Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Book Club Discussion "Jobs"


Small group book discussions are a great way to get kids interested, excited, and engaged with books! I use a Book Club discussion format loosely based around the books Literature Circles: Voice and Choice in Book Clubs and Reading Groups and Book Club: a Literature-Based Curriculum.

I have found that Book Club discussions work best when everyone comes prepared with information to share. To that end, I have found that a mix of more open-ended categories or "jobs" works well when combined with a small number of more directed questions or vocabulary words.

Looking for great books for Book Club discussions? Check out my recommendations here.


Launching Book Club Discussions


Early in the year when we have our first round of Book Clubs, each student in a group is assigned a different job or role. This works best if you have the same number of jobs as times the Book Club will meet (i.e. four jobs for four discussions). That way everyone has a chance to do each job at least once. 

Here are the initial descriptions I include for each job:

Connector

Your job is to find connections between the book and the world outside. This means connecting the reading to

  • your own life.
  • happenings at school or in the neighborhood.
  • similar events at other times and places.
  • stories in the news.
  • other people or problems.
  • other books or stories.
  • other writings on the same topic.
Some things this reading reminded me of were:

Question Asker

Your job is to write down some good questions for your group to talk about. These could be questions

  • you had while you were reading
  • about a character
  • about the story
  • about a word
  • you’d like to ask the author
  • and more !

Write your questions here :

Passage Picker

Your job is to pick parts of the story that you want to read aloud and talk about in your group. These can be
  • a good part
  • an interesting part
  • a funny part
  • a scary part
  • some good writing
  • a good description

Be sure to mark the page number(s) of the parts you want to share. You may also want to use a post-it or a bookmark to mark the spots.

Parts to read out loud : [Here I include a table with two columns: page number and why I picked it]

Word Wizard

Your job is to look for special words in the story. Words that are

  • new
  • strange
  • funny
  • interesting
  • important
  • hard

When you find a word that you want to talk about, write it down below. You may also want to use a post-it or a bookmark to mark the spot. You may also want to use the dictionary to look up one or more of your words.

When your Book Club meets, help your classmates talk about the words you have chosen. Things you can discuss:

  • How does this word fit in the story?
  • Does anyone know what this word means?

[Then I include a table with four columns: word, page number, why I picked it, and dictionary definition.]

Artful Artist

Here is where you will draw something about the story that you liked: a character, the setting, a problem, an exciting part, a surprise, a prediction, etc. You may want to label your picture.


After students are comfortable with the different jobs, I shorten the descriptions considerably:

Connector

Here is where you will find connections between the book and the world outside. "Some things today’s reading reminded me of were ..."

Question Asker

Here is where you will write down good questions for your group to discuss. Remember to think about thick discussion questions with multiple answers rather than thin, simple "yes" or "no" questions.

Passage Picker

Here is where you will pick parts of the story that you want to read aloud and talk about in your group. Be sure to mark the part(s) you want to share with a sticky note and record why you picked that passage(s).

Word Wizard

Your job is to look for special words in the story. When you find a word you want to talk about, mark it with a sticky note and record why you picked it. You should also look up the definition.

Artful Artist

Here is where you will draw something about the story that you liked: a character, the setting, a problem, an exciting part, a surprise, a prediction, etc. You may want to label your picture.

The second major component of a good Book Club is the directed discussion questions. I'll talk more about those in my next post.

Looking for more Book Club articles and recommendations? Click here or the Book Club tag.

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