Reading used:
The Book Club Companion by Cindy O'Donnell-Allen
I really enjoyed reading Allen's thoughts on book clubs. She does a fantastic job of really explaining the purpose of them and how to best implement them in your classroom. I like that she begins with a sort of background on book clubs and how to tell the differences between reading groups and small discussions from book clubs. She goes into a lot of detail explaining the intricacies of the logistics and even says how many number of students are best to use. I had no idea that book clubs could utilize students of different ages and she pulls in Vygostky's "Zone of Proximal Development" to explain how this would work. She includes in chapter two the best things for teachers to include in their classrooms to best help their students in book clubs and reading in general which I think is wonderful! Of course, some of them seemed common sense but I'm sure there are teachers out there who don't heed Allen's advice. She mentions access to audio books as one of these elements to include and I love this because it taps into multiple intelligences. Not all students enjoy sitting there for extended periods of time holding a tangible book and it gives them the option to listen to it on their iPods or their cell phones! In chapter three she talks about Donald Schon's "frame experiment" and how it helps her decide what problems her students are having. I would definitely use this in my classroom! She also talks about the "Book Club Curriculum Planning Heuristic" and this seems very helpful for teachers deciding what books to use based on the standards they must teach to. There are also other elements such as goals, flexibility, constraints, and adventure. I am definitely going to hold on to this book to refer back to for my own classroom. Allen has a lot of great ideas and I can't wait to use some of them!
Do:
To implement Allen's ideas into my classroom, I would want to start the beginning of the year with a similar questionnaire that Allen mentioned in chapter three. It comes from Donald Schon and it is called the "frame experiement". This gets students thinking about their own reading in a way that isn't completely influenced by outside sources and what others have told them. This type of personal reflection is a great way to start the school year and to get a good feel of how your students feel about reading in general and their own reading. Of course, not all of these questions would be appropriate to ask students but here is how I would amend it:
1.) What makes a good reader?
2.) Do you think you are a good reader? (Don't think about what others have told you--what do you think.)
3.) How do you think you can become a better reader?
4.) How can I help you become a better reader?
5.) How do you read? Do you take notes? Ask questions? Read aloud?
6.) Do you prefer tangible books or audio books?
7.) What could you change about your reading to become a better reader?
Book clubs are a great idea for any classroom and Allen does well to support her methods with foundational research. I like that you drew out these connections to research and especially some of the basics that we learned in one of our first education course like Zone of Proximal Development. I almost forgot about that and can clearly see how it works in a book club setting. What I would like to see is how you would use your do to connect to book clubs. Maybe they could share their answers with their club? Or you could use their answers to place them in scaffold book clubs. I think this type of data could be used well in advance of book clubs in various ways to direct your instruction.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't this survey remind you of the Burke and Atwell versions we looked at in EDRD 600? The ones we used as a basis for our interview with DJJ students? While you do a good job of synthesizing ideas from the book, what about connections backwards to previous readings? How do book clubs related to Socratic Circles or what we read around talk? What about Rosenblatt and response? How/why/what is the relationship between response and book clubs? Where does the reading process fit in or How might we utilize reading strategies within book clubs? Where and how do we find balance among this growing list of structures? Start making connections backwards to previous readings and authors--start creating some cohesion.
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