Chapter nine was dedicated to outlining how to hold the
perfect Book Club. Book clubs can be a more entertaining way to get your
students reading content-relevant texts of their choice. They’re also pretty cool
in that they incorporate both collaborative learning and individual reading.
I’ve been in quite a few book clubs thought my school
career, all of which took place in my language arts classes. I distinctly
remember enjoying the book clubs that we had in my AP English class in my
senior year. Because of the AP test, our goal for the class was to have as many
classic novels and their main ideas, motifs, themes, etc. in our repertoires to
be able to write about on the test. I recall our first clubs (there were only
two clubs due to the small class) forming from our choice between reading
either Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte or Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin.
I’ll be honest here: neither of those was particularly appealing to me. But
most of my friends chose Pride and Prejudice so I joined in. Each week, we’d
have to read a few chapters or so and use sticky notes to mark imagery,
foreshadowing, or other literary elements. Then, we’d hang out and discuss with
our group members about what we read. I distinctly recall how my group, of all
girls, would discuss the cute moments between Elizabeth and Darcy, and also our
frustrations with Lydia’s immaturity. We’d also spend a long time trying to
decipher some of the odd, old rhetoric.
 |
| Darcy and Elizabeth are #goals for sure |
My only beef with book clubs is that I don’t understand how
they could work in a non-language arts classroom. They could probably work in a
social studies classroom, but I just don’t see how I’d be able to fit a book
club in or make a book club relevant to my math or science classrooms. I'm hoping that our upcoming book clubs using content-area texts will help me figure that out.
314
Emily
Emily,
ReplyDeleteI definitely felt the same way until I read the word articles. It never even crossed my mind that this process could be used for virtually anything. How Outstanding!!! Although, I am still worried about time management in my classroom, especially being an upcoming first year teacher, but I am sure we could incorporate this into our class at least once every week or every other week.
Love you gifs as always!!!!
[73] (sorry Robinson =) !)
DeleteHilarious meme, Emily. I appreciate your concern regarding book clubs outside the ELA classroom. This is probably a concern we should take up in class. Although I've only been an English teacher, I can imagine how I think a book club could work in other disciplines, especially science and social studies. Math would be more challenging, though, as it's more difficult to link it to curricular content. Great question, though. We'll see what everyone thinks.
ReplyDelete