Cassandra Scharber- Digital Literacies
Elizabeth Edmondson- Wiki Literature Circles
Diana Lapp and Douglas Fisher- It’s All About the Book
Appleman- Critical Encounters in High School English
Harvey Daniels and Nancy Steineke- Mini-Lessons for Literature Circles

Online Book Clubs

Say:
     "What am I really doing to nurture such lifelong learners?"( Daniels 1). What an opener. It continues on explaining that all the practical ways of formative assessment and neat classroom engagements that we've been learning like visual vocabulary, friday quizzes, and the like, all may get us from point A in the year to point B, but they don't necessarily reflect skills of good readers or lifelong learners. Adults choose what they read and when they read it. They connect personally, "drawing on a repertoire of cognitive strategies...to understand tough text" (2). Books and articles are abandoned when they become uninteresting. "In short, "they own reading"(2). 

     So as a teacher, understanding that learning some theoretical applications can be useful, and formative checks and quizzes can help keep students focused, what (along with everything else to remember) to do is remember that your goal is to create lifelong, literate, learners--real readers. Socratic Circles are one answer. This teaching critical thinking, and forces collaboration, respect, and listening skills; it gives students roles and jobs. Book Clubs are another that are often paired with Circles. The books tell us that five to six students are ideal, yet in class, other seasoned teachers mentioned a much smaller number: three to four. So i suppose it really is up to the personalities and different levels of your students. 

     Mini-lessons are apparently key in front-loading Book Clubs of any type. Book clubs require connecting, visualizing, questioning, and inferencing skills. Simply throwing any group of students into an assignment, especially one as important and daunting as Book Clubs (online or physical) is asking for trouble. 

     Daniels goes on in length about how important planning time for book clubs in the classroom is. He even includes charts and diagrams (13, 15) about how one might schedule their classroom sessions to include such a thing. Further down the road it's just as important to create a similar calendar for individual groups (119).Practically fitting this time in may seem difficult, with all the standards, and pressure from parents and administrators to change the world, but this is one major step in those processes. Book clubs are crucial (though not completely necessary) in creating lifelong readers and learners. My Coaching Teacher explained early on to me that whenever I was to teach his classroom that I could change anything that I liked: I could add/remove decorations, change seating arrangements, etc. But the one thing that I could not remove from his periods were the allotted SSR time. This is what I remember in reading about the effectiveness of book clubs and literature circles. Learning and knowing how to read is important. 

     Dr. Vic O gave our classroom the "Find Someone Who" icebreaker at the start of the year (32). I like having students who think that it's a time waster compile a list of the social skills required to complete the sheet as an alternate assignment. Icebreakers and social activities are key in creating a safe and respectable space for circles of all kinds to occur. I think that I would use the Membership grid instead of the other activities though (40). Students hopefully would care more about the people in their individual groups, and there is more time spent with each student. The statistic about emotional/public rejection equating to physical pain is pretty incredible, but if I remember back to my high-school days, not too shocking (43).

     It's such a simple (almost) fix. But i've never thought to simply watch the groups interact and record the skills that they're missing or not engaging with. Starting by having students write and describe what "Friendliness and Support" look like and sound like will seem juvenile, but I imagine subconsciously helps--plus it sets a precedent and set of rules that can be referenced if behavior is off task or inappropriate (50). 

     I most definitely will try out the legal note-passing/ written conversation technique at some point (67). It will probably bomb because it removes the fun from note-passing and just becomes a silent writing assignment. 

     Chapter 6 offers some tips that appeal to me most as a new teacher, "Solving Problems: Students and Groups Who Struggle" (159-177). I like how this doesn't focus specifically on discipline problems, but with other legitimate things like domineering personalities and unpreparedness. Task Lists, Liability Forms, and Poker Chips are all decent ways to combat this before it begins--being proactive is the best management. Backup Questions and extended question lists are also great for students to be able to whip out if they have breezed through the first round of questions, or are stalled for whatever reason (179).
     "Love and social belonging are just as central to our students as they were to previous generations. It's no wonder that Web 2.0's collaborative, co-creative nature and social networking capabilities are so attractive to teens"(Edmonson 44). it goes on to praise Wikis as a platform for collaboration, but from what I understood about wikis, they were just user edited sites designed to host information (Like the StarWars Wookiepedia Game of Throne wikia). Perhaps the author took a more textbook definition of the term, or I have just been using it incorrectly. Regardless, the first few days of digital of community are extremely important-- and much like the start of the physical, brick and mortar year creating that community and making sure the students understand how to communicate and operate within the space is crucial.
     

Do:
     

Daily Lesson Plan

InstructorAnd Room #:	Date & Start-Stop Times:  40 Min	Subject and Block/Period: English 1 CP		Unit and Topic: Book Club introduction
Essential Questions: 1. What makes a good book club? 2. What are the roles of a good book club?			SC Standards/PACT/Common Core SC C&CR ELA- Inquiry; Principal of Reading; Meaning; Context; Craft; Language, Craft, Structure’ Range; Complexity
Items to Display as Agenda:  (Activities) Celebrations Book Pass Group Assignments Group Meeting
Lesson Procedures: (Introduction, Development, Conclusion) Intro Celebrations Journal Topic: If you just wrote a novel and you were trying to convince young students to read it, without telling them that you were the author, what would you do? What would the cover look like? How would you sell it? Share responses 10mins SSR 10mins Development Give spiel about starting book clubs, the benefits gained, and how these will be student-led--they have the power. 5mins Show video of what good/bad book clubs look like 10 min Have students break up into random groups of 4-7 and conduct book pass circles, having them fill out form similar to one used by Dr. Styslinger in class (with a rating system and title recording, etc.) 15 min Guide students in call/response discussion and determine as a class the major texts that will be used for the book clubs (number may vary based on class size but usually it should be 3-7 different books) 5 min Pass our/share guided and helpful prompt questions for book club discussions Conclusion Have students meet with their groups/ the students who chose the same book as them Students will create a reading calendar for the individual book clubs and begin reading  Homework Read assigned portion of their book club books
Materials and Resources:Book Club/Pass novels; videos of good and bad book clubs; guided prompt/question handouts; patience; book pass grading/comment sheet
Assessments and Assignment: Were the students all able to complete the book pass sheet, join an appropriate group, and come up with a reasonably paced reading calendar for their group?

     

     

  Additional Artifacts that were used to scaffold online book clubs by having students reflect on the canonical text, digitally: