Juli Kendall's Weekly
Reading Workshop Journal
A MiddleWeb Listserv Project
Self-selected members of the MiddleWeb Discussion List are joining
together to explore the Reading Workshop and other ideas about supporting
young adolescent readers. Juli Kendall, a reading teacher/coach in Long
Beach, California, is helping moderate the discussion. Juli is also keeping
a weekly journal of her own Reading Workshop initiative. Find out more about
our project at our Reading Workshop homepage.
You'll find Juli's background article here.
Links to many of the tools created by Juli and her colleagues are embedded
in these journals. Most often, when you click on them, a PDF file will begin
to download. You'll find a list of the downloads here.
Week #31
Book Clubs Are All the Rage in Our Class
Our Reading Workshop, the delightful result of perseverance and hard work,
has discovered its next big thing: book clubs. Despite Oprah's decision
to "cut back," book clubs are all the rage in our class.
It's not hard to see why. This year's biggest surprise -- kids have gone
crazy over chapter books. It follows a careful laying down of groundwork
to make our readers successful and reading a pleasant experience. Feeding
the burgeoning "club scene" are books such as Sideways Stories
from Wayside School, Scary Stories and its many sequels, the
Junie B. Jones series, and Island of the Blue Dolphins.
Over time, the success of books like Crocodiles and Alligators and
Whales, both by Seymour Simon, demonstrated that books about science
(nonfiction ones) could appeal to girls and boys in book clubs, as well
as student researchers and student writers in Writing Workshop.
If we needed any further convincing about the potential of the book clubs,
A Child Called It, should erase any doubts. This is a very powerful
book, part of a series of three (The Lost Boy and A Man Called
Dave are the sequels), and it is changing "reading lives"
in our Reading Workshop. Something has happened to our readers. They just
can't read anymore without "talking back to the book."
A word-of-mouth book
To be honest, A Child Called It is not on the approved list for this
grade level. Kids are reading it on their own time at home. But sometimes
the motivation to read doesn't come from lists, as we all know, but rather
from the recommendations of friends. That's what happened with this book.
Gina read it first. Her cousin recommended it and gave her a copy. As Gina
was reading it, Maria got interested. So when Gina finished, she lent her
the book. Then Esmé found out about it. Now she has her own copy,
and after just a weekend of reading, she's within 20 pages of the end. Considering
where these kids were at the beginning of the year, this is amazing.
"Listen to this part," one said.
Then another chimed in, "Wait, this is even better!"
"Do you know what his mother did to him?" questioned a third.
"I'm going to read the end again because it says he is finally free."
Book clubs are providing a creative outlet for the need to talk about this
particular book.
How we made the book club strategy our own
Trying to copy a successful model, even when it's in common use, is a strategy
that's bound to fail. In order to make book clubs work, we needed to make
the idea our own. Here's how we have structured book clubs for success in
our Reading Workshop:
Finding book club teams: We started by letting kids choose groups
of four. We watched and listened to the interactions and took notes on things
we thought needed to be changed.
Finding clubhouses: (I love this term!) Each club found a space in
which to meet. Most of them headed to the corners of the room. Two clubs
actually met under large tables on cushions. Interesting.
Setting standards for book clubs: Kids worked in their book clubs
to write standards and expectations. Our class decided on these:
+ Respect the other Book Clubs around you.
+ One voice talks at a time.
+ Use the Reading Strategies:
-Making Connections
-Questioning
-Visualizing
-Inferring
-Determining Importance in Text (Nonfiction)
-Synthesizing
+ Take notes and write in your Reading Journal.
+ Stay in your Clubhouse.
Starting with short text: We based this on a suggestion from The
Art of Teaching Reading, p.410, in "Lifting the Level of Work Children
Can Do in Reading Clubs."
One of the most effective ways we can help children progress
toward being ready for successful book clubs is to have them meet over a
few days in an early version of clubs to talk about short, shared texts.
Accountable Talk: You need something to talk about ("moving
from purposes to activities to talk")
Because talk is always about something, it doesn't really make
sense to focus on talk out of context. In order to recognize and support
accountable talk, it is critical to focus on the activities and tasks that
are carried along by the talk. It's impossible to identify "good"
or "productive" or "accountable" talk without taking
into consideration the goals, topics, and content of the lesson, and the
relationship of the learners to each other and to the task at hand. For
this reason, in thinking about and promoting accountable talk, we are always
moving from purposes to activities to talk. (Institute for Learning, University
of Pittsburgh)
Monitoring and Adjusting: Change is constant.
Enjoying the results: Watching and listening as they build new understandings
from their reading.
What the kids think
So what do the kids think about book clubs? Here's a selection of comments
from our students:
"I really like book clubs. They make it more interesting
to talk about books." Leti
"Because it is fun to learn about what other people are reading."
Esmé
"I like book clubs because we retell and infer." Rogelio
"I feel great about the book clubs because we get to talk to our
partners and we write about what we read." Ramon
"It's like a girl's club with our friends. It's fun to read and
do work with friends, too." Jenny
"I like book club because you can talk about a fun book and have
a good talking place and rest your own self." Vuthy
"It's like the tree house." Gina
The key to success is finding a book club team that works well together
to produce something well oiled-with good chemistry. Something that will
help our readers build their understandings about what they are reading.
"I like the book club because you get to share some things
about the book and you could help each other with your book. Also, because
we get to read the same book with our friends." Maria
Great resources for Book Clubs
Small Planet Book
Club, including their book club title, Book
Club for Middle School
"Book Clubs," Chapter 20, Pg. 395-427 in The
Art of Teaching Reading by Lucy Calkins
"Section 4: Literature Study," Pg. 252-300 in Guiding
Readers and Writers by Fountas and Pinnell
Yellow Brick Roads: Shared and
Guided Paths to Independent Reading by Janet Allen
Literature Circles by
Harvey Daniels
See Juli's April curriculum map
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