October 4th blog

After reading Book Club Plus, and learning all the dimensions of how one would manage a Book Club Plus literacy framework, I started to see some similarities, some differences, and some things that I might want to incorporate into my classroom. First off, as I pointed out last week, my literacy program is slightly similar to the Book Club Plus framework, minus the theme aspect. My class engages in read-alouds, and do reader’s workshop, writer’s workshop, shared reading, literacy centers, and guided reading. They even engage in discussions about literature throughout the day. The aspects that are different between the Book Club Plus framework and my class, is the incorporation of a theme, and book clubs, or fishbowls. In my classroom, the different aspects of the literacy program are not managed by a connecting theme, but instead, are connected by various literary aspects and comprehension strategies. For example, in reader’s workshop the learners are currently learning how they are able to read a book, by reading the pictures. A whole unit has been dedicated to teaching the learners how to read the pictures. This overflows into writer’s workshop, where the learners are learning that the words that they write must correlate to their picture. Furthermore, they get this emphasis of picture/word correlation, when they engage in shared reading activities, in which they have to try and decode the word on the page by using the beginning sound presented and the illustrations. Thus, my teacher connects and makes sure to continually re-emphasis various objectives throughout all the literacy components, but they are not connected by a common theme, nor do the other lessons presented in each aspect of the literacy program always relate. For example, some days during shared reading the learners learn what the front of the book is all about, whereas during writer’s workshop they learn how to add details to a picture. There is no correlation. Their writing, during writer’s workshop, always has to be about something that has already happened, nothing about a story they have read. The only correlation between literature and writing I have witnessed is during literacy centers (the daily 5), in which learners listen to a book on tape and then have to draw a picture, illustrating their favorite part. This engages the children in a “writing out of” piece. As for the talk in my class, my learners do engage in a lot of talk related to different books, but not in the aspect of fishbowls or book clubs. Usually throughout a read-aloud, or during making meaning lessons, discussions are touched upon about the theme, specific to the story read. Learners engage in a lot of the discourse. A lot of the discourse resembles the types of questions and responses one might hear in a fishbowl or book club, however, the discussion takes place as a whole group. Thus, the questions asked and the ideas brought up, such as, “Why do you think this character did this?” is presented to the learners as a whole. Therefore, my learners are learning how to respond to specific types of questions, whether it be before a story, such as a prediction question, during a story, or after a story, just as they would in a book club. The downside is that my learners are not getting the social piece of how to interact with each other. In our discussions, it is a lot about me talking to them and them responding back to me. Sometimes, they engage in think-pair share, but they do not really talk amongst each other any other time. Thus, I am the main facilitator, not allowing them to discuss amongst themselves for long periods of time. I do, however, find the think-pair share beneficial and developmentally appropriate for my learners, for they are just learning how to listen to someone else, how to vocalize their opinion, and how to talk amongst each other to come to a conclusion. Both of these are skills that I feel are essential for them to have before they would ever be able to engage in fishbowl discussions or book clubs. I feel like maybe my learners would be able to engage in fishbowls, later in the year, if they continue to be successful in whole-group discussions, and working with their think-pair share partners.
If I were able to add dimensions to my literacy program, from the Book Club Plus framework, I would add a theme to connect all of our different literacy components. I don’t think I would necessarily add fishbowl or book clubs right away, as I pointed out, because I am not sure my learners are quite ready for that. However, as I pointed out, my learners may be able to later in the year. I think once they gained the specific social skills, pointed out in Book Club Plus!, of “asking good questions, knowing how to build on another student’s comments, and engaging other classmates,” during large group, they may be able to then take those skills to work in highly regulated fishbowls (Rapheael, Florio-Ruane, Goerge, Hasty, Highfield, 2004). In contrast, however, I would be very excited to implement themes to our literacy program, especially themes that would be relevant to science and social studies. The Book Club Plus framework talked about how it is important to pick literature pieces that cross-disciplines, and since I am such a strong advocate of creating a stronger social awareness in younger learners, I would love to add themes relevant to teaching about social studies and science. I think teaching my learners themes such as friendship, justice, patience, family, cultures, etc., would not only focus my literacy lessons, but would greatly impact the knowledge my learners would gain from engaging in reading and writing throughout the day. I loved the idea of creating specific “big theme questions,” that the learners want to learn throughout the unit, and that the learners answer throughout. This makes learning so meaningful to them and gives them a specific purpose as to why they are engaging in different tasks. True, there still will be the different objectives embedded, such as, learning about concepts about print during shared reading, but the learners would also be learning a lot about the theme. It would make the different literacy lessons seem less segregated and irrelevant. I further love how then, the writing they would do during writer’s workshop would be relevant to the reading that they did. This would make it so much easier to teach learners different writing styles and how to use writing to respond to reading. There could be so many more connections. For example, if you were doing a lesson on cultures, you could have the learners do a simple compare and contrast piece, a letter to a friend around the world, etc. They would be able to engage in meaningful pieces of writing that exemplified different writing styles. I think that it would be really easy to connect all the different literacy aspects by a theme. The only part that would be difficult would be finding different selections of books to use. Other than that, I think that my class already engages in enriching discussion and we already talk about a lot of deep themes, thus I feel they would be able to easily transition into a theme based literacy program.
I also really enjoyed all of the resources for ELL learners that the Book Club Plus framework talked about implementing. The idea of books on tape, for both ELL learners and learners who struggle with reading, really sparked me as a great idea. I truly believe that learners who find reading difficult are often placed at a disadvantage because they are given books that are developmentally appropriate but are not as rich in content. Thus, those learners start to lose their love for reading because they are not able to really engage in enriching text. I truly believe, in allowing them to listen to books on tape, instead of not being able to engage with certain higher content texts, would keep them more engaged and loving reading. They would have the opportunity to learn how to become stronger readers during guided reading, thus not taking away from their ability to grow as readers. Furthermore, I loved how chapter 10 talked about having books in ELLs’ native languages so they are able to pick up the content. So much of reading to me is the comprehension piece, the delving deep into the meanings of books. If I am able to share that with my ELL learners, that would be beyond words to me. So often ELL’s struggle because they cannot get past the decoding. This would solve that, for bigger purposes such as comprehension or for their writing. If they are able to read richer content books, they are going to engage in more in-depth writing. I think the books on tape and books in my ELL’s language would be really easy to implement and would only take time and effort on my part to find the resources.
Overall, though I feel as though my literacy program is strong, I think that it could be even stronger if I added a theme as a connecting piece to tie all of our literacy components in the day. I also think that it is really important to add books on tape to my classroom and texts written in the languages of my learners. I believe all of these dimensions would make my learners stronger readers and writers, and also would make them better citizens, as it would further increase their social awareness (by adding cross-cultural content as the source of where I derive my themes).