Our students are a diverse group of high schoolers living in Clay County, Florida. Our administration and staff promote respect, scholarship, and honor as the standards for our students.
Our student body is approximately 1700 9th-12th graders, with more than half of our students coming from low-income households.
We strive to offer all students a well-rounded education plus opportunities to participate in a variety of clubs and sports on campus.
My Project
For better or worse, high school students love TikTok. One of the best things to come out of this video-based social media platform is a community of users who share book reviews and recommendations. They call it "BookTok," and their hashtag has been booming in popularity over the past year. The rise of BookTok has actually made a noticeable impact on book sales, especially in YA (young adult) titles.
I have chosen two of the more popular and celebrated fantasy series that have been highlighted on BookTok: Sarah J Maas's "A Court of Thorns and Roses" and Leigh Bardugo's "Six of Crows." My intention is to obtain class sets of the first title of each series, along with 3 copies of each of the sequels.
My after-school Book Club (with an average attendance of 25 students) will read the first book as a club, and the sequels will be available to them in our library to read on their own.
I believe this will have a trickle effect throughout the school as Book Club students tell their friends about the books and encourage their friends to read the books as well. Combining the power of friend recommendations with the power of TikTok influence, I hope to grow a new crop of readers by hooking them with these "addictive" stories!
I hope to implement this project all year, starting with the first Book Club meeting we have after the books are acquired. Reading books as a group (or with a friend) provides encouragement for students to keep reading, to analyze as they read, and to further their comprehension skills and vocabulary (related to SIP goal #1). I will measure students' attitudes towards reading for pleasure through a retrospective survey.
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