Help me give my students the full boxed set of the Lois Lowry collection that begins with the required 7th grade novel, The Giver, to build their at-home libraries and restore their habits of reading for enjoyment.
My middle school students are hard workers, and they appreciate authenticity. Being a high poverty school, my students have learned to be grateful for small acts of kindness, and they reciprocate those acts with their loyalty. Students come to my school as 6th graders and they stay together (since our middle school is attached to the high school) until they graduate as seniors. This closeness is reflected in the way they support each other through prosperity and adversity.
Our class conversations about reading and writing have shown me that my students once adored books, and they reflect fondly upon their memories of reading for pleasure as young children.
In middle school, the habit of reading for enjoyment withers in many of my students. They get busy socially, and their after school time is divided among many other interests and obligations. They do still hold the memories of their former reading enjoyment close to their hearts. I know this, because they can all write deeply about that one teacher with a great read-aloud voice, their first favorite book, and even the first time a great story brought them to tears. I love these genuine conversations with my middlers.
My Project
I have tossed around the idea of starting a middle school book club for many years, but I have never had the resources to adequately fund it. In order to meaningfully comprehend what we are reading together, it would be critical for my book club members to own their own copies of the books. In 7th grade, The Giver by Lois Lowry is the required novel, but there are three more books in the quartet that my students simply don't have the time or resources to read. My middle school book club would create the means and the momentum to read the full set of books in this series in a high-interest, low-risk environment.
I often tell my students that good readers like to reread their favorite books, and they maintain at-home libraries filled with these books they love reading.
Good readers also interact with the books they own by annotating and entering incidental thought jots in the margins as they read. This is critical for deeper reading. This transactional reading experience would be possible if I could launch a first-of-its-kind, middle school book club with no pressure, no mandatory 10-point quizzes, and no forced membership. The goal of this middle school book club would be to "make reading for enjoyment great again", restoring a love for books that my students often reflect upon from their elementary school years.
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