If you’ve ever been part of a book club or reading group, you’ll know the joy of it. They are a great way to foster reading for pleasure. If you are thinking about setting up a book club in your school, read on to find some hints, tips and resources to help you structure it in the best way for your setting.

We absolutely must get our children to the standard whereby the three strands of reading – being able to read, choosing to read and spending time reading – reinforce one another, forming a virtuous circle. As Professor Teresa Cremin commented last year around the new reading framework: “Balancing reading instruction and reading for pleasure is never easy!”

To nurture the reading habit, schools need a strategic approach rather than simply an eclectic mix of ‘reading for pleasure’ activities. Evaluation should take place regularly and core strategies to encourage sustained, voluntary reading should include book clubs, adults reading aloud regularly, informal book talk, encouraging library use, including the local public library, providing time to read and sociable reading environments.

So, where do you start in creating an opportunity, outside of the classroom to encourage children to read?

We thought we’d start this piece by reminding ourselves, and everyone of the brilliant Rights of the Reader by Daniel Pennac and illustrated by Quentin Blake produced by Walker Books. This is absolutely key for reading for pleasure. It’s not about being told what to read, when to read, how many pages to read, and getting it signed in a reading record, it’s about talking about books they’ve enjoyed, sharing book love, helping the child find the right book for them, the book that will make them fall in love with reading, and make them a reader for life.

To follow this, the only rule for any book club or reading group is to make it fun. It’s not a lesson, it’s an inclusive opportunity to invite anyone to read and talk about books. 

So you must decide which age ranges will be invited to join the group and clearly having the right space available to host the group will be critical too. Your library being the best option if you have one!

Perhaps you could run a Year 7 Book Club on Monday lunchtime, or a KS3 Book Club on Tuesday after school. If you’re a primary, perhaps it could be years 5 and 6 together?  One of our funded schools Ranworth Square Primary in Merseyside runs book clubs at lunchtimes and calls them “Books and Biscuits”, a great motivator for the children to attend.

We understand that many schools don’t have enough copies of one particular book to enable the whole group to read the same book, as we tend to do in other reading groups, but there are a few solutions to this issue.

1) LoveReading4Schools Wishlists. Create a wishlist of the books you’d like to read in your book club on the LoveReading4Schools portal and ask parents, carers and other stakeholders to gift them to your school. You could even approach local businesses to purchase them for you.

2) Awards Shadowing. The Yoto Carnegies are the UK’s longest running children’s book awards. The Carnegie Medal for Writing is awarded by children’s librarians for an outstanding book written in English for children and young people. The Carnegie Medal for Illustration is awarded by children’s librarians for an outstanding book in terms of illustration for children and young people.

A national reading for pleasure initiative, the Yoto Carnegie Shadowing Scheme engages thousands of children and young people in reading the books on the shortlist via reading groups in schools and public libraries with dedicated educational reading resources and promotional materials to support each shortlist. Register here for the Shadowing Scheme for 2024.

3) The Marcus Rashford Book Club. This is a collaboration between the famous football player and campaigner Marcus Rashford MBE and Macmillan Children's Books. This initiative has enabled over 100,000 free books to reach children who need them most. 

Rashford, who didn’t read his first book until he was 17, has commented on what an impact it had on his life and how he wished he had read sooner. Now a prolific author, you can access tons of resources to help support your discussions of The Breakfast Club Adventures: The Ghoul in the School. They are free for teachers to download and use. The resources include discussion questions and five reading activities which explore chapter one of the book and aim to foster reading for pleasure. Join the club to keep updated of forthcoming books available. Not every child needs a copy of The Breakfast Club Adventures to take part – the activities are all based around chapter one, which is included in the pupil activity pack.

If getting hold of multiple copies of a book is still an issue, simply start with a general book discussion and invite the children to share what they are currently reading, or ask them to talk to the group about their last favourite read.

We can’t talk about reading without a mention of the brilliant work that OU RfP do in this space. Are you looking to offer a better balance between teaching young people the skills of reading and nurturing the will – their desire to read – for myriad purposes and for pleasure? If so, you’ll want to develop research-informed practice that has been tried and tested and builds a love of reading. The OU RfP site has tons of research based findings and downloadable examples of best practice from fellow practitioners, so it’s definitely worth a dive in.

In addition there are several organisations or initiatives that are set up purely to support reading groups' activities.

Chatterbooks, run by The Reading Agency, started in 2001 and is now the UK's largest network of children's reading groups. Almost 9,000 children belong to Chatterbooks Groups, which are run in libraries and schools to generate discussion and encourage children to enjoy reading. The groups are run by librarians, teachers, teaching assistants, or volunteers - anyone with a passion for reading. 

