Student Book Clubs: Learning to Learn Together

I’m reading over 6th and 7th graders’ reflections on their book club discussion reflections, and I’m delighted. The Winn-Dixie group has noticed all on their own that Winn-Dixie’s “pathological fear” of lightning is a strange contrast to his usual calm disposition, and they’re predicting that it is going to come up again later in the book. The Wonder group comments that they did a better job of piggybacking on other member’s comments. 

The Caterpillar Summer group noted that Macon’s words about half of life being just showing up are coming up again and again, so it might be connected both to the past mystery of what happened between the mom and her father—and to the current mystery of why Macon seems so gruff. And the Dan Unmasked group said, “We had such a great discussion today that we weren’t even finished when our time was up!” 

We are 2 weeks into our first book club experiment, and it’s going well! Students are half-way through their books, and they are growing in their discussion skills, their literary analysis skills, and their understanding of resilience.

Their first task was to work together to divide their book up into 18 assignments and report their decision to me. Most of them took the total number of pages and divided by 18 and said they were done. I said, “If that's what you want. You’re really going to just stop randomly in the middle of a chapter?” “Oh,” they responded, and went back to discuss it some more. I think they’ll appreciate the work teachers put into dividing up assignments a little more!  

Since then, we start each day with a 10-minute lesson on the day’s topic. It might be... 

• A discussion skill (like piggybacking, or respectfully disagreeing).
• A literary analysis skill (such as a Notice and Note signpost like “Again and Again” or a literary term like conflict or foreshadowing). 
• Content on how to build resilience (like getting connected or being proactive). 

Next they take their books and journals (see below for the generic journal page and examples of how different groups used it) and move into their groups. There, they apply the focus lesson in their discussion and talk about the thinking on last night’s reading that they held in their journal. After that, they reflect on the day’s discussion (see end of post for reflection) and turn the journal page and the reflection in to me. 

Finally, they have 10 minutes to get started on their next reading. (For this daily schedule as well as for the discussion lessons and reflection sheet, I am indebted to Lesley Roessing's Talking Texts: A Teacher's Guide to Book Clubs across the Curriculum.)

What do I do while students discuss? The first week I wandered around the classroom, listening in to various discussions, noting what was going well, what misunderstandings were happening, and what skills needed more guidance, intervening on the spot or in the next day’s focus lesson. The second week I spent a whole discussion sitting in on each group. I’d meant to just observe, but I found it was a really important time to give some specific instruction and modeling. Next week I hope to wander again.

In addition to watching the students grow in their discussion and analysis skills, I’ve been kind quietly geeking out about how amazingly well the novels are illustrating what I’ve been learning about resilience. You see, I just picked them to go with Wonder, which half of the class this year had already read. So I thought that resilience is a topic that interests me, I picked a bunch of really good books with protagonists that overcome challenges, and I did some research (see Mayo Clinic’s “Resilience: Build skills to endure hardship”). It seemed like it would fit the books pretty well. 

Then came the actual lessons. The first week we learned about the importance of social connectedness to resilience. This week we learned about the importance of being proactive. I showed students the “stuck on a broken escalator” video as a counter example. Before class the next day, I was reading the assigned section from Dan Unmasked, and both skills—getting connected and being proactive—are mentioned on the same page (202)! 

Here's how it happens: Ollie, Dan, and Courtney have brainstormed a list of possible endings to the story they are writing, and now they are winnowing down the choices. When they are down to the last 3, they eliminate the ending where a new group of characters shows up out of the blue, because, Ollie says, “You can’t always wait for somebody else to fix your problems, you know?” (Bing-bong: proactivity!) Then they eliminate the ending where the protagonist goes it alone because Courtney and Dan simultaneously reach the conclusion that teamwork is required. (Bing-bong: social connectedness!)  

We have 2 more weeks left. I’m really intrigued to see how the books continue to fit with the 4 more steps to resilience that I got from Mayo Clinic: make every day meaningful, learn from experience, remain hopeful, and take care of yourself. I’m also looking forward to mixing the groups together to discuss connections among their books, especially as to how their characters build resilience.  

What about you? Have you tried book clubs with your students? If so, what have you and your students learned through the experience?

P. S. Here's an example, mentioned at the top of the post, of the discussion reflection students do each day: