Book Clubs

The Book Club Companion by Cindy O'Donnell-Allen

Book Clubs

Let’s face it—book clubs aren’t anything that we haven’t seen done before in the classroom. Many teachers know that when you put students together in small groups, sometimes the discussions that they have can be limitless.  What is different however about book clubs, as Cindy O’Donnell- Allen puts it, “Obviously, I’m not the first person to suggest that discussing books in small groups is a good idea. But the small groups I’ve just described are not identical to other familiar configurations like reading groups complete with round-robin reading, small-group discussions, and literature circles.”  So what is it? What is it that makes book club so different than any other group discussions we have in the classroom?  The fact that they are so student centered not only excites me, but scares me as well.

 For starters, a book club is exactly as it sounds. Your students choose the book, they choose how the discussions flow, and they choose when they want to meet with each other. I like to think that book clubs are essential within the English classroom—not only do book clubs help promote dynamic conversations among students, they’re also used as a fantastic diagnostic technique for teachers. The way I see it, you cannot just create a book club and tell students that they’re going to have conversations. You will get blank stares.  I believe that students have to be scaffolded into how you have a successful book club meeting. One of the first things you need to understand about how to have a book club is the fact that you will need to show your students how to communicate, more specifically how to make sound arguments. This is very important, in fact the reason in why we read Smith, Wilhelm and Frederickson’s book on arguments. The trio concluded that arguments are in fact an essential part of our curriculum yet we do not teach our students how to make them. I believe that I would take their book as the theory, and use book clubs in my classroom as the practice with their theory. Once my students are able to learn that there is a right way in how to take a piece of literature and engage with it, I believe they would be set up to have the types of conversations around literature that we wish we saw everyday.

SO what is the purpose of book clubs then? Sure they are a way to show our students how to have conversations with each other through textual support and analysis, but can’t we do that with Socratic Circles? Absolutely. What I found to be the most distinguishing difference which argues for the need of book clubs was in Lapp & Fishers article, “It’s All About the Books”. They said, “Our students often select the “coming-of-age” novel, in which a trusting, narcissistic adolescent encounters some of life’s realities about topics like sex, sexuality, relationships, death, crime, family, work, or travel. Through the personal, life-transforming experiences of the characters, our students find the inner windows to their voices. As we listened to their book club ex- changes, we saw Rosenblatt’s (1946, 1985) and Gee’s (1996) theories in action.” This is what we should strive for and this is why book clubs are needed. It would be great if everyday our students took the literature that we gave them and fell so deeply in love with them that they cant help but relate and converse about it—ha! That would never happen. Understand that we are in a society where all of our students are coming from different walks of life with a different mentality. As a teacher, it would be impossible for you to find one core text and have each student like it. We want those rich discussions and we want those efferent conversations, the way to do that is by fostering student centered groups where they are able to choose what they want to read. Believe it or not, they may resist it, but never have I found a student who disliked reading a book that they chose and didn’t enjoy discussing it. Rosenblatt says it best, “Without an understanding of the reader, once cannot predict what particular text may be significant to him, or what may be the special quality of his experience.” The power in allowing our students to engage with a text that promotes personal connections is dynamic.

One of the things that I believe I struggle with as a pre-service teacher is how to set up book clubs. How do I choose a selection of books for my students to work with? What do I do before and after? O’Donnell offers a variety of suggestions for me. She informs that teachers need to set up their book clubs around systemic discussions. This will eliminate a lot of confusion and unawareness during book clubs. “I found that individual book clubs inevitably establish their own routines, but students appreciate a system that outlines the before, during, and after. In other words, they want to know how to prepare for book club, what will happen when they get there, and what will come after they’ve finished the book, as far as final projects and evaluation go.” Even though students are ideally the ones who will identify what they will discuss in their book clubs, we need to provide a structured support system that helps them keep track of basically everything. In other words, show students how to keep track of comments, how to set meeting times, as well as how to act during the meetings. It is so important that we identify and talk about the structure of the clubs before we let students go—they need to know that they are going to be held accountable. I love the ide that Kayla presented a few weeks ago where she has students record their conversations and send it to her. This promotes healthy discussion but also individual accountability. O’Donnell also talks about how you match your students—something I know I would struggle with. Do I let them choose their own groups? I happen to know that some students are going to discuss and work with their friends—they’re comfortable around them! Do I create groups myself? Rosenblatt did say I needed to understand each of my students—so theoretically I should know who would work best with who and who has similar interests. O’Donnell offers support on this issue, and I believe her stance on creating a classroom environment in which students are free to share with each other will definitely cut down on the “awkwardness” that may come about when I place students in groups. Also, I believe that letting students know that they will not be in the same group all year is important—their group will constantly switch up based on the genre that we read.

