Thinking about the ideas discussed in Book Club Plus, specifically about talk in the classroom and managing book club, I immediately see vast differences between how we manage our literacy program and how book club is managed. Book club has four overall components which consist of a community share, reading, writing, and book club itself. All of these four components are interrelated to support students’ learning to read, respond to, and discuss literature in student-led discussion groups (Book Club Plus!). The opening to book club is the community share which is teacher-led, and a whole group activity introducing the students to the literature discussion. I feel that our mini-lessons for both writer’s and reader’s workshop are similar to this community share. During our mini-lessons we discuss whole group what the students are going to be working on and what skills or strategies can be used in their reading or writing. The reading component of book club involves the students to gain access to the book being discussed. The writing component also involves the students preparing for upcoming discussions and activities that utilize the book being discussed. This is where our literacy program differs heavily from book club. After our mini-lesson, or community share in book club terms, the students read independently followed by reading with a partner in reader’s workshop and write independently in writer’s workshop. The students are given the opportunity to read and write about anything they want as of right now. The only suggestion is that they try the strategy or skill discussed in the mini-lesson/community share. The book club portion of book club is the student-led discussion group where the class is divided into small groups of roughly four to five students per group. The books read by each group are theme-related to the unit and are age-appropriate. Within these book clubs the students discuss ideas that emerged from their reading and written responses. There is also one last important component of book club, this is literacy block. The focus of literacy block is on instruction and the practice of skills and strategies. It is during this literacy block the guided reading groups are taking place as well as several other literacy centers such as skill work, journaling, etc.
After learning about the use of talk in book club and the discussions that take place, it is evident to me, that we do not make use of discussions in our class all that much. I am in a first grade classroom and right now we are simply working on the students’ stamina to read to themselves and to read with a partner. The students have the opportunity to discuss during the mini-lesson at the start of reader’s and writer’s workshop, and at the end of both workshops during share time. During share time a few students are chosen to share what writing they worked on, or what they and their partners read during these times. Learning more about the literacy block component of book club, I realized that it is a lot like our Daily 5 program. During Daily 5 is when the students are being pulled to our rainbow table in their guided reading groups meanwhile working at centers. The centers in our Daily 5 include reading, writing, listening, word work, and retelling. Right now we are still working on building stamina for each center and the students are becoming increasingly more independent at each center. By the time the students are independent and able to keep focused at their centers is the time when we will begin guided reading groups.
Already having similar components in our literacy program that are equivalent to that of community share and literacy block, I would love to try out the book club portion of book club. The students are rarely, if ever, reading the same book and so they hardly ever have the opportunity to talk amongst themselves about the book. The students do however; have the opportunity to talk with a partner during our interactive reading (Making Meaning) literacy instruction about a particular book being read to them. With the students already having the skills needed to discuss with one other person about a particular book, I would be interested to see how they could handle talking about a book in small groups. With that being said, the types of support needed to make this happen would be to perhaps start with partner discussions, then moving up to small groups of four to five. We would also have to talk about what our book club should sound like and look like. This would be in the form of a chart that could be discussed prior to every book club meeting until we feel that the students are ready to be independent in their book clubs. Being in a first grade classroom, and new to teaching, I have not yet heard about a first grade class making use of book clubs but I am definitely not opposed to the idea and would love to learn and research lower elementary classrooms using book clubs in their literacy instruction!
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