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The Joy of Reading: Create a Book Club

Have you ever read a book and wanted to find someone else who had read it so you could discuss it with them? After reading The Shack many years ago, I remember feeling almost desperate to find someone to have a conversation with about that book. I finally resorted to Googling ‘discussions about The Shack’!  However, online discussions just are not the same as in person. I’ve been involved in many book clubs over the years. I’m currently involved in one via Zoom with a group of ladies in Texas. It is a sacred time of my week; I’ve turned down invitations to many things so as not to miss meeting with the group!

A book club with your children or students is especially wonderful! It doesn’t have to be fancy. It can be just you and your child or can include a few of your child’s friends and their parent. When my daughters were growing up, I would typically read the books they were reading. By doing so, we had a great time sharing our perspectives and wonderings with each other, asking questions, and getting a deeper understanding of what was going on in the story.

Sometimes, if I hadn’t read the book, I would get myself in a bit of hot water.   Kelly, my youngest daughter, was reading The Giver when she was in 3rd or 4th grade. She asked me if ‘releasing’ meant someone died. I told her (with great confidence and authority) that it most certainly did not. In my mind I thought it was such a strange question. Then I read the book and realized I was wrong. In that book, releasing most certainly did mean dying. What an intriguing and interesting book that was! We had some deep conversation thanks to that one.

A parent/child or teacher/student book club can be as simple as a parent and child reading the same book and discussing it to a group of 3-4 children and a parent creating a formal club and meeting regularly. You could also do a virtual club and include grandparents, cousins, friends who live far away, or even ‘book club pals’ who live in a different country. However you choose to structure it, a book club is an excellent, fun, authentic way to connect deeply with a book and to strengthen relationships. Remember to make this experience one that has an intimate, casual feel rather than a rigid, school assignment vibe.  

Here are some resources and suggestions to help you jump into this wonderful adventure:

  • How to get started
    • This article lays out what to do to get your book club going.
    • Find additional suggestions in this article.
    • Brainstorm a name for your book club. Be creative!
  • Have the children share the types of things they’d like to read about.
    • Share a few book suggestions to choose from and let the children be integral in picking each book you will read.
      • Lists of great books to choose from
      • Ideas to enhance your book club
        • Choose a child and their parent to lead the discussion each session
          • Have each child/parent team generate a discussion question for the chapters read
        • Choose different locations to meet
          • One week you could meet in the gazebo in a park, the next you could go to a coffee shop
        • Act out parts of the book
          • My 8 year old niece and I recently read Anne of Green Gables
            • She spontaneously acted out the part about Anne’s friend who accidentally drank alcohol laden cordial instead of the child version during their play date!
          • Play with vocabulary
            • Have each person choose a word that they were not familiar with when they were reading and explain it to the group.
            • Have a casual discussion about other words that mean the same thing.
          • Teach an activity that goes along with the book
            • If you read Little House in the Big Woods, kids could make a corncob doll like Laura got as a child.
          • Watch a movie based on the story
            • Be sure to watch the movie AFTER you have read the book.
            • Compare the movie and book.
              • Talk about what you liked and didn’t like with each.
            • Make food or drinks described in the book
              • If you read Anne of Green Gables, you could make the cordial (the non-alcohol kind!) and make finger sandwiches.
            • Go on a field trip that relates to the book
              • After reading the Secret Garden, go to a nursery to see and learn about flowers and plants. You could buy some to take home and plant!
            • During discussion time
              • Ask thought provoking questions that require everyone to share their opinions and perceptions of what happened and what they think or feel about it.
                • What would you have done in their situation?
                • Why do you think they did that?
                • How might that impact their life in the future?
                • What did you like most about this book/chapter? What did you like least?
              • Relate what was read to each of your lives.
              • Ask some questions based on the fact based elements shared in the story.
                • What did a character do, where did they go, where did they live, etc.

Interacting with children or a group of children about a book you’re both reading is such a rich experience. It is a way to help them (and you) open up and share their innermost thoughts and feelings in a way that would rarely happen otherwise. Whether you do this with one book or with dozens, with just you and your child or with a group, or following a process or doing it off the cuff, it is an activity that will enrich your lives and theirs in countless ways.  

Stephane Bolton has spent more than two decades teaching first graders to read. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in elementary education, a Master’s degree, and an Education Specialist degree — all from the University of North Alabama. In 2011, she received National Board Certification and renewed it in 2020. She has served as an instructional coach and an assistant principal. By any measure, Stephane was already an accomplished literacy educator.

But she wasn’t reaching every student.

Bolton had trained extensively in phonics instruction over the years — first through the Alabama Reading Initiative, then through LETRS and Orton-Gillingham. Each step forward clarified the picture. As she told journalist Holly Korbey in The Bell Ringer, the Science of Reading training helped her see the puzzle pieces more clearly, and things began to make more sense. But a handful of students continued to struggle, year after year.

Then she discovered EBLI.

The Shift

Bolton found EBLI through the Accelerate Literacy Summit — almost by accident. What caught her attention was how the method streamlined phonics instruction: fewer rules for students to memorize, a lighter cognitive load, and a focus on students picking up sound-letter patterns in words and applying them to reading and writing. It was a fundamentally different approach — Linguistic Phonics, rooted in the speech-to-print methodology that starts with what students already know (spoken language) and maps it to print.