I must say that the Grading Literature Circles pdf was a great read. I often struggle with knowing how exactly to create rubrics for certain things—this offered great support for myself. It also talked about my role during meetings. I should be actively listening, jumping in and out of groups, and always assessing students as they are meeting. I believe will set students up to again be accountable for themselves. The part I loved the most about this article is when it stated to have student’s grader themselves. What? You can do that? I love it. This allows ownership over your own grades and allows me to meet with students so I can get active feedback.
Book clubs are amazing. Period. O’Donnell offers great support on why they are needed and how to conduct them correctly. Although I have never done one, I feel a lot more confident in my skills as a pre-service teacher in having one in my classroom. Those same strategies we learned over the summer in EDRD 600 can be used as a way to start book clubs—getting students interested in the books, and from there, you scaffold them, and it’s smooth sailing.

My do for the week happens to be a sample of a rubric that can be used for book clubs with my future middle school students. Having them responsible for assessing one other student is a fantastic way for them to be honest and also aware of their own participation in the book club.

http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson_images/lesson1163/rubric.pdf

Informative Writing

Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Michael W. Smith, and James E. Fredericksen: Get It Done!: Writing and Analyzing Informational Texts to Make Things Happen

Informational Text!

Say

I am thrilled that I have been able to actually engage with my students using a number of informational texts for a project that they have been working on lately. Students are asked to identify one issue that they are faced with in their everyday lives—whether it is bullying or gang violence, they are asked to create some sort of project that raises awareness to these issues in hopes of irradiating the issue within their school environment. The perfect way to do that is through the use of informational text—Wilhelm, Smith, and Frederickson produce another great product in which they not only explain the significance in teaching informational text, but give very real examples on incorporating them into our unit plans. I like how they were able to break into categories different types of informational text such as cause-effect, compare-contrast, etc. Using these categories in writing is often what helps students with structuring their papers. For example, if I wanted a student to write an argument paper on corporal punishment, most likely they would be using a compare-contrast technique.  I will be the first to admit that I would much rather spend time working with fictional text with my students, but informational text offers a reality that you don’t get from other genres.

What I really enjoyed most about the book was chapter 5 which dealt with the process of inquiry. I believe that in this chapter the authors definitely go into great detail on how exactly we go about teaching using informative text in things like projects. For example, when they talk about creating a culminating composing task—the same type of project my students at Dreher are working on, the lesson plan ideas that are present would have been great to use beforehand. For the project that the students are working on, they need to identify a “problem” and then pose a question that they need to answer through their project. Wilhelm, Smith, and Frederickson describes this as an “essential question”. “Effective essential questions can accommodate many possible answers and provide a wide variety of opportunities to read and compose. What is the American dream? isn’t a good question, because in our view there’s consensus on the answer. To what extent is the American dream equally accessible to all? works much better because of the range of possible answers and how current and compelling such a question can be to students” (46). I can remember that when my students first started working on this part of their project, many had issues because they didn’t know exactly how to find an essential question. I believe that because my CT and I had our students come up with a project idea first, we may have limited them in the scope of their thinking about essential questions. Wilhelm, Smith, and Frederickson says that once our students have identified an essential question—then we go in to help them compose different text types and so forth. I can appreciate this book for the fact that we are able to understand the steps needed to guide students through a project in which they are using questioning and informational text.

Where I am able to see great parallel with informational text is with close reading! When our students are dealing with informational text the first thing we want to make sure they are doing is taking the text and reading it in detail—again, this isn’t fictional pieces we are dealing with. The primarily goal of close-reading is so we can get students to deeply engage with challenging and high quality text. Showing various techniques of how to work through an informational text (like a scholarly article) takes practice and scaffolding. I do believe the two can work hand in hand with each other however. Beers does state that when we put the energy and attention into a text (reading it closely), then the text and analysis starts to become more rigorous. This also relates to writing as well. I do believe there is a specific level of writing our students should be able to do when they are working primarily with explanatory text. I would expect my students to be able to define, detail components, explain behavior or rationale, as well as provide conclusive explanations for their topics that they are researching using both primary and secondary informational text. I believe that Wilhelm, Smith, and Frederickson offer tips on how to engage students in this type of discourse in the later chapters of the book.

