Friday 7 October 2016

Latest Adventures of the Book Club

One of the activities at our home education group is a book club or rather two book clubs. I run the older group and a friend runs the younger group.

The older group has children from 9 to 12 and includes both voracious and struggling readers.

We have a couple of books for each term which are connected to the term's theme. This term we are studying Europe so the older group are reading Lois Lowry's book, Number the Stars, about Jews in Denmark during the Nazi Occuption. Later in the term, the book is The Good Master.  Both books have some themes of treatment of minority races in Europe before or during the Second World War. I can't say that I selected them for this reason but it is a useful unifying point. 
The younger group have been reading Emil and the Detectives and are due to read Patricia St John's beautiful book, Treasures of the Snow.

A recent highlight for the older group has been being a judging panel for the Royal Society Young People's Book Prize. Voting was completed today ably chaired by one of the children. 

 Being a judging panel meant that we were given six science books. Each child had to read the books and make a judgement about them. 

Being rather mad, I decided that I would work on individualised book recommendations for each child. The children filled in sheets about the genres they like and dislike, and their current reading. Over the summer, I read children's books. This term, I have read children's books and I have almost reached my target of three recommendations for each child. I talk about the recommendations at the rate of one child per meeting, with the whole group present. 

The children also recommend books to one another. Both the child making the recommendation and the one who then reads the book have a small reward.

Plans for the next few months include a visit from the author Douglas Bond, in March 2017. This is open to home educators who do not usually come to the group. If you are interested and can get to London, please let me know.

Whilst I enjoy running a book club,my knowledge of literature is a bit on the limited side. If anyone is in a similar position, I recommend Deconstructing Penguins for some ideas about how to look at literature with children.  If anyone reading this runs a children's book club, I would love to know how it works as new ideas are appreciated and there is much to learn! 


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