trust one another in classroom collaboration, as teachers are
sometimes unwilling to share their student time with anyone else. I see
the book club as a win-win-win situation for the library media specialist, the
students, and the teachers, and I know the triangle could grow exponentially
through the years as more grade levels are included, but this process will
begin where I know I have the most control and influence (junior high) and
branch out from there.

References
American Association of School Librarians. (2011). Position statement on the
school librarians

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role in reading. Retrieved from

http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/aasl/aaslissues/positionstatements/sl
roleinreading.pdf
Crow, S. (2009). Fostering the curiosity spark. School Library Monthly, 26(5),
50 - 52.
Hall, S. (2007). How I learned to run a really popular book club (and what I
learned about its
effect on students reading skills and attitude. Teacher Librarian,
35(1), 32-36.
Miskinis, E., Freyberger, C., and Vetter, K. (2010). Book haters no more.
Educational Leadership,
68(2), 64-65
Wittingham, J.L., Ph.D., Huffman, S., Ed.D. (2009). The effects of book clubs
on the reading
attitudes of middle school students. Reading Improvement, 46(3), 130136.