I enjoy being able to challenge the way I would combat a project and then reading on ways that have proven to be successful. For me personally, I know I would not have taught to give students a mentor text to use when we gave them this project not realizing that mentor text offer a guided model to writing. Wilhelm, Smith, and Frederickson did a fantastic job on this, and I love how practical the book really is. I did recommend it to my CT after I left his class.

Do

For my DO this week, I was able to find a video of a middle school teacher who does exactly what I spoke about! Using close reading with informational text. What I find to be great about his video is his use of effective questioning to engage his students and elicit a response. He also is able to use a number of collaborative techniques to keep learning going for the students the entire 20 minutes. I certainly needed to watch this before I taught using informational text.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxzU2TmFLiw

Reading & Writing Argument

Michael W. Smith, Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, James E. Frederickson: Oh, Yeah?! Putting Argument to Work Both in School and Out

Reading & Writing Argument

           “From the clothes you wear to the foods you choose to eat to the groups you decide to join—all of these everyday activities make nuanced, sometime implicit arguments about who you are and what you value. Thus an argument can be any text— whether written, spoken or visual—that expresses a point of view” (2). Just as argument is considered the center of political discourse, I believe that we are in the position to make argument the center (or near center) of everything that we teach. I can admit that I was dumbfounded when I learned the true definition of argument—like many, I can say that I was under the impression that an argument is a point that you make when you’re in disagreement with someone else. The reading from this book took argument and defined it as the process we use to make a decision about practically anything.

            What I found to be the most interesting about what Smith, Wilhelm, and Fredricksen had to say was their stance on the Common Core. Though I am still iffy on my thoughts of CCSS, these authors make note that what we understand about the Common Core and argument basically breaks down to understanding form and structure. Should we be focusing on the structure of argument? It is my opinion that when we begin to teach structure of any form of writing, we begin to treat that writing as an isolated form just like we do any other type of writing—instead of making them interconnected with each other and showing that like other types of writing, there is indeed a model and a process to follow, teachers aren’t doing this. Chapter 2 has an in-depth conversation highlighting the immediate problem that we are facing in our schools—the growing gap between student abilities in both oral and written argument. “NAEP doesn’t disaggregate scores based on genre, but it’s worth noting that 40 percent of the writing prompts called for persuasive writing, so it seems safe to say that NAEP establishes that most adolescents are not proficient at argumentation” (11). Can we really argue with this generalization though? We deduce the abilities of our students when we do not challenge them to think critically about the decisions and arguments that they make. This chapter outlines for us the Toulmin Model, a model that should be used when teaching students how to effectively learn about arguments and then how to make and defend them. And we want to stress that it’s crucial to keep in mind that using Toulmin’s model is a means to the end of helping students become more proficient composers and consumers of arguments. That is, while we introduced the terms and used them, we never tested students on them. What mattered to us was that students understood how to employ them rather than how to define them” (51). What is important and stood out about this that they used this model as a strategy—and not as an assessment piece. All too often we as teachers choose that when we teach a new strategy, there needs to be a formal assessment that goes along with it—not necessarily. What I thought about as I was reading this was a number of strategies that we already use in the classroom—Socratic Seminars, Book Clubs even—both of these strategies are built around having our students think about their thinking and the choices they make. Furthermore, I couldn’t make the connection until now, but when we are working in Socratic Seminars, one of the central challenges we faced in class a few weeks ago was connecting our arguments to why and how we got there—all steps that are discussed within the Toulmin Model.

