As I look through Book Club Plus and see how it applies to our classroom I see some things that do that I did not expect and some things that I don’t know if, with the class of students that we have now, we would be able to implement.
First off related to the choosing of books for oral reading, the first book my CT chose this year was the book “Because of Winn-Dixie” by Kate DiCamillo. He chose this because of the fact that in the book the main character is new in the area and has no real friends at the start of the book, and a majority of the book is about her getting friends. He felt this applied well to the beginning of the year because some of the students may not know any of the others in the class, or even in the school so it will help them to feel more comfortable knowing that other children go through this as well. It also provides lots of opportunities for text to self connections which is one of the first things we work on as a class. As I have now taken over the oral reading, and we are reaching the end of Winn-Dixie, I have struggled over what book to read next. I know that I don’t want one that is too long, as I need to be ready to move on because I have an idea for what I want to read towards the end of October (more on that to come in a minute). I have decided as of now to read the book “Mr. Poppers Penguins” because it has a story similar to that of Winn-Dixie, giving the class the opportunity to make lots of connections between the two texts improving their comprehension techniques, and also to make new connections. It is also a shorter book so I know that I will have time for the book I want to read at the end of the month. This book will relate directly to my unit lesson which is going to be about how we are all different people but special in our own way, and the like. I am torn as of now between two books, “Flawed Dogs” whose title speaks for itself as to why that applies, and “Babe: the Gallant Pig” since that is about a pig that refuses to be what the society thinks he should be and works to be a dog. Any thoughts you have on the book choice would be super appreciated. I also know that both of these books will provide situations for discussion as the students will be able to make many connections to them as we discuss how we ourselves are all different and have our own flaws and quirks, myself included.
I see difficulty when it comes to grouping our students into groups. We have a class that is very chatty no matter who they are with and we have a very hard time keeping the class quiet and focused. I personally also have a problem with the idea of mingling the academic levels for something like book club because you should not overwhelm the lower students and cause the higher students to be bored and not challenged with the reading, but that is just my opinion, What is yours?
I don't know of any books off the top of my head--that is one area I definitely feel I am not prepared in at all--but I will keep your theme in mind.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you are saying about grouping students. We have a very chatty class as well with a wide range of literacy abilities--students off the chart at both extremes. I was thinking about implementing something similar to what we talked about in math with different roles for each group member (we also discussed this in my literacy TE class last year). I can't remember exactly, but it was something like one person chose an important quote from what they read, another drew a picture summarizing, another was a facilitator, and another the speaker? So as far as different academic levels, you could assign roles that way maybe. Just something to ponder!! :)