Everything that I am reading in the Book Club Plus! book is all very interesting. I am not seeing this concretely shown in my classroom yet. However I am seeing aspects of the book club being shown. In the chapters we read about assessment and classroom management.
A common thing we are doing right now is a read aloud daily. Students are read to and then reflect on what they read. The students come back to that writing and reflect on their work the next day. Giving students a chance to walk away from their completed work and read it the next day gives them a chance to look back and see where they could’ve done a better job. I think this is really important, reflecting is a huge part of education and seeing where improvement could’ve been made and a plan for better improvement.
I enjoyed reading about the different types of literacy we can engage our students in. The only one mentioned that I have seen so far in my classroom is the read aloud. My teacher reads from a chapter book for about 20 minutes everyday.
I would like to work out a time where a block of literacy can be made. Right now it is a combined hour or so, but it is broken up and disturbed by specials and lunch. I would like to see more classroom discussions based on the read-aloud as well as sharing from students reflecting notebooks.
I think overarching support that I would need to provide is a foundation of expectations, as well as an environment that promotes discussion among small and large groups. Also because a lot of these are large group/fishbowl discussions, I would need to have an understanding of where the student is at in their reading levels to best understand how to help them facilitate good conversation and be a part of the whole group activity. I will also need to look at the resources available in our school and make the best decision of books based on my students needs.
I am really excited to take what I have read about and slowly incorporate it into our daily schedule. I am interested to see how it plays out. I haven't seen a lot of what I read incorporated yet in my classroom, but am interested to see how managing a successful book club and literacy block will be.
Shannon-
ReplyDeleteLitearcy seems to be put on the back burner a lot in my classroom as well. Like you have been saying now the students are reading to learn by the fifth grade. I think Book Talk Plus! is a great program and see may befits of using it however I think it would fit into my schools in a younger grade. While we do different aspects of this program, we just do not have as much time for literacy as some of the younger grades.
I think in fifth grade we are going to see different areas of the book, depending on the mini-lesson but I do not think we will ever be able to see an entire day of Book Talk Plus! I think some of my students would be very bored if we spend this much time on literacy as well, considering I have some students in the middle school reading levels.
Thanks for the post and I hope you start seeing more Book Talk Plus in your room!
Megan