In my classroom, I am slowly but surely seeing portions of book club plus! being used in our literacy curriculum. However, still there isn't much explicit literacy instruction to observe just yet. Because I am in a higher grade level placement, there just isn't enough time in the day to spend even an hour sometimes on literacy. Especially with the MEAP looming a lot of the instruction I have observed has been tailored around test prep. However, my C.T. has been trying hard to sprinkle some literacy instruction in here and there when she can. The literacy instruction we have spent the most time on so far has been writer's workshop. In my classroom, we use the Lucy Calkin's curriculum and right now we are working on creating meaningful and rich personal narratives. I think this writing workshop does a wonderful job of starting small and getting the kids to think about important memories and meaningful events and stories before they jump into their writing. From what I have observed so far, the hardest part for the students is finding an important story to write about, and through modeling and practice our writing workshop has prompted a lot of students to find a rich topic to write about which they might not have thought of otherwise.
One way that I am observing my classroom literacy instruction coinciding with book club plus! is that the topic of personal narratives that we are focusing on in writing workshop is being reinforced in our read aloud's as part of the making meaning curriculum. So far, the stories that we have read have been meaningful personal narratives, and during writers workshop we have been able to reference these stories, and I am seeing it really have an impact on the student's thinking. When they have something concrete they can look back to as an example it really helps them to be able to model their writing and ideas after it. We have also done a lot of independent reading, which I have noticed the students really enjoy. It is great to see how many students really love to read. The only problem that I am seeing about the Accelerated Reader program being used, is that to reach the minimum of five books per trimester, many students are picking books that are below their reading level so that they can fulfill this benchmark. Very few students are actually pushing themselves to read harder books. As I begin to see more literacy instruction in my classroom, I am certain that I will be able to make more connections to the ideas that I am reading about in Book Club Plus!
Dean-
ReplyDeleteI was having a similar struggle in my classroom for awhile. It seemed as if there was not enough time in the day for language arts. However, now that the MEAP is over, we are starting our genre study. It is a mixture of reading/writing workshop. The students first have deep enriched learning experience with the genre then they are responsible for writing a piece in that genre! It has been fun seeing this in my classroom.
I hope you start to see more literacy instruction in your room.