We are providing the opportunity for students to sign up for the 2025 summer book clubs NOW, as we were full by March of 2024. Due to personalized feedback and discussion groups, we limit these clubs to 8 children.

 These clubs will begin July 8th and end August 12th of 2025. The book clubs will be held virtually and meet via Zoom once a week on Tuesday afternoon at 2pm CST. The goal will be for students to get together and discuss the pieces of literature in an open and respectful space. The cost will be $40 per student to join a book club. Explore below to find out what books will be discussed next summer! 

Week 1: Introductions and the setting of individual and group reading goals

Week 2-4: Book discussion and weekly differentiated tasks (based on personalized next steps in learning).

Week 5: Final discussion and the sharing of final projects

Questions you may have

Are audiobooks okay?

Absolutely! Any way that is best for your learner to access the literature is fine by me. The goals of the books clubs is not necessarily to help your student get better at reading itself, but to build an appreciation and love of books in general. If you do have any wonders about helping your child with phonics and reading better please reach out to me at: kitzerow97@gmail.com.

What will the book club meetings look like?

Each book club will meeting via Zoom for an hour. Each book club will be facilitated by the STRETCh instructors Ashley Kitzerow and Heidi Williams. While there may be a few specific questions that are asked to start each meeting, the facilitators will have differentiated and inquiry based goals. This means that for the large majority of the time, the readers will be choosing what to talk about. An example of a guiding question at each grade level might be:

Elementary: What did _____ do to solve the problem?

  What was your favorite part of the book? Why?

                                    Was there ever a time you also ___________?

Middle & School: Who was your favorite character from this chapter? Why?

    What do you think about character's choices in this chapter?

These questions are for one goal: to get the readers talking about the book. While schools do very well at talking about themes, metaphors, allegories, plot, etc., there is one thing they don't teach readers how do to.. have open eneded discussion and just talk about the book to talk about it. While we, as the facilitators, are there to explain terminology, clear up any confusions about the plot, etc., we don't want these book clubs to be readers answering question after question. 

The second goal for the facilitators will be to hold the readers accountable for justifying their thoughts/ideas with evidence from the books. We won't have students simply stop at saying "I think ______.", but will push them to explain why and be able to point back to something from the book to support their claim. 

How many students per book club?

There will be a maximum of 8 students for each book club.