Book Group and more

Literacy Block @ Eastgate Elementary 4th Grade | 10/25/2008 | 1.5 hours field work | Present: Classroom teacher, students and myself

Background

I had the opportunity to observe the Literacy class in session in the 4th grade classroom of Eastgate Elementary. The students were focused on three types of activities during this time block that I will describe below.

Key Observations and Methods

Book group: The teacher has created five reading groups (5 students each) in the class. Each group has been assigned a book that they are reading some chapters from each week and also doing some writing on in their reading group journals. During the period I observed, the teacher was getting together with one group at a time, to discuss the chapters they had read and share their writing. During the discussion, the teacher did the following —

• Touched on what the chapters were about

• Went through the questions that the students had been asked to discuss in their writing

• Every student got to share their responses to the questions

• Read more of the book together. Each student in the group took a turn reading out aloud.

• Assigned reading for the coming week and a writing assignment.

• It was clear that the teacher had chosen each book in response to the particular students in the group. The groups seemed totally engaged in the story of each book.

• One group also listened to another book on tape. This was the group of students having the hardest time with reading.

Independent Reading: While the teacher met with a book group at a time, the rest of the students read the books for their reading group. They were asked to read quietly and by themselves. Students who were done with their assigned reading, read other books. The back wall of the classroom is laden with books, organized by author, genre and other student interests. On top of the shelves are some books being showcased, ones that might attract the students the most.

Writing in Social Studies: Students who were not meeting with the teacher or completing their assigned reading were working on a writing piece. They were filling out a form that was guiding them through the process of buidling up a character biography. This was based on reading and discussions they had in their Social Studies class on Native American clans. The questions on their form addressed all aspects of one might expect to see in a character biography. Each student was choosing a character to be and describing the character. This would eventually lead to a paragraph long character biography. It was encouraging to see such an easy overlap between social studies and literacy that kept with the pertinence of the work in both subject areas.

Questions Pondered

The following are some questions I pondered based on this experience:

Q: Should students/children be responsible for creating some of the discussion questions or should that soley be in the hands of the teacher?

A: In my ideal learning environment, learning would be collaborative, every step of the way. In such an environment, children would naturally contribute questions to be discussed. That said, I think any learning environment is enriched when children take greater responsibility for their learning — that is the first step towards becoming a self-sustaining learner. To that end, it would be more meaningful to setup a book group in which students also contribute questions to the discussion. A natural way to do this is for students to make note of the questions that they came upon while reading the book and to pose them to the group during the discussion session.

Q: How does the teacher determine what makes a good question for students to ponder?

A: I know what makes for bad questions. It is harder to define what makes good questions for a book group setting because so much depends on the particular book and learning group.

That said, what makes for bad questions is the fact that they have only one right answer. Those are the worst questions to ask — they put the teacher in a position of authority, begging students to guess the single right answer the teacher has in mind. When questions have a universally known single right answer, the question is not worth asking — the answer can be looked up when needed. When questions have a single right answer in the mind of the person asking it, it is demeaning to the receiver of the question. It puts them up to the impossible task of treasure hunting through the brain of the questioner.

On the other hand, good questions might …

… engage the learner to connect the reading to their own lives .. make it more meaningful to them

… engage them to consider the mindset of the writer, in turn engaging them in the process of being writers

… consider the broader implications of the story — the larger global context it is set in and so make it relevant to greater aspects of life

… help the student experience what the characters in the story are experiencing … and in doing so, make the story more real, make the characters come alive, help the student relate to the story and to its characters which might lead to a love for reading

… deepen student creativity in some way

Takeaway(s)

It was fascinating to note the combination of activities available to students. The combination met many student needs. For example,

— there was group and individual work options
— independent and group reading was occurring
— a writing assignment was on hand

The combination of activities and the clear engagement of students in the books they were reading meant that close to 80-90% of the class was well-focused on its work almost the entire hour of the session. This was impressive to see.

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