My 6th Grade Book Club

Last year, I had some 5th grade girls approach me about forming a book club that would meet during their lunch hour.  I was ecstatic that they wanted to read for fun in addition to the work that they were doing in their classrooms.  We ended up reading some really good books including Kate Messner's Sugar & Ice and some of The Shadow Children series books by Margaret Peterson Haddix.

With this year came a change for those students:  middle school!  They moved upstairs in our school building and started having new classes, new teachers, and involvement in extra curriculars that weren't available to them last year.  I never said anything to the girls about continuing on with our book club now that they were in middle school because I know things change and they were now busier than they have ever been.

Well, it seems they hadn't forgotten about our club!  A few weeks before Christmas Break, two of the students approached me and asked if we could start our book club up again.  Imagine my excitement!  They told me that they missed reading books together and talking about them.  I did, too, and I told the girls that.  We set up a meeting during their lunch and I had 9 girls interested in being in the club.  That is the perfect number for a group like this!  We talked about when they'd like to meet, books they like to read and fun things like that.

The girls decided on reading Esperanza Rising for their first book and they are really enjoying it.  We had a book club meeting yesterday and it was so interesting to get their take on Esperanza and her mother's journey to California after leaving Mexico.  While the girls don't always share the same view on the books, they are willing to listen to each other and agree to disagree.  It's fun to see them interact this way.

We're almost finished with our book, so it will be interesting to see what book the girls want to read next.  No matter their choice, I know for sure that we'll have fun reading it!