Book Clubs and Big Ideas

Continuing on with Daniels and Zemelman, we read about book clubs and inquiry units and how to incorporate them effectively in our classrooms.

I have been learned a lot about book clubs this semester in another one of my courses through the use of literature circles. Having now read about strategies to create effective book clubs, I now understand the way our literature circles have been designed. One key concept is to let the students choose what they want to read. We were provided with a handful of book options for adolescent literature and were given a brief description of each. From there, we each chose the book we liked best and created a group. It is a small class, but we managed to have groups of sizes three and four. It is important to keep the groups small so that everyone can participate, but not so small that there isn’t enough exchange of ideas.

Book clubs and literature circles are “structured discussion groups” that allow students to share and build on each other’s ideas. It is a good idea if everyone has a role so that there are specific components of the book that are being addressed and it can help lead the discussion along. And although they may not be formally addressed, there should be some structural and behavioral rules to go along with the groups as well, such as actually reading the book and participating in discussion. Book clubs help build social skills by creating meaningful and thought-provoking discussion that is mostly created by the students. The teacher should have little input in the group – maybe an overarching question here or there, but not a big player in the group, as I have also learned from my own literature circles in class. A lot of the time, when the teacher enters the group, discussion ceases, but they are merely there to monitor and help push the discussion along – and sometimes to grade you. Be careful how you grade though – make sure it is constructive to what you want the students to be learning, such as preparation and reading activities.

So the other “big idea” here is inquiry units. An inquiry unit has multiple components – large and multi-faceted with open-ended questions; makes reading real; covers a topic of importance for your subject, students, and the world; has clear goals and immediate satisfaction (no one likes hearing “You will use this in the future”); creates opportunities for student choice; has a meaningful process for sharing…the list goes on and on (but I think I got most of it).

There is definitely a lot to process there, but inquiry projects should have meaning and create opportunities for students to learn in their own way. These units should be guided at every step, making sure it’s not too big for the students to handle.

One example of an inquiry-based project is a RAFT (Role, Audience, Format, Topic). This type of project allows students to explore a specific topic from a certain perspective and share what they learn with their peers. I recently did a RAFT assignment for this class in which I had to do a textbook analysis and write a letter to the department textbook adoption committee, me being the department head, and convince them whether or not to adopt the textbook that I analyzed. It was definitely a longer and harder process than I expected, but I learned more by actual doing it on my own.

One thing that really stuck out to me in my reading, though, was when the authors said that you don’t need to cover all subject areas when creating an interdisciplinary unit. I know this is understandable because reaching every content area is a large task, but it made me think back to my last post and how math usually gets left out. I created a four week interdisciplinary unit last semester with a few classmates that was based on the theme of cooperation, and it seemed like when trying to apply themes to math, it was harder. I feel like most people would give up on trying to fit math into a unit, but it gets so easily overlooked that it’s being left out. My goal is that no matter who or where I am teaching, I will integrate math as much as possible when working with colleagues to create an interdisciplinary unit or inquiry-based project.