First Grade Book Club

The Library is excited to announce 1st grade book club! A fantastic group of ten first graders, recommended by their teachers, come to the library twice a week to discuss our books. I'm amazed at how insightful these students are about their reading and how deep their connections, predictions, inferences, and observations are! Our first reading choice was Bink & Gollie by Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee. We zoomed through our first title, and many of the participants already put the newly released sequel on hold. We loved comparing our two protagonists, learned new words like "bonanza" and "compromise" and discussed the choice of spot color in Tony Fucile.

Now, we've split into two groups, according to which book we were interested in, and are reading either Like Pickle Juice on a Cookie by Julie Sternberg and Ivy + Bean by Annie Barrows. We watched a short book trailer online to give us a preview of the books. We've got our special supplies ready- pencils, notebooks, sticky notes, and bookmarks to remind us of how we can categorize our thinking.

We meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and students read their books between meetings, showing their thinking so they'll remember what they want to say when we meet next to talk about our books. Groups will change flexibly depending on what titles students are interested in reading. These ten students are deepening their understanding of literature, and their responses to it. Great job, first graders, and thank you to the first grade team for helping me help their students in the most meangingful way possible!