In the new-fangled course I'm teaching that allows teachers from fourteen schools to collaborate, we have a book club or literacy circle that can offer students a choice of fourteen different books to study. It's all online on different types of discussion forum sites that any student can read and follow and add to during class or from home. Each teacher just hosts one site. Here's
mine. It's not nearly as impressive as some of the others, but it gets 'er done.
We've been trying to get students to connect in a variety of ways for the past two months, and this seems to be something that really works to develop community between teenagers across school divides. Students each can pick any of the books based on their own taste in literature, and I think that is the key to the success of this activity.
