Book Club and a guest

We had our first "real" book club meeting last week and something exciting happened!  We had a guest, Heidi, join us from a local middle school to lend her expertise to our gathering and to introduce us to some of her favourite middle years fiction books.  She mentioned that there are two over-riding themes that she has noticed middle schoolers being fascinated with:  not fitting in and death.  She suggested several books on those themes that she has found popular among her students.

But the interesting part about having Heidi join us was how she joined us.  It was using BlueJeans videoconferencing.  So, Heidi became part of our round table and it worked really well.  So well, in fact, that I have a new plan for the book club:  I am going to invite other middle school language arts teachers to join us this way so that we can access the experience of people already working in the field.

Progress!

The above was written several days ago and there has been a new and exciting development to share.  A friend of mine, who also happens to be a masterful middle school teacher, Alex, suggested that he might be able to bring some real live students into our discussion.  Alex is a man of action and so tomorrow, a small group of grade 6 - 8 students will be joining us via BlueJeans to share some of their favourite books, genres and literary themes with us.

This has inspired me and I am in the process of setting up another group of students to join us next week.  Maybe some of the others would like to come back again too.  This is getting cool.  To see the books that we are reading, reviewing and blogging about, see http://pdppposserc.blogspot.ca.