Barnes and Noble Nook Book Club- looking for ideas

My school got a grant to hold an afterschool book club for grades 5-8 students who are absent from school a lot. The 15 selected students will receive a Barnes and Noble 3G Wifi Nook and a collection of books which they will use in the club and be able to keep as their own permanently if they attend each session of an afterschool book club. That's where I come in, as the facilitator of the book club. We will meet for six hours after school every other week, two hours a day for three consecutive days, and I'm thinking that's too much.
Can anyone give me some really exciting ideas of things to do for six hours with a variety of students, boys and girls? I don't want to make it seem like just more school, but the grant proposal has the students doing lit groups, comprehension questions and keeping a journal.
Here are some other things I can think of doing:

Read quietly
Read aloud
Share interesting things that we found we could do with the Nook
Create something to share with the school- but what?

Tags: english, middle

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Permalink Reply by Lauren Dowd on October 5, 2010 at 8:46pm

I don't know if you're able to integrate any other technologies, but you might set up a blog with some discussion questions and allow students to answer the questions and comment on the answers of their groupmates.

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Permalink Reply by Sjoukje Brown on October 5, 2011 at 4:56pm

Peer editing would also be a great way to spend time. I work with my classes on specific skills, and review rubrics with them prior to assignments. With direction in what to look for and in constructive criticism, kids can be very valuable as "assistant teachers" with other kids. I tell them to start out commenting on what they like, then look at specific skills (i.e. use of imagery, use of action verbs, etc.) and make suggestions as to improvements. The writer then makes revisions for a better end product. The best part is that kids learn to recognize mistakes in their own writing by taking a critical view of others', and their writing inevitably improves as well.

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Permalink Reply by Sjoukje Brown on October 5, 2011 at 4:57pm

Through whom did you get the grant? I'd love to look into this. :)
Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Barbara Wright on October 8, 2011 at 8:46pm

The grant was through our county, a program to keep students who are frequently delinquent in school. Unfortunately, the county does not have the funding this year, but it was fun last year.

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Permalink Reply by Andrea McKichan on October 9, 2011 at 8:50am

You could look into integrating some digital storytelling into the lessons. I really like storybird.com. I would have the students create a storybird using the characters from their books. This could help them develop point of view while doing a character study. Another thing you could do is have them create digital puzzles that use vocabulary words from their books. Discovery Education has a puzzlemaker. Good luck!

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Permalink Reply by Brianna Strahler on October 10, 2011 at 4:51am

I'm sponsoring a book club for my junior high school this year. Some of the ideas we are considering are:

Setting up a blog for book discussion (maybe some of your hours can count for this)
Holding a book drive for some of our elementary schools who will not be able to purchase books due to budget cuts
Collaborating with our public library for an after school event
Allowing students to come to our library during their lunch to eat lunch and discuss what they're reading (we will do this about once a month)
Reading to students in elementary school

Hope this helps and good luck!