Book Clubs: Getting It Rightwith Character Education

Anna Ballard

June 17, 2015

Background

• History of book club• First year: mornings, fourth and fifth graders, Tale

of Despereaux and Phineas McGuire Gets Slimed Second year: purchase ordered books, Chomp–Mornings and afternoons

• Third year: again, Chomp, afternoons• Celebrations• Fourth year: GET IT RIGHT

First, What Not to Do:

• Three Don’ts and one Do• Don’t dictate choice• Don’t do “freestyle”• Don’t do all the work

• Do require student preparation

Get It Right Club

• Let kids name club• Let kids choose book• Get funding, later• Theme for club: Kindness, Habits of Mind

Plan for First Meeting

• Girls first.• Put out books, let kids rank them and I’ll tally rankings.• Will purchase books, get reimbursed later. (Donors Choose---*(see Jed!!!!) or PO)• Harvey Daniels’ charts, let students decide if they want to have roles

or just keep logs and post-its (Daniels says that the roles are to be used for “conversational emergencies: if you restrict the reader to a certain kind of cognitive resposne each day…you may suppose that you should be visualizing when you read.”) But real readers don’t work this way. They think about all elements of the text and use all their congnitive lenses, jumping around, noticing a key work, visualizing a scene, questioning a character’s motives, and so forth.”

• Remember club is VOLUNTARY!!!!!

Plan for Second Meeting

• Plan for behavior guidelines. (Let students list rules they’d like to follow. Discuss what would make them feel comfortable discussing the book.)

• Rules should include: “It’s ok to disagree; just do it agreeably.” and give examples! “I never thought about that..” “I think you may have not have considered….” “Does anybody else have a different opinion?”

• Checklist for listening in literature circles (handout)• Give out books, baggies, spiral notebooks and post-its and

guidelines for use.• Decide how much to read for next week.• Introduce Habits of Mind and The Three Questions

Resources

• Daniels, Harvey. 2002. Literature Circles: Voice and Choice in book Clubs and Reading Groups. Portland, Maine: Stenhouse Publishers.

• Day, Jeni Pollack; Spiegel, Dixie Lee; McLellan, Janet; Brown, Valerie B. Moving Forward with Literature Circles: How to Plan, Manage, and Evaluate Literature Circles that Deepen Understanding and Foster a Love of Reading. 2002. New York: Scholastic Books.

• Hill, Bonnie Campbell, Johnson, Nancy J., and Schlink Noe, Katherine L. 1995. Literature Circles and Response. Norwood, Maine: Christopher-Gordon Publishers,

• Peterson, Ralph, and Eeds, Maryann. 1990. Grand Conversations: Literature Groups in Action. New York, NY: Scholastic, Inc.

• Trelease, Jim. 2001.)The Read-Aloud Handbook. Fifth Edition. New York, NY: Penguin Books.

• Spires, Elizabeth. 2002. “The Three Questions.” New York Times (April 21.)