As a primary teacher, so much of my planning is centered around reading. After all, creating a classroom of readers is a top priority in my world! I've always loved books and so naturally, I am a huge fan of Scholastic Book Clubs. Scholastic helps me affordably grow our classroom library, and ultimately foster a deep love of reading in my students. Today, I am sharing my top 5 reasons to use Scholastic Book Clubs in your classroom!
What is Scholastic?
In case you aren't familiar, Scholastic Book Clubs is an amazing online marketplace for books. You can find high-quality books for Pre-K and up at fantastic prices. In addition to being online, Scholastic also sends out a monthly book flyer for each grade level.
As a teacher, you can send home these flyers for families to place orders online. Parents have the option for books to be delivered to home or the school. This makes a simple way to encourage more reading at home and in the classroom.
What Are The Benefits Of Using Scholastic?
Aside from the simplicity of the program and ease of ordering, there are so many more reasons to use Scholastic flyers in your classroom. Using Scholastic Book Clubs with a few “teacher tricks and tips” will be a total game-changer in your classroom!
1. Low Prices & Amazing Book Collections
Scholastic Book Clubs offers low prices on their thoughtfully curated book selection for each grade. Compared to most book stores, Scholastic's prices are unbeatable! Every monthly flyer features a fun collection of seasonal books that your students will love. You will find familiar characters as well as brand-new books every month.
Personally, I love all the sight word readers for kindergarten and first grade. You can always find the familiar “Bob Books” in the monthly flyers. And . . . Scholastic also makes their own lines of sight word book sets with seasonal and holiday themes! These are great books to recommend for emerging readers. Not only do they support what students are learning, but the kids love being able to read a book they picked out.
2. Bonus Points
Perhaps one of the best reasons to use Scholastic Book Clubs is for the bonus points! As a teacher, you will earn bonus points on every single order your classroom submits. For every dollar spent, you accrue a certain number of bonus points. So the more your classroom orders, the more points you earn!
What can you do with these points? So glad you asked! You can use your bonus points to purchase books for your classroom library! This means you get to choose specific books that will interest and benefit your students totally free of charge! This is such an amazing offering from Scholastic and helps build an amazing classroom library on a tight, teacher budget. If you save your points up there are also a variety of other classroom tools and resources you can get for free!
Bonus Tip: Throughout the year you will notice that Scholastic does Bonus Point promotions. One of the best is at the beginning of the school year when you can get 10x or more bonus points. This adds up really quickly! Don't be shy about telling your parents about the benefits of these bonus points and how they will help you get free books and resources for your classroom.
3. Teacher Exclusives
Another use for those bonus points is the teacher's only exclusive shop. Here you will find amazing deals like 10 books for $10 to give out as gifts, teacher recommendation lists, and a bonus point catalog. The bonus point catalog has everything from art supplies to manipulatives to classroom furniture! There are tons of great things you can use your bonus points for and receive 100% free to you!
In addition to those great deals, the Teacher Exclusives also offers a variety of themed book sets at a discount. This is a great way to build up your library with the themes you will be studying during the year. As we start a new unit or theme I love to pull out a variety of books and display them in our classroom library. This is a great way to get students interested in the new topic and also opens the door for some “bonus” learning.
4. Dollar Deals
Another super fun, teachers-only benefit is the Dollar Book Store. Once you submit an order of $100 or more on behalf of your class, a special “bookstore” will open that is filled with books all priced at just $1! These books are only available to teachers, so these also make great gifting options for your students.
One of my favorite ways to use the teacher-exclusive dollar books is for student gifts. I love giving my students a small gift either as part of our birthday celebration, for Christmas, Valentine's Day, or the End of the Year. A small bag of trinkets can add up quickly. But you can get great books for only $1! I don't know about you, but I prefer to give my students a book over a small trinket.
In addition to these deals, you will also find $1, $2, and $3 books in the monthly flyer. This is a great way for all families to participate in the book clubs without having to spend a lot of money. I always point out these amazing deals to the students and talk about the great books that are available.
5. Nurture A Classroom Of Readers
Last, but certainly not least, Scholastic Book Clubs will help you nurture a classroom of lifelong readers.
Participating in the monthly flyer club builds anticipation every month about new books.
I love to see how excited my students are when the new flyers come in. I like to pass them out to my kids and flip through them together as a “Fun Friday” closing activity. We read the descriptions together and each child will take a little bit of time to write down favorites on their own student wishlist.
This monthly ritual is fun for the students creates excitement about books, and ultimately fosters a love of reading. My students truly look forward to this activity every month!
Plus, even if their family doesn't order books that month, they know this means our classroom will be getting a few new books, which is exciting in itself!
Inform Families About Scholastic
Once you have those student wishlists filled in, it's time to send the flyers home to families! When sending these home, keep in mind that the key to making Scholastic Book Clubs successful in your classroom is parent communication. If parents don't know about the amazing book deals available to them, you're not likely to end up with many orders.
For this reason, I like to use parent letters in my classroom to tell families all about Scholastic Book Clubs and how to order each month. At the beginning of the year, I send out an intro letter that details how the program works, what it's for, and why they might be interested in ordering. This general overview also tells parents that every order they make helps grow our classroom library, which is a huge benefit to our daily learning at school!
Then, with each monthly flyer, I attach another note that gives a quick reminder about what Scholastic is and how to place an order. I Include our class code, due date, and my personal favorites from the current monthly flyer. I love to print these notes out on brightly colored paper to catch parents' attention.
Feel free to get creative with your monthly notes and customize them as you see fit! You can grab my ready-to-use Scholastic Letters Home to use in your room this year from my TpT Shop. This resource comes complete with my intro letter, monthly letters, and student wishlists in both PDF and Google Slides versions. Everything you need to get started and make using the Scholastic Book Clubs quick and easy is included.
Get Started With Scholastic Book Clubs
Ready to start using Scholastic in your classroom? I highly recommend giving it a try. It's a great way to add books to your classroom library affordably and easily. And . . . if you sign up through my referral link, you will get 250 bonus points automatically applied to your new account! You are already on your way to those new books, resources, and tools!
Reading is a true gift we can give our students that will serve them throughout their lives. Using Scholastic has helped me build more excitement around books and foster a community of readers in a fun way. I hope you find these tips helpful when using Scholastic in your classroom this year!
Save These Ideas
Don't forget to Pin these ideas to your favorite classroom Pinterest board for quick and easy access when you're ready to get started with Scholastic!
