The book club model involves multiple components: reading or read aloud, writing, community share, and book club discussion groups. Several of these components are implemented in literacy in my own first grade classroom on a daily basis. For example, each day, my mentor teacher begins Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop with a mini-lesson teaching a new skill or strategy for them to use in their reading and writing. This is very similar to the opening community share in the book club model, as it is a teacher-led, whole group activity in which the teacher controls the topics of discussion (p.11). Additionally, students are exposed to teacher read alouds and independent reading throughout the day, while also writing for sustained periods of time daily. The book club model contrasts with the literacy instruction in my classroom mainly because we do not have student book clubs. As opposed to having students read and reflect on books in small groups (book clubs), a teacher will normally read one book aloud to the class and then students will turn to a partner and discuss before opening up discussion to among entire group.
In first grade, we spend the large majority of our day focusing on literacy. As a result, we see reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing constantly and across different subject areas as well. Reading takes place in every aspect of our day—from the morning message, Reader’s Workshop, Word Study, and Making Meaning to snack and a story, math journals, Daily 5 and social studies read alouds. Writing also is heavily incorporated into our literacy program, with a designated block of time for Writer’s Workshop and a ‘Work on Writing’ time in the Daily 5. Additionally, students write their names on everything they complete and practice writing in their math journals as well. Speaking and listening take place throughout the day and include listening to a teacher read aloud, turn and talk to your partner to discuss a story, listening to others’ ideas and teacher instruction, speaking the words to help them read a story, etc. (the examples here really are endless!). Finally, students experience viewing when they look at a peer’s illustration of writing, watch a student present their star of the week poster board, look up front on the overhead projector, or follow along with the pictures while reading a book independently or while a teacher reads a book to them.
So far, our literacy program seems very open-ended for students, as they can choose any topic to write about. Currently, we are focusing on writing personal narratives (which can be anything from telling what they ate for dinner last night to writing about the people in their family). I think simply having students write about experiences in their own lives is an example of writing into a unit or text because it helps engage them with the concept of personal narratives and gives them something to refer to once we start reading personal narratives as well. Additionally, students have the opportunity to write through a unit or text during Writer’s Workshop. During this time, students write without stopping for a period of time, focus on ideas and meaning as opposed to spelling and grammar, and always have the opportunity to go back and work on. These are all features of speedwriting, a tool for writing though a unit (p. 55). Finally, students had the opportunity to write out of a unit after we read a book about several things the main character used to do in kindergarten, but doesn’t do in first grade. After we read, all students wrote in their writing notebooks about “When I was in kindergarten, I…” This prompted students to reflect on the story and helped students engage with the book.
Your classroom sounds a lot like my classroom. I really enjoy seeing all the literacy being done in my class! I think one main difference between my class and yours so far is the age of my students and we cannot write as long because students do not stay focused for long periods of time yet. One important part of our writer’s workshop is the noise level in our room. We want students to be thinking independently as well as being able to think. We use music in our room so that when we cannot hear the music any longer after a little bit of time, students will know that they are being too loud and it may be time to move on. This has seemed to work and a lot of the children really enjoy hearing the music as well. We also focus a lot on making meaning from text as well as the structure of a text. We also focus on concepts of print and implying that in our writing as well that we start the top and we write from left to right.
ReplyDeleteI would really like to see what book clubs would be like in our classroom. The closest we get to book clubs is discussing what we have read so far in our book with a partner on the rug. We focus on this when doing “making meaning” lessons. This so far has not seemed to work so well in my classroom because of student behavior. With my children right now, I do not know if students would be able to sit with a group of students and actually discuss the book and what is happening with it. I feel like my students would move on to other discussions that had nothing to do with the books and may not even listen to each other. This is because with our partners so far, this has been the case. I would be interested to know if there are kindergarten rooms that do participate in book clubs. I would be curious to see what that would look like.
When it comes to writing so far, we have focused on writing stories that have actually happened. Because we want students to remember things that they have done and be able to make a story about them, it can be a challenge for students. I am hoping to see that later on, students are able to write about other things as well. It will be interesting to see how my students grow throughout the year and the changes that we see in both reading and writing.