About Reading Activities, Book Clubs, and Output Gathering

The countries will visit each other and have the opportunity to apply different interactive

activities about the book. After the gathering phase is completed, the students will be presented

with a “warm-up” activity that is about the book. The outputs that are gained from the

individuals will have their background information, interest, and expectations. It is important to

note that different opinions of the students are gathered. So, the participants have the chance to

find themselves in the accumulation of different thoughts and ideas. The application of this

stage emphasizes the importance of giving value to the participants’ own opinions. After this

stage, the students move on to the stage called “while reading”. This process includes what they

are asked to do in the process of reading. The activities that are done in this stage consist of

questions that are related to the characters, plot, vocabulary, and so on. This stage determines

whether the participants grasp the content, ideas, characters, and more that the book offers to

them. The “post-reading” activity includes activities that highly prioritize the individuals’

thoughts, opinions, and ideas after they are done with the process of reading the book. So, the

comments that are added by the students have the purpose of differentiating what the book

includes.

After successfully completing these stages and the break given in a reasonable time, the

students are moved on to the book club activity. The activity consists of four sections that are

called “summarizer”, “scene master”, “culture connector”, and “predictor”. In the first stage,

the students are asked to share their own summary of the book that sounds important, striking,

and surprising for them. So, the activity tries to find out if the students’ understanding of the

book is acceptable. As for the second stage, students have the opportunity to present the scenes

or quotes that they found impressive. As has been mentioned many times, students’ own

thoughts and ideas are valued. When it comes to the third stage, the students from different

countries try to reveal the relationship, similar or different aspects of the book with their own

culture. This stage allows students to increase their cultural awareness through the book they

are presented with. As for the final stage which is called “predictor”, students’ own ideas and

thoughts about the chain of events that may happen or the behaviors that the characters in the

books are shared.