Investigative Skills in a Book Club

So last week I had two book club meetings. The first was fourth grade. We had read the book The Detective's Assistant by Kate Hannigan. So for book club we solved a mystery, matching footprints and fingerprints. It went all right, but most of the kids' couldn't get through the first two chapters of the book so we couldn't really have a discussion. I did do a discussion with the one boy who read the book so that was good. What do you do if the kids haven't read the book? I wanted to read a chapter, but its difficult sometimes to work with children, they had a dance party instead and played keep it up with the discussion ball. Not a shining moment on my part, but I'm still learning. Next we are reading Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman, so hopefully that will be better. More later on 6 and 7th grade book club as well as third grade book club. Nicole