She paid for the training herself.

The Results

What happened next in Stephane’s first-grade classroom during her first year teaching EBLI was remarkable.

2024–2025 School Year (Bolton’s First Year Using EBLI):

Beginning of year (August 2024): 

  • 37% of her class was at grade level on the iReady assessment.
  • The average wpm (words per minute) on DIBELS for the 19 students was 46.9.
  • The average accuracy on DIBELS for the class was 84.9%


End of year (May 2025):

  • 100% of her students were reading at or above grade level on iReady (+63%)
  • Median of 184% of typical growth for iReady
    • The average DIBELS wpm for the class was 108.2 (+58.6wpm)
      • EOY Benchmark for 1st grade is 91 wpm
    • The average accuracy was 98.1% (+13.2%)
      • EOY 1st grade benchmark for accuracy is 91%.
  • Every student was independently reading chapter books by year’s end.

DIBELS Results 8th Edition – Correct Words Per Minute and Percent Accuracy

In Her Own Words

In September 2025, Bolton shared this reflection on her experience with EBLI:

"EBLI has completely transformed the way I teach and the way my students learn. During my first year using EBLI, every child in my class experienced remarkable growth. Struggling readers made leaps that once felt out of reach, while fluent readers progressed far beyond grade-level expectations. One thing that makes EBLI so powerful is its seamless integration of phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, handwriting, writing, and spelling. These skills aren't taught in isolation. Instead, they are woven together in every EBLI activity, giving students constant practice with high-leverage skills. Built on cognitive science, EBLI instruction feels clear and efficient. It reduces the cognitive load for both students and teachers so we can focus on what truly matters. In my classroom, EBLI is everywhere! Reading and writing flow naturally through every subject, and the activities are so engaging that students often beg to do them as rewards. I've watched my first graders grow into resilient, flexible thinkers who genuinely love learning and reading! EBLI has given me more than a method…it has given me a mission! My passion to join EBLI in 'teaching the world to read' now stretches beyond my classroom of students. I've started tutoring during planning times at school and even opened a private practice over the summer to reach more learners. Teaching with EBLI doesn't just feel like instruction; it feels like a calling, because every person deserves the richness of a literate life."
Stephane Bolton
First Grade Teacher, Kilby Laboratory School

Who Is Stephane Bolton?

Stephane is the first-grade supervising teacher at Kilby Laboratory School, a public laboratory school on the campus of the University of North Alabama in Florence, Alabama. Kilby is ranked among the top 5% of elementary schools in Alabama for overall test scores, with 80–84% of students achieving reading proficiency — compared to the state average of 47%.

Accomplishments: 

Two articles about her EBLI experience published in peer-reviewed journals: 

Recipient of ALA Outstanding Literacy Teacher Award, 2025

Recipient of ALA Outstanding Literacy Teacher Award, 2025

Founded Primary Patchwork Learning Center, 2025

  • Stephane teaches EBLI privately to students after school, on weekends, and during the summer.

Goyen Literacy Fellow, 2025

Presenter (by request), Alabama Literacy Association conference, Fall, 2025

  • Follow the Yellow Brick Road: A Speech-to-Print Journey to Stronger Literacy

Featured Holly Korbey’s “The Phonics Wars” article, February 2026

Why This Matters

Bolton’s story matters because she is not a newcomer. She had decades of training in teaching reading, Science of Reading frameworks, and evidence-based practices before she found EBLI. She had already been doing the work. And yet, it was the shift to Linguistic Phonics — the speech-first, streamlined approach that EBLI uses — that closed the gap for the students she hadn’t been able to reach before.

Her experience mirrors what EBLI’s independent research has shown across larger studies: in a Michigan study of 815 students across 35 classrooms, 58% of K–4 students met fall-to-fall growth expectations with EBLI, compared to 42% in the pre-EBLI cohort. In a Massachusetts intervention study, 37% of students reached grade level and 88% passed the state assessment. And in Grand Rapids, the percentage of students at or above grade level rose from 40% to 70%.

Bolton’s classroom data adds a powerful individual case to this growing body of evidence — one teacher, one classroom, and the outcome every educator hopes for: every student reading.

Want to learn more about EBLI training? Explore Training Options 

See the full research behind EBLI: View Evidence

 
  • Bolton, S., Tomlinson, A., Kirkman, E. (2025) Elevating Literacy Through Evidence-Based Practice: A Case Study in Innovation at Kilby Laborators School, IALS Journal. Read the Journal. 
  • Bolton, S. (2025) Teaching with Clarity: The Power of Speech-to-Print Instruction, The Reading Paradigm (2025). Read the article
  • Bolton, S. (2025). Teaching less and learning more: Five shifts that maximized growth. Science of Reading Classroom. Read the post
  • Bolton, S. (2025). “A Closer Look at EBLI: Bringing the Five Shifts to Life.” Science of Reading Classroom (Substack). Read the post
  • Bolton, S. (2025). “Fluency in 1st Grade: An Introduction.” Science of Reading Classroom (Substack). Read the post
  • Korbey, H. (2026). “The Phonics Wars.” The Bell Ringer (Substack). Read the article
  • EBLI Facebook page, sharing Bolton’s data from the 2024–2025 school year
  • Goyen Literacy Fellowship. Goyen Foundation. Learn more
  • ESSA Research on EBLI, independent efficacy studies. See results

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