While I was looking at the chapters for this week, I learned a lot of different things regarding book talks and how you organize different types of literacy areas within a classroom. I was thinking about my classroom and I did not really think that book club discussions could take place because my children are only 5 and they cannot read on their own. I was not sure that my children would be able to read a book and then actually go and discuss the book. I really liked this quote “They may use commercial versions of books on tape or, if these aren’t available, create their own through family and community volunteers and volunteers from older grades” (Bookclub Plus, 108). This would make it easier for students to hear a story and then be able to go and discuss it in books. It would also be beneficial in my mind to have the volunteer stay and guide the discussion in case things happen to go off track in a wrong direction or pose questions for students to think about. I also thought it was very important to choose books that have enough content in them for students to be able to discuss. Many books are often not filled with content for young readers so it is important to choose books that there may be a dilemma happening or some information that is easily able to discuss. In choosing this, I agree that it needs to be developmentally appropriate to your students.
In my classroom, because we are not doing book clubs, but rather we are doing partner shares, we have two students to a group. We let these students discuss the question asked and then we share what our partner says. The reasoning behind the partner groups we chose was originally based on behavior, personality or the beginning stages of literacy development that we saw in different children. Now that we have gotten to know our children more, these partner groups will be changing again. It would be interesting to see how children would do in groups of 4 or 5 children when discussing a book. We also have been doing assessments on our children regarding literacy (reading, writing, concepts about print). These things along with behavior are also helping us determine who should work with whom and who should be sitting at tables together. I like the fishbowl model. This would be something interesting to try with my students. We have to model a lot of what we are teaching so this would be interesting to see how my students would react to it if we were to try book clubs.
In our classroom, we manage our literacy program by being enthusiastic about writing and reading. We want students to see that both my teacher and I value these things and then they might too. We want students to be excited about learning and this is something that we model in class. We also use different types of instruction and we try and choose the most developmentally appropriate books for our students and differentiate our teaching styles to the needs of our students. Our class ranges from very low students to high students. We try to make sure that we try to make all students excited to learn even if they are already understanding more than what we are teaching at the moment. If we were going to try out the book club model in my classroom, I would really have to work on partner sharing first and then go into groups of students. I would then also like more people to model how book club groups work. At first, it may seem hectic, but once norms were in place, I feel like this might work in my classroom.
Kristen,
ReplyDeleteI thought it was great how you noticed that “Many books are often not filled with content for young readers so it is important to choose books that may have a dilemma happening or some information that is easily able to discuss.” Being in a first grade classroom, I have thought about this as well. Much of the books my students are able to read on their own have text like “The ball is red. The kite is red. The house is red, etc.” – not the best for creating discussion! So, as you said, it’s important to choose developmentally appropriate material that our students have some schema about. I feel that we do a good job of promoting deeper discussion during Making Meaning in my classroom. We too use partner share during this time. You wondered how switching to groups of four of five would effect students’ discussion and I have to admit, I do too! However, I’m not sure if this is really feasible in our K and 1 classrooms. I worry it may take too long to get students in their groups and ready to talk with one another. Keeping each group on task would likely be difficult as well! Finally, I love how you mentioned managing your literacy program by being enthusiastic about reading and writing. My mentor teacher makes it clear to students how important reading and writing is and I see it really impacting how our students feel about reading and writing as well. Writer’s Workshop is their favorite time of the day now!