Reader’s Study (Grades 4-5)
Welcome to the Reader’s Study, a three-student discussion seminar. Students read one book per term—slowly, with genuine attention—organized around a single guiding question that shapes every discussion, annotation, and piece of writing. Every term ends with a published Reader's Zine—the student's own account of not only what they understood about the book, but how it changed the way they think.
Description
The Reader's Study is a small literature seminar organized around one conviction: that serious reading changes how a person sees the world, and that those changes deserve to be examined with the same care and precision as anything else worth knowing.
Each term, students read one book—slowly, with genuine attention, over twelve weeks. The book is chosen because it raises questions that don't have easy answers. Front Desk asks what storytelling gives a person that nothing else can. Tuck Everlasting asks what makes a life worth living. Inside Out and Back Again asks what you lose and what you find when you have to become someone new in a language that isn't yours yet.
Students keep a notebook across the full term—a private record of how their thinking changes week by week. By the final session, they have a chronological account of how one book moved them. That record is the raw material of the capstone.
Every term ends with a published Reader's Zine. The anchor piece is the Reader's Essay—a personal essay arguing for something the book changed in how the student sees the world.
Reader's Study is for students who are willing to read slowly and carefully, think and respond honestly, and follow a good book wherever it leads.
Studio Books
Term 1
Front Desk by Kelly Yang
Term 2
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
Term 3
Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai
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Classes are 60 minutes each.
Term 1 (12 weeks): $600
Term 2 (12 weeks): $600
Term 3 (8 weeks): $400
Annual Tuition: $1,600
Materials Fee: $55 (This fee includes books.)
Tuition is due at the start of each term. Materials fee is due at enrollment.
Refund:
Full refund of tuition and fees if withdrawal occurs before the term’s third session.
50% refund after third session but before Week 6.
No refund from Week 6 onward.
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Class books are provided as part of the materials fee.
Please bring the following to every club meeting:
• Writing tools
• Imagination and an open mind!
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Each term, students publish a Reader's Zine—a curated collection of personal intellectual writing produced across twelve weeks of close reading. It is a real publication, not a book report. Final drafts may be created by hand or in Canva.
Every term includes one required composition and up to two optional ones:
The Reader's Essay (required every term)—a personal essay arguing for one thing the student now believes about the world that they did not believe before reading this book. Not a summary. Not a literary analysis paper. An honest account of what the reading did.
What I Marked (optional)—a curated selection of passages from the Reader's Notebook, annotated by the student, showing the moments in the text that mattered most across the term.
The Response (optional)—a short piece of original writing in a form the student chooses, responding to the book in a register the essay cannot hold.
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Coming Soon
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Coming Soon
Only Grades 4-5 is currently available.
If you’re interested in seeing Literary Lab open for other grade levels or other times, please let me know using the form below. No email required.