Spaghetti Book Club

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About the Program

The Spaghetti Book Club is an afterschool language arts program that integrates reading, writing, art and technology by teaching elementary and middle school youth how to write book reviews that are published on the Spaghetti Book Club website. With the help of the Spaghetti Book Club's standards-based curriculum, youth develop critical literacy skills as they are guided through the process of writing, illustrating and publishing book reviews. Youth participating in the program are excited and motivated to write and illustrate their book reviews, as they know that people around the world will be reading their reviews and seeing their artwork. The program is implemented in various school and afterschool settings, such as the Federal 21st Century Community Learning Centers (CCLC) and Community Technology Centers (CTC) throughout the United States and internationally. The Spaghetti Book Club is based in New York City.

The Goals of This Program:

• To help youth develop critical literacy skills and reach many of the Language Arts Standards
• To help youth increase their self-esteem and self-confidence as readers and writers
• To provide an opportunity for youth to express themselves to a world-wide audience

Program Activities:

The Spaghetti Book Club's standards-based curriculum includes easy-to-follow lesson plans for educators to guide participating youth through the process of writing, illustrating and publishing their book reviews. Participants choose a book that they want to review.They then learn how to write reviews by discussing and analyzing strong examples from the Spaghetti Book Club web site that were written by other youth. Each lesson focuses on a different element of the book review writing process, including writing summaries, formulating and expressing opinions, making recommendations and using supportive details and examples to make reviews interesting. Each session includes a group lesson where the educator and youth read and discuss strong examples of reviews. Then, as a group, they practice writing part of a review together. Then the youth work independently and apply what they have learned to writing their own reviews. At the end of every session participants share their work with the group to get feedback and suggestions from their educator and peers. In addition to writing their reviews, participants create self-portraits and illustrations that are published along with their reviews. Participants are thrilled to see their work online for all the world to see. When the reviews are published, participants can receive feedback from family and friends and communicate with youth around the world through online message boards.

Funding Sources:

• 21st Century Community Learning Centers grants from participating schools
• Community Technology Centers