Emily's Book Club Entry

This past week we finished our book club for Shades of Gray. I have to say that I did enjoy the book and found there to be many lessons learned while historical information was presented. I haven't had a lot of experience doing a book club in school so this was a somewhat new experience. I was familiar with some of the methods and basic concept of a book club though.
I wasn’t able to go to the field trip to observe the book club so I went to a fourth grade classroom in my placement school to observe a book club there. I was so impressed! They had parent volunteers who came in to work with a group of 4-6 students. I am pretty sure the parents read the book at home so they can prepare and follow along with the student’s discussions. They are reading Traders in Time, which is about Michigan history. They have the book split up into five sessions, which covers about 3 chapters per session. Each session they have a different focus. When I was there the focus was on point of view. Each student had to respond to point of view in whatever way they chose to. One girl wrote a diary entry from one of the characters point of view. After a student shares, the group comments or reflects on the students work. In addition to the specific topic they also explore vocabulary, predictions, and write a summary on the chapters they read. I was so impressed with the student’s discussion and how on topic they were. There were a few groups without parent volunteers and they had such meaningful discussions. This made me excited to hopefully implement this in my future classroom. I think if it is set up properly and time is spent developing it, then it can be a huge success.