Book Club Plus

I found the “Book Club Plus” to be insightful and helpful when thinking about literacy instruction. I really like that everything points back to discussion groups. For example the concept map on page 11 really breaks this down. It has discussion groups in the middle and then read aloud, writing and community share and all of these aspects can go back to discussion. This model is more like literacy instruction in my classroom than unlike it. The students very often after a read aloud are told to turn to a neighbor and discuss a guided question. One part of the “Book Club Plus” that is constantly being utilized in my classroom is that of making predictions. Every time we read a book we ask for predictions at least once. This is a great way to track comprehension and simply a way of determining who is paying attention during the read aloud. One thing that I noticed when reading was speedwriting. My CT calls this free writing but has explained that it will soon be a part of their curriculum, This can really promote a interest in writing as they can write what they would like to write about.

In my classroom we do a lot of reading during read aloud. This is when we use books with a lot of repetition. This is a great opportunity for the class to read along together as we point at the words. The students have not done a lot of formal writing other than writing their names, but they have done writing as far as mathematical equations and labeling pictures with words. In the writing we have done thus far there have been a few students that get frustrated with inventive spelling, but for the most part students are catching on to sounding out a word they would like to spell. We also do a lot of modeling with inventive spelling which seems to help. There is a lot of listening and speaking in our class. Whenever we have discussion on the carpet these two area of literacy are constantly intermingled. My CT never just stands at the front of the classroom and lectures. The students are always expected to be listening and answering questions when they arise. I have also seen viewing in the classroom. For example when we discuss during a lesson we often write on the easel and go over what we write over and over so the students don’t repeat the answers that were already said, but also so the students can get used to seeing written language that they actually thought of writing.