In chapter 6, the authors talked about how to launch the book club in your own classroom. You must “think about your level of implementation, your curriculum, standards, themes, literature selection, the grouping of students, daily instruction, reading aloud, developing a classroom library, and how to work with children who are learning to speak, read, and write in English” (103). In describing each of these areas, several of the suggested ideas correspond to things I’m seeing in the classroom as well. First, it is suggested that teachers may use book club alone or immediately being teaching it to students. Incorporating read-aloud with book club helps students “learn how to engage with texts in meaningful ways” (104). My students already have the opportunity to make connections to the stories we read, notice structural patterns, and analyze characters, settings, problems, and solutions in the books we read. Second, the chapter describes how to choose literature to read to students (i.e. books that promote discussion, are developmentally appropriate, rich content, and tie in with curriculum goals). I feel that my mentor teacher is fabulous at choosing interesting, deep books with relatable content and meaningful storylines. She is always able to relate her read-alouds to the students and foster discussion. Third, grouping students is crucial to the success of book clubs. Students are grouped at tables in my classroom and will do various activities requiring group work throughout the day. My mentor teacher has given much thought to the size, diversity, and attitudes of students when putting groups together. Specifically, she told me earlier today that she likes grouping students of different reading levels together because this gives lower students the opportunity to grow more quickly. Fourth, my classroom already utilizes reading aloud, shared reading, and guided reading groups similarly to Book Club Plus!
If I were to try some of the aspects of book club, I would need to support my students in a few ways. First, I would need to show them how to discuss a book without constant prompting from me. I need to support and teach my first graders how to communicate respectfully with one another (taking turns, looking at the person speaking, be a good listener, ask questions, etc.). Second, I would need to especially support my struggling readers. The Book Club Plus! text suggests giving such readers their books to take home and pre-read before coming back to school and reading/discussing with peers. This way, they have heard it once or twice before (121). Third, I could support my ELL students by providing books on tape (if possible, in English and their native language). This will allow students to hear fluent reading in English and better comprehend and create meaning from the reading in their native language.
I agree with you. It seems as if a lot of the elements of book club are happening in my classroom as well, although it is not called book club and there are a few things that are a little different. I like how your teaching mixes her students up so that there are different reading levels together. This would also be interesting to see if students notice in their group who the better reader is and if that affects how the group is run. When we do start pulling students for reading, it will be interesting to see what types of groups are chosen for my guided reading groups. In my classroom, I also would need to be able to support my ELL students and I like your idea of books on tape. Students would still be engaged in literacy and it would be in a form that these students can use and understand better. We use books on tape now in our daily five routine. This however does not necessarily mean that all my ELL students use this. Because it is a center, many children want to attend this area. I also agree that it would be important to have communication between students. In my classroom, this is one place where we struggle at times because my students have not yet learned to listen to what their partner actually says and remember it to tell everyone. Also it is very difficult to get students to actually discuss what was asked. Although we have gone over this several times, it is so far, not helping. I am hoping that as we continue, other tactics will help. I like how you said your teacher shows books that will foster discussion and are relatable to the students. We choose books randomly at this point but are trying to incorporate a theme or notice when things connect and then choose appropriately. I really would like to see how other classrooms are ran and taught because we all have a lot of the same programs, but everything can be so different based on the teacher.
ReplyDeleteI felt the same way about Book Club Plus! and how we make use of the ‘plus’ components, and just not the book club part. During all our read-alouds, and any reading we do, the students are also given the opportunity to make connections to the stories we read, just as your classroom does. My mentor teacher also has the most books I have ever seen. The students are all very excited to get new books that are relatable and having meaningful story lines. Although we do not group our students in groups as your classroom does, we do have reading partners. The partners are grouped based on their reading level so that they can go through the process of learning to read and using the same strategies together, as opposed to the higher level reader simply reading to the lower level reader. As you said, our classroom also already utilizes reading aloud, shared reading, and guided reading groups. We basically do all the components of book club plus, except book club! Thinking about book club, I am very interesting in seeing how book clubs would be used in the first grade. Like you, I would very much like to make use of book clubs in our room. We would have to go over the process and expectations of book club of course, and do lots and lots of practice of the routine of book club. I feel it would take some time, but eventually the students would be able to get into a group and stay on topic about a particular book. The only trouble I see in book clubs at this age, is for the lower level readers, and even our at-grade-level readers, is that the books are so short, that it would be more difficult for them to maintain their discussion. I like your idea of books on tape for ELL students, but I see that this could be beneficial for all the students. Listening to a longer book with more meaning could help them become more independent at facilitating discussions, and the students could be grouped by varying reading levels.
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