The last two weeks we have hosted 3rd and 4th grade Parent/Student Book clubs as part of a way to promote reading within the family. Our 3rd grade students read the book "Runt" by Marion Dane Bauer and our 4th Graders read the book "Capture the Flag" by Kate Messer. In each case we had originally budgeted for ten copies so that we would have approximately 20 people show up for each group. In both cases we had to order more copies because of the response from parents and students. This was the first time I had done something like this so I was unsure what kind of a response to expect.
Our 3rd graders and their parents really got into the story of Runt and his pack. We talked about things like the roles of each character within the pack, as well as that of Bider, the outsider. Issues about the interaction of humans and wolves was discussed briefly. We shared our thoughts about whether we thought Bider would have made a good leader, and about the relationship between Runt and his father King, tying it back to our own parent and child relationships.
Our 4th grade students enjoyed learning about the original Star Spangled Banner and it's size. This actually raised some questions based on how simply Kate Messner explained it being stolen. Interestingly parts of the story, such as the restoration of the flag were actually based in reality. We shared our favorite characters and moments. Some of our parents even expressed concern that the heroes in the story, all of whom were children, were allowed to roam unsupervised around an airport. Thus we had an interesting discussion regarding the idea that the first rule of any good children's book is to eliminate the parents from a story line. One of our students had even figured out how he would have carried out the crime differently. Most interesting was the discussion regarding the villain of the story and his ambitions. We all agreed that the dog Hammurabi was pretty cool. Luckily I was able to share that there are two other books in this series so I think the kids that came will keep reading.
In both cases I was able to show the parents how I used Destiny Quest, and Follett's Webpath Express to do online research and create citations in regards to the topics of the books. This was a great way to advocate both for paid database sources and citation of sources in a friendly way in which the parents can see what it is their students are learning.
The week we come back from Thanksgiving I will be meeting with the 5th graders and their parents to share about "Sophia's War" by Avi. It is a challenging book due to the context in which the story is set so I am curious to see how they all handled it. Still it fit the 5th grade curriculum and makes history interesting.
I'm also getting ready to send out our letters about our "Guys Read" book Club which will run from the latter part of January to late April.
