Endeavors of Innovative Teaching: Writing About Reading

Throughout the past few years, I've centered my reading and writing time around creating engaging book clubs for my students. The idea of a book club is the perfect way to differentiate in the classroom, and I'm so excited that my students have been amping up their reading ever since I launched my first book club a few weeks ago. Each book club unit focuses on a different theme or skill. For this specific unit, my teaching partner and I chose books that focused on strong character development. Before I began the unit this year, I took a look at last year's list and decided to revamp it. I traded some of the "not-so-loved" books from last year for ones that I hoped my students would fall in love with. I'm excited to say that many of my students (and even some of my lowest readers whom NEVER read!) are flying through these books! My guidelines for book clubs are pretty simple:

Students must choose a book from the list provided that meets their reading level (Students are given a Fountas & Pinnell reading level; they're asked to say within two reading levels of their letter.) For this book club, there were 10 different book choices. Most students have anywhere from 2-5 books that fall within their reading level.
If a student realizes that he/she has chosen a book that does not interest him/her after the first few chapters, he/she may trade it in for another book club book.
Students are encouraged to read as many of the book club books as they wish, but they are only required to read one per unit.
Once students have read at least two book club books, they may choose any book that they'd like to read. (Although, with the high-interest book list this year, many of my students are on their fourth of fifth book -- and we're only on the third week of the unit!)

Students are reading their character book club books at home and at school. For reader's workshop time, we read a mentor text together and I teach a lesson specifically about character development. Then, students are asked to try that lesson on their own book club book using guiding questions, graphic organizers, etc. For the past several years, I've been using Rules by Cynthia Lord as our mentor text. We're so lucky to have Cynthia Lord coming to our school at the end of the month! Even though this will be my third year hearing her talk about her books, I'm beyond excited!!

Although the kids seem to enjoy their independent work with their book club books, this year they have been looking forward to Friday book club meetings the most. My teaching partner and I decided that we would try our best to allow students who are reading the same books to meet every single Friday. Each Friday, we have an activity that allows them to discuss and analyze the characters in their book. The kids love working with students from another class, and it's great to see the kids discussing their books on such a deep level.

This past Friday, my teaching partner suggested that we try a Fakebook Character Analysis activity that she found on Teachers Pay Teachers. I loved watching the students really "get into" their book's characters. This was such an engaging activity, and every single kid was involved throughout their work time. They were super disappointed that they didn't have enough time to finish their pages, but we promised more work time for next Friday.