I'm sure you'll get lots of great suggestions for transitioning into book clubs, so I'm writing with a different message--sometimes it's okay to lose control. I have the experience often in my (4th and 5th grade) classroom that I give kids a lot of freedom, and 5-10 minutes into it I think it's totally not working because it looks like kids are just wandering around, and socializing, and not getting anything done. But I bite my tongue and sit on my hands and just wait and watch, and sure enough, when I give kids more time and watch more closely and listen carefully, they're actually doing amazing work. Of course, kids do need to know the purpose of why you're giving them this time, and your expectations of what kind of productivity you should see by the end of the period. And I often find it helpful to tell kids that I'm experimenting--I'm not sure how it will work, but I'd like to give them this freedom so I'm willing to give it a try and see how they do...have the kids talk a little about how you'll know that it's working well--and I've found that kids really do rise to the occasion. Trust the kids. Trust the kids. Trust the kids. Last year my colleague talked me into doing book clubs where I gave the kids no assignments or directions or anything--just told the kids this was their time to be excited about books and do work around books. It took 3 or 4 sessions for me to see anything (I kept going back to my colleague, saying "It's not working! They're just fooling around!" and she'd tell me to give it more time and trust the kids.) but finally I did--one group read the books in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series and wrote up character profiles of each of the characters, really discussing what was important about each character. Another group read the Rainbow Fairies series, which was a little young for them, but then they wrote their own books, in the same style. Another group read Room One by Andrew Clements and created a "detective's notebook" with information about the mystery in the story, and clues, as well as information they thought was important about the whole book. --And this was all on their own. I didn't tell kids to do any of it. Trust the kids. Natasha
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:32:15 -0400 From: miko...@aol.com Subject: [MOSAIC] Starting a bookclub To: Mosaic@literacyworkshop.org Message-ID: <8cb7798f237b426-284-...@webmail-df08.sysops.aol.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi Everyone, I'm trying to start book clubs in my 5th grade classroom.? I have to say that I feel overwhelmed and uneasy about "losing control".? Any suggestions on how to ease into this?? Thanks, Michele
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