Book Club Plus Chap. 1-5

How does the book club model compare and contrast with what you are learning about literacy instruction in your classroom context? Where do you see reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing and other literacies in your classroom literacy program? What opportunities do students have to write into a unit/text, through a unit/text, or out of a unit/text?

There are a lot of similarities that I see between my classroom literacy instruction and Book Club Plus, but there are also some differences. The book club plus model talks a lot about teacher read alouds and share alouds and my CT has recently started a genre unit and she is reading the first story out loud to the students while they follow along with their own copy of the book. This is certainly a part of book club. My CT has not done community shares and that is something I hope to have in my lessons. She also has no done any guided reading which I feel is an important part/big part of book club plus, so my classroom differs from book club plus a lot in that sense. However my CT is so stressed about MEAP prep right now that she may do guided reading once the MEAP is over. Independent reading is a part of the book club plus framework that my CT does in our classroom. My students read silently every day for 15 minutes in the morning and if they finish their work throughout the day they have a book in their desk to read. However book club involves writing or discussing what you’ve read during independent reading and this does not happen in my classroom so that’s a difference. The importance of comprehension is a similarity between the book club and what I’ve seen in my class. My CT is always asking my students questions about the story as we go along and also doing her own think alouds to give students ideas and reminders of what is happening in the story. She also has them do retellings and summaries both throughout the stories and at the end of the stories to practice comprehension. However, as I said we do not do community shares or much group discussion so the students don’t’ get much of a chance to share their thoughts with their peers other than the few called on to answer her questions or give a retelling or summary and this is different than the book club model. Our book says “It’s not enough simply to tell students about a strategy; they must see and hear it employed by a good reader. (30)” My CT has been discussing inner conversation as a form of working on comprehension. She models her inner conversation by saying it out loud to the students and then asks them to either think about it in their head or jot down notes in the margins of the conversation that is going on in their heads. My CT always has my students make predictions before we begin reading a story, which is another part of the comprehension strategy that book club plus uses. Book club also emphasizes that students understand the different genres and we just began a genre unit so that certainly corresponds with the book club plus. Although my CT may not follow the exact concept of book club plus and may not call it book club plus, she uses many aspects of the book club plus framework!

I see reading in my classroom a lot. Our district requires us to have our students complete GLCE books for reading and math before the MEAP so we have been doing that GLCE book since the school year started and we just finished last week. It involved the kids reading a lot of short stories and responding to questions. Before doing the reading and the questions my CT addressed how to look for key ideas while reading. As I stated, I’ve also seen my students reading silently with a book they have chosen on their own. They have 15 minutes of sustained silent reading in the morning and they all have books of their choice in their desks to read whenever they complete all of their work. My CT also has done a couple read alouds and is currently doing a share aloud. She read a couple short stories to my students while they sat and listened and now she’s reading them The Sign of the Beaver but they each have a copy of the book to follow along with her. There’s also reading during social studies and science from those two books and also worksheets that are given. The math GLCE books even had a lot of story problems, which involved the students reading. Reading is always in my classroom!

The first writing piece that I saw in my classroom was my students doing a writing assessment. We gave them the topic of courage and discussed what courage was and then asked them to write a story about a time that they were courageous, someone they know was courageous, or they could make up a story about someone being courageous. First we discussed how to use the 5 square organizer with topics for each paragraph and 3 main ideas. We had them fill out the organizer, write a rough draft, edit and revise the rough draft, and then write a final copy. We told them we couldn’t help them on this writing because we wanted to see where they were at in terms of writing skills. Since then I’ve seen the students use the 5 square organizer again along with writing a rough draft and final copy about their special place. They also did short answer responses to questions in the reading GLCE books, in science, and in social studies. They’ve also done some retellings and summaries of stories that were read aloud to them.

I have seen a lot of listening from my students, as they have to sit there and listen to my CT teach or read them a story. Other than asking a few questions here and there, there has not been much speaking from the students. I would like to see more discussions in the class. They answer math questions and questions about their readings and writings, but there are never long conversations or discussions amongst the class.

As for viewing, our classroom has a Promethean board that my CT often uses for instruction. We can also use it to show videos, PowerPoint, short stories that we’re reading together, etc. The students seem to really enjoy when we use the Promethean board.

I have seen some opportunities for my students to write into, through, and out of a text, but not many. As I stated above, my CT is currently reading The Sign of the Beaver out loud to my students and before she began she asked the students to write down any predictions they had based on the cover picture and the title. I thought this was a great way to get the students thinking about the story and wondering what might actually happen. They have read other short stories such as a story about the Iroquois Nation and my CT asked them for their prior knowledge, but she did not have them write it down. I think it may be helpful to have them write it as a write into so that the students can refer back to it at a later date. It also could be used as a way to assess the students and what they learn from the reading since we’d be able to look back and what they knew before and then we could do a write out after the story of what they learned. The Book Club Plus book says that some writing through strategies are sequencing, visualizing, and describing events and these happen to be three things that my CT discussed with out students a couple days ago. After reading a couple chapters in The Sign of the Beaver she asked the students to write a retelling of the story, but before having them work on it she discussed that they need to have the correct sequencing of events in their story and that they should try to visualize what they read as they write because it will make their writing much more interesting. This is a great example of writing through that I’ve seen in my class. An opportunity for my students to write out was after my CT read them the story Ben and Me they were asked to write a summary of what happened and to draw a picture illustrating any scene from the story. This allowed them to not only write what they remembers but also to be creative with their drawing, which also forces them to visualize the story. The book talked about speedwriting as a way to write through but I saw it as a write out in my classroom. On the first day of school my CT read my students the book First Day Jitters and after reading the story she asked them to take 5-7 minutes to write any type of response to the story that they wanted. They could write what they remembered about the story, how they related characters in the story, etc. As long as what they were writing was about the story they could write anything for those 5 minutes and they were to write without stopping. I think this is interesting because it shows that things that are done for write through can also be done for write outs and vice versa. I hope to see more of the write into, write through, and write out in my classroom and if not I look forward to incorporating it into my lessons when I begin teaching.