Student Clubs in the Library

Scheduling Clubs

 Since I've spent more time as an elementary librarian than a middle school librarian, my inclination is often to get really involved in instruction and activity planning. What I discovered at the middle school level, though, was that students and families are so busy that it's hard to do much outside of school in addition to what is already happening. They often don't have time to meet before or after school on a weekly basis, much less follow up with activities between club meetings.

I've found more success trying to schedule short-term clubs, clubs that don't meet every week, or clubs that meet during the school day if at all possible. For example, I did a Lego club that met for 30 minutes after school three Tuesdays in a row, My middle school students are in the habit of coming to the library before and after school from the time that the building opens until the time designated for staff to leave, so since I'm already open to students for check out and study time, it's easy to host student-led clubs during those time periods. We have a 30 minute advisory time three times a week, and one day that's for tutorials can be open to clubs if students don't need to attend tutorials. A once-monthly before school club is easier for some students to attend than one that meets every week.

Meeting infrequently or for a short number of sessions does limit what you can accomplish, and being open to any participants (as opposed to having a sign-up or pre-registration) can make it tricky to plan in terms of materials and space. However, a parent once observed that it was nice to have some low-commitment clubs - experiences where you can show up, participate, and not need a costume or practice or prep work. Many of my students are so over-scheduled that I found it was easier to plan one-shot experiences for each club session, so I didn't have to build on prior experiences and assume the same students would be attending each time.

Types of Clubs in the Library

I've run so many clubs as a librarian - I'm always interested in exploring new things myself, and clubs are a great excuse to get immersed in a new interest and share that with students. I studied with Joseph Renzulli, who developed Enrichment Clusters as part of the Schoolwide Enrichment Model, so I've done lots of different types of enrichment cluster "clubs" over the years, too. Here are several different club ideas:

• Craft Club - elementary library - met six times on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school for 3 weeks, 45 minutes per session. Each session introduced a new craft (Perler beads, origami, jewelry making, washi tape cards, cartooning), and the final session let students repeat whichever craft they liked most and wanted to do more of.
• Chess and Choice - elementary library - this met once a week for 10 weeks after school as part of an enrichment club option on campus. The first 35 minutes were for chess, then we had a school-provided snack, and then students could choose either more chess, or a modified D&D game, or puzzles (including Rubik's cubes), or strategy games like Battleship.
• D&D - modified - elementary library - this was a virtual club that met online twice a week during COVID, when we had a lot of virtual students. This is a more difficult club to run for one teacher because there is too much sitting and waiting with more than five players. If I had to do it again, I'd try this club with parent or older volunteers to run each small group, but I loved getting to run it and witness the creative thinking of the players. I modified a traditional D&D  system to create a simplified character set-up, along with some established goals and fears for them to select for their characters. I created a story outline with obstacles, and an over-arching goal with mini-goals for each session. Then I basically enjoyed my own improvisational skills as students made decisions through the game, and we rolled virtual dice to determine some of the conflict outcomes. I didn't have multiple copies of the real D&D handbooks to refer to, so it was simpler to run my own lighter version than try to frontload all the "real" rules. This was a time-consuming, but very rewarding club.
  
• Short Films Club - elementary library enrichment cluster - I had an iPad cart for students to use for this club, and we first explored short assignments, like a stop motion app featuring building blocks, and a sock-puppet app using dialogue, and the camera app using good framing of people. During the second half of the club, students developed their own projects using various formats and tools. The club culminated with a short film fest we shared with parents.
• Game Design Club - middle school library - This was a new interest of mine, even though I didn't know a lot about it. We tried lots of different existing games at first - card games, then word games, then other strategy board games, then some LARP scenarios, and then some coding with Scratch and Code Combat. Then students used sessions to develop their own original games of whatever type they wanted, and playtested those with feedback from other group members. For a culminating activity, the students connected their own original games into one big escape room type activity (so if you successfully played one game, you got a clue that you could put together with clues from other games to solve the puzzle). We took our games to a nearby elementary school to play-test with some fourth and fifth grade students. The coding piece was labor-intensive, and we lost some students around that time because they basically had to spend time outside the club to be able to make a functioning game experience. I'm not a coding expert and couldn't provide a lot of specific support. However, I had a small number of highly-invested participants who continued to code and show me their independent efforts throughout the following year. I also liked that this was a club that reached students who didn't necessarily join any other clubs on campus.
  
• Creative Writing Club - middle school library
  I really love this club, because the whole point of it is that participants get to write whatever they want. We meet once a week during one of our advisory times (it's about 27 minutes). Some advisory times are untouchable with announcements and counseling lessons, but one of the three days a week are saved for tutorials, and any students who don't need to attend tutorials can attend this club instead. I offer one short prompt and post it to our interactive board each week, but students can work on any type of writing they want. I encouraged them to expand their conception of writing to include short films and podcasting, but so far the participants have been working in traditional print media. Sometimes we take time at the end of a session to share with others, and some students work on partner pieces. The students who attend are very invested in it, and again - for very busy students, it's nice to carve out some creative time. If a student can't attend one session, it doesn't make or break their overall participation in the club.
  
  I'm in the first year of this club, and our plan is for students to select 2 pages of content in any combination - 4 poems, one story excerpt, several illustrated jokes, an essay - or whatever they want to share - and publish it in a bound book at the end of this year - one to have on display in the library, and one for each contributor. I actually planned to set up a digital showcase website with videos, artwork, and other pieces, but it never took off and I ran out of time with all my other initiatives happening. I still have hope that this will happen and we'll go digital . . . but I also love those minutes where we're all writing in our journals, just because we want to.
  