           I can easily see myself using Socratic’s as my own means to teaching argument in my classroom. Slowly we would think about what questions or thoughts we wanted to explore—using the model, students would then take an individualized approach to understand how you use claims or qualifiers, back them with evidence and support that warrants their claim, and eventually think ahead and form rebuttals to students who can effectively disagree with them. Though this is just one example of how I would use argument in my classroom, Smith, Wilhelm, and Fredricksen provide a range of other ways that we can incorporate argument in our classroom in chapters 4-7. I enjoyed the examples of incorporating student’s writing into this unit as well—when students have a mentor text that is accessible for them to work with, I believe with the right scaffolding, they would be able to make stronger arguments in their own writing and have the direct evidence to support it. Using journal articles as well as controversial topics is an excellent way to do this. The activity I enjoyed the most was the one we did in Vic’s class where we needed to explain how the husband died from falling from the stairs. I believe using this as in introduction not only engages students, but gives you an understanding of how students are making arguments and claims as well as showing if they can demonstrate how to back it up. I would personally bring in several commercials that demonstrate a stance—such as what “real” beauty looks like. I know the students would refute a claim stating that someone who is blonde, blue eyed, and a size 0 is the ideal definition of beauty, so using something like commercials and advertisements are essential to getting those differing opinions from students which would force them to think about why they feel a certain way. I agree with Smith, Wilhelm, and Fredricksen when they state that for us to be able to capture the essence of writing arguments, we need to first address the absence of authentic argument in our classrooms! If we do so, we can then move toward creating units that focus on central and essential questions and move through the process for creating arguments around them. “It is our obligation to prepare our students for the future. But we are convinced that we can only do so if we can engage them in the present. In the case of teaching students to read and write arguments, that should be easy. But we’re afraid it’s not” (38).
            
            In short, I can admit that before reading this book, I was like many others—someone who felt that my stance on arguments simple went along with how well I could persuade someone that I was right. I now know that it goes much deeper than this and if I want my students to be able to write and speak effectively using arguments, I need to view this as a tiered model. I can also admit that like many other teachers, I would have made the mistake of teaching argument with persuasion. To help eliminate this—I was looking online at some ways to help my students differentiate between the two—now three (Argument, Persuasion, and Propaganda). For my “Do”, I am attaching the url link to a  fantastic handout that I would include as a reference sheet for my students to look at when I am beginning my unit on arguments.


http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson_images/lesson829/Argument-Propaganda.pdf

Close Reading & Reading Like a Writer

Where Does Rigor Fit? - Kylene Beers
What is Close Reading?
Defining the Signposts
Explaining the Signposts
Wondrous Word: Writers and Writing in the Elementary Classroom by Katie Wood Ray
Mini-lessons for Literature Circles by Harvey Daniels and Nancy Steineke

SAY

I remember when I was in my AP Lit class in high school and we had the option of choosing 3 books for a final project. This project required us to take a “great literary work” and have a conversation with the author. This sounds like a fun project—one in which you allow your students to explore creatively and freely, no? It would have been that way for me, except the books were way too difficult to read and understand and we were expected to work on this alone. I knew that I liked English for a while, but I can admit at the moment I felt too overwhelmed and underprepared. My teacher thought that because we were the top of our class in an advanced placement course that the rigor of the work needed to be comparable to the course we were taking. After reading the articles for this week, I see that she could not have been more wrong! “Rigor is not an attribute of a text, but rather a characteristic of our behavior with that text. Put another way, rigor resides in the energy and attention given to the text, not in the text itself” (Beers, 21). Some teachers of English tend to be the elitist classroom practitioners who hold the belief that because they have their students reading books from hundreds of years ago that this creates an environment that is both rigorous and academically challenging, when in reality it creates an environment in which students are not able to conceptualize and understand what is being studied. Rigor, according to Beers, comes from the level of commitment and dedication spent with a text. If students are struggling to understand a text, but they (and you) are putting all your energy together into taking that text piece by piece until you understand it, this is what makes your curriculum rigorous. “If they are to read rigorously, students must be committed to understanding some intriguing character, to solving some problem, to figuring out what a writer believes or values and how those thoughts compare with their own…” (Beers, 22).  

Obviously we understand that in order to obtain this level of rigor in the classroom, we need to be scaffolding students to get to this level of thought. To do this, we need to be using much more close reading and reader response in our classes. I believe that for every close reading that takes place in the classroom, some sort of reader response needs to be added as well. Getting our students to think about a topic prior to digging in the text is a sure way to get them to make those personal and world connections to the text—and isn’t this what we want? I can admit that even though formal analysis is extremely important, I am someone who values reader response over it any day. I believe that in order for our students to become better readers, and even better writers, they need to go “there”. They need to have some sort of connection with the text prior to being tasked with understanding it. If you can make a student feel a certain way about a book before he reads it, you have won him over just a little bit more than if you tried to convince him this book is good because blah blah blah. Reader response and close reading work so well together in this regard. After you have students give their reader response, you employ a close reading for them and the “close reading should suggest close attention to the text; close attention to the relevant experience, thought and memory of the reader…” (WICR, 37). Having the two work together will then help the reader to make sense of their own memories as it relates to the text as well as help them take a smaller passage of the text and understand it too. But one key essential part is tying it all together again and making that connection with the bigger picture. Making sure that you come full circle and showing an understanding of the work as a whole. Sure this may take longer, but breaking it down and doing close readings will help ensure that your readers are understanding the text and relating it to those personal, world, and other textual memories.

