Sunshine, Sand and Scissors: How To Host a Book Study

We LOVE a good book study!

How about you?

Each summer we host a book study. The last few summers we have read The Essential 55 by Ron Clark, The Wild Card by Hope and Wade King, The Limitless School by Abe Hege and Adam Dovico, and Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess.

Click the pictures below to find them on Amazon.

Our typical schedule is:

Initial face-to-face meet-up

3 Twitter Chats

Final face-to-face meet-up

The schedule depends on the length of the book and summer schedules.

And this summer...social distancing!

Here are a few tips and tricks we have learned along the way!

Meet-Ups

We love to start our book studies with a face-to-face meet-up. This gives you a chance to go over the logistics, get to know everyone, build excitement and introduce Twitter.

Not everyone is comfortable with Twitter. You do not want that to deter someone from participating in your book study! We end our initial meet-up with Twitter 101 to help with this. More on that later!

Location

Chose a neutral location. We meet in the Media Center at our school.

Participants might not be from your school. You might not know a participant or you might only "know" them through social media.

Also be aware that someone might be the only participant from their school. They will need encouragement along the way. A neutral location will help reduce any anxiety.

Be sure to go over logistics, like your name, where the restroom is and the wifi password right away!

Decorations

We go all out on decoration.

That is just us.

Your decorations do NOT need to be over the top.

Our decorations come from Amazon, Dollar Tree or Party City...or out of the Room Transformation tubs in our garages (you have stacks of those too, right?).

Purchase things that can be reused or repurposed!

Solid colors are great investments.

Swag

Everyone loves swag!

Now we are not talking about the fancy swag you get at big conferences.

We are teachers.

We do not have extra money.

We are talking about a little something participants can take back to their classrooms with them.

Try to have a quote from the book on it. Or something interactive that will remind them of the inspiration they felt during book study.

We secretly love walking into a colleague's classroom and seeing a momento from one of our book studies!

And we all know a glance at a momento can give you a much needed boost on a rough day in say... February!

It is also good to have pens, highlighters and sticky notes available. I am SURE you can find this stuff around your school.

Food

Candy and cookies!

Thats it.

Nothing fancy.

You don't need "real" food or drinks.

We usually provide a candy that matches our theme (because we are extra like that) and whichever cookies are BOGO at the grocery store!

Welcome

You want your participants to feel welcome and excited.

Play music- and not quiet background music.

Loud, fun music!

Create a PD playlist. You only need about 10 songs. Put it on repeat.

Include current hits as well as well known "party" songs.

You will be surprised at how many sing along or dance!

Greet your participants at the door!

Introduce yourself.

Tell them you are glad they are participating.

Show them where to sign in.

PowerPoint

Create a PowerPoint for your meet-ups.

Now we are not talking about a boring PowerPoint you read slide by slide!

It is to keep you on track.

When you get 40 chatty teachers in a room who have not seen each other all summer, the discussion can quickly go astray!

Practice your presentation.

We run our book studies more like a conversation than a presentation, but we still prepare and practice!

Set a schedule.

Not a strict, second by second schedule. But one that will help you keep the discussion moving along. (Remember those 40 chatty teachers!)

Have probes ready if a tough question causes a room full of crickets.

Know which questions you are okay with skipping if things are running long!

We end the PowerPoint with Twitter 101. Participants can leave when the discussion is over, or hang around for Twitter 101. This is a quick and easy way to make sure everyone is set up and put some minds at ease!

The PowerPoint is also an easy way to share information with someone who is unable to attend your meet-up. More on that later!

Handouts

Provide participants with handouts. This will give them a hard copy of important information and a place to take notes!

Twitter Chat Tips and Tricks

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is the easiest way to host and participate in a Twitter Chat.

You can schedule the tweets/questions in advance. This will allow you to be more engaged in the chat itself and not worrying about when to tweet the next question.

If you are not using it, click the picture below to get started!

Hosting

We use pictures for each question.

Pictures make the questions stand out a little better during a chat.

We use Word Swag app to create the pictures.

The app does cost a few dollars, but it is totally worth the investment.

Create a generic picture with your hashtag at the bottom then use picture in the Word Swag app to type in each question. You can automatically size it to a Twitter image size!

General Tips and Tricks

Advertising

The more participants the better.

You want to learn from each other so you need participants.

To get participants, you need to "advertise."

Twitter and Word of Mouth are your best methods of advertising.

Let us tell you a little story.

A few summers ago we wrote a Donors Choose project asking for 10 copies of a book we wanted to do a book study on.

10.

Our hope was that 10 colleagues would want to join us.

10.

We were at a district meeting at the beginning of summer and it came up in conversation.

The presenter asked us to tell a little bit about it...

Then it got shared on Twitter....

And shared some more...

By the day of our first meet-up, we had more than 60 colleagues from all over our district join us. It was a very successful book study. (Notice I said colleagues, not teachers. More on that later!)

We are contacted every spring asking which book we will be reading in the summer!

Do not be afraid to Tweet about your book study.

Do not be afraid to tag the author...we have been contacted by almost every author. And THEY have asked US if they can participate, record a message for us, or visit our school.

Not kidding!

And we are tiny little school.

Participants

We mentioned saying colleagues, not teachers earlier.

If you are hosting a book study, it is most likely because you want to make your school better or make a change at your school.

A change requires everyone at your school being on board, not just teachers!

Open your book study up to everyone in your school-no matter what their role is!

Our original questions for the book study that became huge were classroom centered. We had principals, vice principals, coaches, special area teachers and district personnel joining us. It would not have been a worthwhile book study for the vice principal if we only talked about classroom lessons.

We know the majority of participants will be classroom teachers. We are just saying to be aware of all of your participants.

It is easier than you think to reword questions to be school centered, instead of classroom centered.

Reminders

Our brains turn to Summer Brain by late June and we forget what day of the week it is.

Teacher.

Summer.

You too, right??

We set up a Remind group at the first meet-up.

Participants receive a text about the chat via Remind about an hour before the chat starts.

It is also an easy way for participants to ask you questions during the book study....since not everyone checks their email during the summer!

These remind texts can be scheduled in advance!

If you are not familiar with Remind, click the picture.

Credits

We want our participants to earn PD credits for participating.

Set a clear criteria and share it with your participants right away.

We usually ask for participation in 3/5 activities.

It is summer.

We are teachers.

Committing to a weekly chat 5 weeks in a row during the summer is not always feasible.

We mentioned the PowerPoint earlier. If someone is unable to attend the first meet-up, they will miss a lot of important information. If you email them the PowerPoint, all of their questions will be answered! (And you don't have to type it out 10 different times. Experience talking here!)

So, are you ready to host a book study?

Get started with The Limitless School.

Click the picture below for FREE ideas, questions, handouts, PowerPoints and swag.

If you host a book study, we would love to hear about it!

Tag us on Twitter

@meredithg17

@clc1820