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My classes will use these high interest books for book clubs. They will self-select a book that interests and challenges them and join in a group with the others who selected the same book. They will be given bookmarks and the dates of each book club in order to plan their reading. The Common Core standards state that "through wide and deep reading of literature and literary nonfiction of steadily increasing sophistication, students gain a reservoir of literary and cultural knowledge, references, and images." This reservoir will confer upon the "the ability to evaluate intricate arguments; and the capacity to surmount the challenges posed by complex texts. " This standard cannot be achieved unless students are readers. My project seeks to hook them with engaging books and start them on the way to being life-long readers. They will read the books at home and in class, and once a week we will have "book clubs" where they will discuss their books. The discussion will center around questions provided by the teacher. They range from informal, such as 'how do you like a character' to more formal, text based questions, such as 'what is the effect of the extendend metaphor'. Because the books interest them and because their groupmates are counting on them to read, the engagement for this assignment is sky high. Because the engagement and fun level is high, students see that reading is actually fun, and they are much more willing to read at home for "fun" and read their assigned class texts. Additionally, even when students read for fun, their comprehension skills and vocabulary knowledge increase as well. It is the best way to improve a student's performance in English, as evidenced by the standard listed above.
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