The articles regarding signposts are simply amazing (shout out to B & P). Yes, I would use this in my middle school classroom, but the ideas are so practical and useful within the classroom and I think they would really help when you are trying to make sure that students are understanding the text. Making those connections are essential to your becoming a stronger reader. 

Do:

My do for the week is an example of student work in which they were asked to incorporate these same details in there own work with a book report.

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/136oUDOOWD8zIEtdUL_Kfcvasz-jwCnCZMDnJIFrvYr0/edit?usp=sharing

 

Technology & Online Book Clubs

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

Online Book Club

Looking back at my own experiences in high school, I do Not remember any of my classes having book clubs. After competing multiple courses, I do understand the importance of having the book club. One of the challenges that I had for myself was wondering how I would be able to create a book club that is outside of the traditional realm of the classroom environment.  I believe that the readings for this week are very important as they show house teachers can move beyond thinking that book clubs have to be done any certain way.  Creating an environment of which students can have book clubs online and give them the freedom to have multiple discussions in an environment in which they already thrive.  Students are using technology at a much faster rate than we can keep up with. It makes sense for us to take a very archaic teaching approach and make it far more assessable and creative for our students.

            I really appreciate it how Elizabeth Edmonson gives a wonderful example of how digital book clubs have worked for her. As a teacher who somewhat believes of the traditional approach, I sometimes find it very difficult to be able to incorporate technology in the majority of my classes—I still believe in holding books! Once I read the article, I had a hard feeling that this would work in any class. I begin to think about the difficulties of why digital book clubs may not actually work—then it dawned on me that I was beginning to grasp a hold of the teaching models that we DON’T need in the classroom.  After stopping to really consider my issues with technology, it forced me to stop and really consider my own teaching philosophy. Upon doing this blog, I actually stop to do another assignment in which I was asked to write out my teaching philosophy—to my amazement, I truly do believe that teachers should be on the brink of innovation and creativity in their classroom. Many of the new concepts around technology are things that I am embrace as a person, so it would make sense to embrace them as a teacher.

             Moving on from Edmundson’s piece, I thought it was a great place to move to discussing Daniels and Steineke’s piece on mini-lessons! I was thoroughly surprised at how practical and fascinating their article was on providing lessons for teachers to use. Many of the articles that we have read so far in this class have taken us on a journey to understanding a lot of theory, and it was good to be able to see how those theories can actually translate into best practices. I could almost see a lot of what we are doing in Vic’s class in this article as well! Journaling and keeping students writing seems to be a common concept across the board. Even with Scharber’s piece on technology, I believe that these educators thrive on not only making book-club and technology in general a part of their class, but they do so without isolating it into its own part of the class. Scharber wants students to be writing! She wants teachers to allow students to use technology the way they have been doing it (because we can’t stop it), but I took away the idea that we could be using it to work in our advantage! I have a Twitter account, and it takes skills to summarize what I want to say in 140 characters or less including spacing! The issue is that most teachers don’t value this sort of writing—it doesn’t follow what a traditional English class should look like!

            Book clubs don’t have to be boring, and they certainly don’t have to be done the way we are used to them being done. If we follow set key insights on them, I am sure that we will be able to create an environment in which students will LOVE it. Time, monitoring, planning, and accountability are all steps that the authors of the articles make note of as we are planning any sort of book club. Having students write and reflect is also equally important, as well as having fun with it.

            I am glad I was able to look at these articles, not only did they force me to really tackle the issues I was having with technology, but it helped me see that I have been making things harder for myself when it comes to using it in the classroom. Who’s to say that my students won’t like what I like? I’m sure if they are able to use their devices in class and still learn at the same time, it will be just fine.

DO

Book Club on Facebook through Twitter’s Lenses!

This Do is a creative activity that I would include in a classroom book club as it allows students to have a creative twist to book clubs. See the link below:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eOX0RXctuHqVSonzsg_LuvxtVtgtoMAyJm6Ght8lbRY/edit?usp=sharing