MS Game Design Club sharing their projects with elementary students

Game Design Club sharing their final projects with elementary students

Creative Writing Club promotion graphic

Sample Creative Writing Club prompt - a new one is offered each week, but students can choose to write whatever they want

Student-Led Clubs in the Library

I would love to give my all to every single experience, and collaborate with even more colleagues (especially the musical theatre directors and the D&D club), but there aren't enough hours in the day. Still, I have students asking about opportunities, and if I can make it happen, I'm happy to, so student-led clubs are one option.

Student-Led Book Clubs
The age-old struggle with a school-based book club: some students read "ahead" and spoil things in discussion for others, while some are reading "behind" schedule or don't finish the book at all. As a classroom teacher, my solution was to give students reading time the first week (and two weekends) to finish reading the whole book, and then to schedule 3-4 small group discussion sessions with established types of questions.

In my middle school, I didn't have enough free dates available to schedule multiple book clubs, but I have some student leaders who were willing to lead discussions. We kept the same expectation that everyone read the book before the the club meeting, and we were able to offer multiple different books and genres with different student leaders. "Book Club" actually meant four or five small groups spread out around the library at the same time, with one student leader talking about The Inheritance Games with her group, and another discussing Artemis Fowl with his. I provided some simple snacks, and the one-time discussion lasted for the 20 minutes after school dismissal until the official end-of-day time for teachers. We ran a second session with different books (but mostly the same student leaders) two weeks later, and a third two weeks after that.

This was a great way to develop student leadership skills and friendships - although the book club leaders generally invited their existing friends to participate in their clubs, we also promoted it at Library Club meetings and on library signage, so any additional interested students were welcome to join and participate. I didn't do a lot of in-depth training with club leaders about how to keep conversations going or include everyone in discussions, but we did touch base about creating some questions in advance (and many of these students were library aides who had already demonstrated great social skills and leadership skills in other areas throughout the year).

Student-led historical fiction book club meeting

Student-led mystery book club meeting

Library Club
This club was started by my middle school librarian predecessor, and I have to say, this one is hosted by students, who lead most of the activities, but I do more of the planning than with other student-led clubs. I don't have an adult library assistant at my middle school, but I have student library aides who help with check-out, check-in, and shelving each class period. Those library aides take turns hosting each monthly Library Club meeting.

Library Club is open to any students who want to attend, and it meets about once a month before school for about 40 minutes. We close the library to before-school visitors on Library Club meeting days, and the club has more than 90 members this year, with about 70 regular attendees. Basically, it's a great opportunity to promote upcoming library events, to offer students a chance to share ideas and lead stations or other clubs, and  to include students in a school activity when they might not take part in athletics or performing arts programs.

The schedule usually runs something like this:
   Sign-in, pick up a giveaway (bookmarks, stickers, raffle tickets for prizes like pens or paperback books)
  A short social game (it could be as simple as Rock, Paper, Scissors) that mixes the group up to talk to different people
  Announcements about Library Club opportunities and events - with time for feedback and ideas
  Pair or small group discussion time about books or reading habits - again, something that gets them up and mixing and talking to different people
  A craft activity tied to books (we've done rainbow scratch-off book covers, ugly sweater books, decorate a duck, and more)
  Book checkout/return and reading or discussion time as they finish the craft

I generally make the slides with the announcements, and the student hosts decide on the game, craft, giveaway, and discussion questions with my input based on what supplies are needed. The student hosts advance the slides and talk through the information and lead the activities.

Student hosts chose a Hawaiian theme for this Library Club meeting

Chess Club
I know how to play chess, but nobody is going to come to me for advice about how to play unless they're complete beginners. I had some students who wanted to start a chess club, and I have chess sets in the library, so we established that they could have chess club on Tuesday mornings in the library - even while other students were in the library doing other things. It was not a competition team and there was no agenda other than time to play chess matches (and they only had about 30 minutes). It started with a friend group and some other students showed up to play, too. The group leader eventually stopped coming and it fizzled out after a year, but it was very low-maintenance on my part, since providing the game sets and a space was really all they needed. Obviously, it's not a competitive preparatory experience, but again - that low-commitment opportunity has value for some students, too.

Crochet Club
In my first year in the middle school library, I tried to establish Thursday mornings as craft mornings, and I had a great volunteer who knew how to crochet and was willing to work with a small group of drop-in students to work on projects. We had some other crafts out from time to time, too, but we had a lot of interest in crochet, even if we didn't quite have enough time in a morning to get a beginner started from scratch and progressing. We also packed up some take-home crochet kits with QR codes leading to directions for the summer.

In my second year, we still had some yarn and crochet hooks, and I put the bins out for our maker days. A small group of students started asking permission to take them out at lunch time, and eventually it grew into a club that met most days at lunch and once a week after school for 20 minutes. Many of these students asked to take some materials home over the weekend if they promised to return them, so we created some simple sign-out forms for that. I'm really proud of this club, because it meets students wherever they are and allows them to take complete ownership of their level of investment - whether they sit with other students who crochet, or work on one straight line, or complete multiple projects and want to spend time outside of school creating as much as possible.

Student-led Crochet Club started with a lunch group

To-Go Crochet Kits for over the summer, with crochet hooks, yarn, and project directions

Sample crochet project: frosted donut

There are a million clubs I haven't run, but just you wait!
What are some of your club success stories?