Sem 3

The four main components of book club, teacher read aloud, shared reading, independent reading, and writer’s workshop, are all seen within my classroom. So far I have been reading from a chapter book called Ida B. Applewood. This story is above perhaps half of the class’s instructional level but is still at a fully age appropriate level. This is good for the students because they are able to hear an entertaining story without having to struggle through some of the harder vocabulary. I read with a lot of intonation and prosody which is something else that I think would be lost upon many if they were to take on this book individually. The best thing (I think about a read aloud) is that it lets the reader’s passion for reading shine through and hopefully be absorbed by the listeners.
We don’t do shared reading quite like Book Club Plus suggests, it is more of a “Johnny, read number 1…Sallie, read number 2” kind of thing, so perhaps that one isn’t seen in my classroom. But we do have independent reading each day for at least 15 minutes. During this time students read their choice of book from the guided library. Students know their letter and are encouraged to read at that instructional level but are free to choose a lower or higher book if they want.
Just this week we are started book club and I will be very interested to see how it plays out. To begin groups will not be student led at all, but fully teacher lead. Students will read their books outside of club. So far it appears that will be following the book club plus model fairly closely.
The different literacies can be seen in my classroom all throughout the day. Starting with morning meeting each student is given an opportunity to both speak and listen and we try to develop their social literacy by encouraging them to be open with one another and hold self facilitated conversation. Good old fashion reading literacy is being driven home currently because we are preparing for the MEAP. During this time we directly teach comprehension strategies as suggested in chapter three. For writing students get to use a daybook which helps facilitate both reading and writing practices and conventions.
As we delve into bookclub in the coming days I look forward to comparing more deeply the philosophy found in our book to what I see in the classroom.