Blog Post week 3 prompt

I would like to preface this post saying that my classroom instruction is currently focused around preparing for the MEAP, so we haven’t started our normal literacy instruction yet.  I haven’t really been able to get a clear grasp on what our language arts routines are yet.  My CT has however told me a lot about what our curriculum and literacy instruction will look like after the MEAP, so I do have some idea of what kinds of things we will do and what kind of framework we will use.

I see a lot of similarities between our classroom practices and the Book Club Plus framework.  Although I am in an upper elementary classroom, we still utilize teacher read aloud everyday.  We have a wide variety of reading levels in our fifth grade classroom, but they are all able to have the commonality of the chapter book that the teacher reads everyday.  The book we are reading right now is a chapter book that is above the level of several of my students, so it allows them to engage and be excited about text they would not normally be able to encounter. 

My teacher has a wide library with many culturally diverse and meaningful themes, which is largely due to our multicultural and multilingual school wide community.  Students are able to choose books that have topics that are meaningful or important to them, or select books that contain themes relevant to their daily lives.  They are assigned a reading log every week where they focus on one of the aspects of literacy.  This is similar to the ideas presented in the Book Club Plus framework of constructing meanings and concepts of aspects of literacy.  I also see a lot of the comprehension principles mirrored in the way my CT encourages effective comprehension strategies.

My teacher has told me about the literature circles that she has developed and implemented for the past few years.  This involves students forming Book Clubs, which start out being based off of reading level.  The group all reads a text, and assigns roles to each of these members.  I am unsure of exactly the titles of these roles, but I know that my teacher said the students are required to present their books in a variety of different fashions, allowing for all different learners with multiple intelligences to use their abilities.  The book unit involves various types of writing exercises, cross-curricular connections, as well as speaking and listening in a group context.  This seemed to me to be comparable to the Book Club Plus model.

The reading and writing I have seen up til now however doesn’t really look like the book club plus model.  Other than the library selection and teacher read aloud, our literacy instruction has been using worksheets and teacher based instruction on things like authors purpose, editing and scoring a piece of writing, comprehension strategies and the six traits of writing; all things that students will need to know for the MEAP.  I am very excited for after the MEAP, when it sounds like all of my subjects will get a lot more fun and meaningful.