Entry 7: Online Book Clubs

Readings:

• "It's All About the Book: Motivating Teens to Read" (Diane Lapp and Douglas Fisher)
• "Wiki Literature Circles: Creating Digital Learning Communities" (Elizabeth Edmondson)
• "Online Book Clubs: Bridges Between Old and New Literacies Practices" (from "Digital Literacies; Cassandra Scharber)
• "Mini Lessons for Literature Circles" (Harvey Daniels and Nancy Steineke)

Say:

 Continuing with last week's post on book clubs in the high school English classroom, this week's post talks about online book clubs and how to best use them with adolescents.  The first article deals more directly with how to get high school students to want to read, which is vital in creating successful book clubs no matter the medium.  They talk specifically about under privileged students who come from various backgrounds but who all struggle academically.  The authors explain how they were able to motive these students through book clubs and the subject matter.  One such way that the authors were successful is that they tapped into background knowledge and personal experiences of the students.  They created a few main questions, one of which included "Text Selections for the Racial Profiling: What Do People Think When They Look at You? Unit" (Lapp & Fisher 558).  They compiled a list of books which included Night by Elie Wiesel and had students use their personal experiences and backgrounds to connect to the books.  The students ended up loving the authors' ideas and were actually excited about reading.  I think the idea of tapping into students' personal lives and experiences is a great motivator for reading.  Oftentimes under privileged students are the ones who feel disenfranchised and disconnected from the reading world and authors when in fact, the opposite is true.  It is these students that we need to focus on because of the way they feel, no matter how wayward we may believe their thinking is.  While Edmondson and Scharber's articles discuss "digital learning communities", motivation is still a key factor here.  In order for something to be successful in the classroom, students have to actually want to do it.  She talks about the "Facebook mentality" and how our students are obsessed with knowing every little detail of their friends' lives, including what they ate for breakfast (Edmondson 43).  However, she suggests that teachers use this to our advantage by using what students already know about technology in the classroom.  One idea Edmondson proposes and one that she has personally used in her classroom is a wiki.  She admits that it took significantly longer for her to figure out than it took her students, but this is to be expected in this day in age.  Edmondson continues by using her own example from the classroom and explains how she created online book clubs for her students.  She says that she gave the class a choice of books and after telling her which book they chose, she put them into book clubs.  Then, they were assigned "daily duties" which included discussion leader, vocabulary builder, and theme tracker (Edmondson 45).  Using this model, students were to post on their club's wiki according to their assignment that day.  I love the way Edmondson uses her students' knowledge of technology to her and their advantage in the classroom.  Students really like when they can show their teacher how to do something and it shows them a way to use technology to their academic advantage.  Schools across the country are gradually beginning to become one-to-one schools in which all students have their own computer in the form of a laptop, Chrome book, or iPad.  Why not put their knowledge of technology to good use in the classroom?  Daniels and Steineke also tap into the role of students in book clubs and focus heavily on the fact that classroom community plays a big role in the success of these book clubs.  They mention that students can and will struggle with choosing their clubs with someone other than their friends, the fact that a classroom community has already been established will go a long way in the club's success.  Their mini lessons are extremely helpful and this is something I will definitely hold on to in order to obtain ideas for my own classroom.

Do:

In order to implement online book clubs in the classroom, I would have students live tweet their thoughts while reading.  Of course, they would need to read and THEN post their tweets in order to fully comprehend what they are reading.  Each Sunday evening, I would open a 2 hour window in order to allow them time to read, comprehend/take notes, and post with their group members.  In order to receive full credit their tweets would need to be somewhere in that 2 hour window and they would need to use specific examples from their text (these can be in the form of page numbers or direct quotes).  Depending on the amount of reading they have will determine the number of tweets they will post.  For example, if they were assigned to read 20 pages of their book I would have them make 8-10 tweets.  Of course, students will be allowed to post more but to receive full credit they will need to have the minimum amount of tweets.  They will also need to respond to their book club members at least 3 times per member.  These responses can be in the form of a question or a statement but they have to address it specifically.