On Thursday afternoons, several Blair Oaks students in grades 3-5 stick around after school for Book Club or Media Club.

The clubs are new this year, and many students are learning for the first time about new genres and authors, or new technology and software.

In Media Club, students get in pairs matching older students with younger students to work together on slides for a slideshow that plays in the cafeteria during lunch, and in the office. The slideshow contains parent shout-outs for their children’s accomplishments, teacher spotlights, and information for each grade.

Sponsor Heather Dixon said students work on the slideshow for the upcoming two-week period.

Students Regland Hood and Joy Holzer recently worked together on jokes of the week, while Emersyn Bellin and Emelia Stockman added birthdays to a slide. Hood and Holzer chose a school-related joke, but they said sometimes they choose jokes to coordinate with the season.

Sam Reynolds, Sam Wright and Lucien Rademann all worked on outlining the breakfast menu.

Jonathan Spiedel and Kelsey Gerling sat in a corner of the library on comfy chairs, formatting announcements for third grade.

Others added information for grades 3-5, which included the topics each grade would be learning about.

“It’s just a really good opportunity for them to learn how to use these different programs because they’re going to need them for class,” Dixon said. “But also for them to just learn (about) other kids in other grades because otherwise, they don’t get to have any interaction with each other.

“We’re starting off with more of like an organized form where they know what slide they’re on. So as the year progresses, we’re hoping to give them more independence and not so much assigned slides. But they get, pretty much, a lot of creative outlet.”

She said they had kids look at the slideshow and try to critique it.

“The words were very small. The fonts didn’t go. It was too busy,” Dixon said. “So they’re trying to work on also presentations, and how they’re supposed to look organized, because we would have different fonts, different colors, they wouldn’t show up.”

She pointed to the slideshow, adding, “So this is very organized and clean.”

Dixon helped a student apply some of those design principles to her own slide.

She pointed out that the text was difficult to see on the busy background and showed her how to add a semi-transparent textbox background to make it easier to read.

“Third grade, in particular, they came in not having a lot of experience with Google Slides in general,” said fourth-grade teacher and Media Club sponsor Kelsey Luebbert. “The fourth-graders and the fifth-graders really had to help the third-graders. That’s why we partnered the third graders up with older (students), because there’s so much that they didn’t know about Google Slides.”

As the year goes on and students become more efficient with the slideshow, she hopes to add other activities like coding, animation or video.

Luebbert said the club originated at the request of Principal Tracey Burns, who had reached out to a few teachers to see if they would take the club on this year using the Career Ladder program for compensation.

Career Ladder provides stipends of up to $5,000 to participating teachers who complete a certain number of hours of extra work, including tutoring, club sponsorship, professional development, test prep and other activities.

Sponsors of both the media and book clubs, along with Burns, said the funds have made the clubs possible when they otherwise might not be.

Book Club, sponsored by fourth-grade teachers Sheri Holland and Rachel Schulte, is intended to “get kids excited about reading and expose them to new book genres,” Schulte said.

Schulte is herself an author of three children’s books.

Members of Book Club were sorted into discussion and reading groups based on their top book choice.

“I just wanted to do it cause I like reading a lot, and it’s been really fun doing it, all the different books that we’ve gotten to read so far,” third-grader Oakley Yoder said.

She said her favorite so far has been “The War that Saved my Life.”

“It gets you hooked right away,” third grader Cassie Schulte added.

Cassie has enjoyed “Wait Till Helen Comes,” a ghost story by Mary Downing Hahn.

Kaylee Schulte said she loved “The Man Who Loved Clowns,” which is by a Missouri author.

Students have a snack and listen to a read-aloud to start the club. Sometimes they may do a craft, read on their own or do a technology activity. They also have a meeting with their group and discuss the book they’re reading.

The next book will be themed around “I Survived,” so students got to choose whether they wanted to read about topics like Pompeii or the Joplin Tornado.