Chatterbooks is a flexible model that can be used with children from 4 up to 12, for all different abilities and in targeted or mixed groups. You will need a meeting space, a session plan, and books for the children to borrow. With Chatterbooks you can purchase materials to support the activities, plus support materials for group leaders but they also offer free downloadable activity packs each month, full of ideas to use in Chatterbooks sessions, which typically in a school setting meet fortnightly. They suggest a meeting outline along the lines of

  • Welcome and Introduction (10 minutes)
  • Welcome and ice-breaker activity (5 minutes, as children arrive)
  • Share and discuss the books they’ve been reading and share ways they have reviewed them (5 minutes )
  • Introduce this week’s session
  • Main Activity (20 minutes)
  • Activities – exploring a theme or a story. This can be through writing, art, drama, or any other way of encouraging children’s own creative work
  • Adult reads aloud to the group (5 minutes)
  • Ask questions to help with understanding the text
  • Choosing a book (10 minutes)
  • An opportunity to choose books to take home and read before the next Chatterbooks meeting.
  • Finish (5 minutes)

For free resources and to sign up to the Chatterbooks network, go to chatterbooks.org.uk.

Book Clubs in Schools is a not-for-profit organisation offering a unique peer-to-peer mentoring programme in the form of a book club in schools across London and Birmingham. Each school book club meets once a week for 10 weeks in a term, with new book clubbers joining each term.

What began as a parent-led programme in a primary school has evolved into a cross age peer-led programme in both secondary and primary schools; Year 10s lead book clubs for all Year 7s, and Sixth Formers work with younger children in local primary schools.

The Book Club Leaders can use their experience to fulfil the volunteering hours for the Duke of Edinburgh Award, in their personal statements for UCAS applications and on their CVs. Find out more. 

Book Clubs in Schools gave us their top tips for running a book club:
- Work out who the club for is for. For example, is it for anyone who wants to join in or is it to give keen readers a space of their own and encouragement to be more adventurous readers, or is it to encourage reluctant readers?  Is it for a single year group or a mixed of ages, perhaps it will be themed around a genre such as a science fiction book club? This will shape your book choice and how you support the club.

- Once you know who will be in your book club you can start thinking about the most important thing… the books.  If at all possible, involve the book club members in the choice. Choice is an important motivator and will strengthen engagement - learning what to look for when choosing a book is also an important part of being a reader.  To make things manageable try offering up a shortlist of 4-5 books for them to choose from.  If you don’t already have copies, then look online (or download) details such as the cover and the blurb.  LoveReading4Kids often has the first chapters available to sample which can help. When drawing up your shortlist, think about the following:

  • Choose books that the book club members won’t find too difficult to read and that they are less likely to already know or to have read.  For less confident readers look at accessible books such as those published by Barrington Stoke where the reading age is below the age the content is aimed at. Check out the LoveReading4Kids Dyslexia Friendly section. 
  • Books that raise issues for discussion work best in a book club. For example, books that raise on a controversial topic or have characters who face a dilemma about what they should do, or books with lots of cliffhangers where there is suspense about what happens next.
  • Don’t worry if a book isn’t everyone’s first choice - that can sometimes help discussions.
  • Books that are the start of a series, or where you can make good recommendations about what to read next are great for encouraging members to go on to read other books.

- It is also important to work out the practicalities of where and when the book club is going to meet and how often.  Where just needs to be somewhere quiet enough that they can hear each other talk and ideally sit in a circle so everyone can see each other and join in the discussion.  In terms of timing, the most important thing is that it happens regularly and at a fixed time that is ring fenced for bookclub so it doesn’t get pushed out by something else and nobody forgets about it.  Ideally once a week, but if your school has a two week timetable, as long as it has a regular slot, that is fine too. Half an hour is a good length, longer can work but you may then want to include some additional book based activities (writing recommendations, drawing etc.). You also need to agree how far everyone is going to read each week.  This breaks up the book into manageable sections and also means that everyone is at the same point when they meet to discuss the book so there is less risk of spoilers!

- Finally, think about how you are going to run each session - who is going to lead the discussion, who is going to think up the questions, does the group want to agree some ground rules about how they run the club (e.g. listen to others, bring the book each time, don’t worry about ‘wrong' or ‘right' answers etc.).  Book Clubs for Schools support schools to train up older pupils to run the clubs for younger pupils and also provide week by week questions to help run the discussions.

- Most importantly, make it something enjoyable - book clubs should be about reading for pleasure, discovering new books, having interesting discussion about them and hopefully enjoying being a reader. 

If you’re not looking for something physical, we also thought it was worth mentioning The Blue Peter Book Club which is all about sharing the joy of reading! Each month they talk about a different book from the list and find out your thoughts on it too! They also have lots of fun activities, quizzes and cool challenges to try.

It's super easy to join, just grab a book from their list and start reading. You can share your thoughts with other fans, talk about your favourite books or even send in pictures and selfies. Although you're welcome to read any book you like, to make things easier they've put together a list of six amazing books for you to try. And of course, you can apply for your own Blue Peter Book Badge here. What are you waiting for? We wish we were between 5-15, we soooo want this new Quentin Blake designed beauty!

And finally, don’t forget that you can upload reviews of books your children have loved. Just go to the book page, and click upload review for them to see their review in lights on LoveReading4Kids - whilst also helping their peers to find their next read.

We can’t wait to hear your stories of your successful book clubs!