Book Clubs
Overview
Students practice making and finding meaning in texts through book discussions moderated by teachers to varying degrees. Discussing books in a social environment may help students to engage in deep discussions involving Critical Literacy while building Background Knowledge, Disciplinary Literacy, and Vocabulary.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
Watch how this high school turned book clubs into a social event that encourages students to read. By bringing in teachers as mentors, these book clubs have transformed reading into an exciting activity while building their Vocabulary and Social Awareness & Relationship Skills.
Design It into Your Product
Videos are chosen as examples of strategies in action. These choices are not endorsements of the products or evidence of use of research to develop the feature.
See how Bookopolis allows participants to rate and review books that they have read. These reviews and ratings create a global Literacy Environment and expand readers' Social Supports, as they share books with peers all around the world.
Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Cooperative Learning Strategies
When peers are able to work together to plan, draft, edit, and revise during the Composition process, their writing quality improves.
Flexible grouping is a classroom practice that temporarily places students together in given groups to work together, with the purpose of achieving a given learning goal or activity.
As students move through multimodal stations pertaining to a particular unit, the social and physical nature of the activity supports deeper understanding.
As students work with and process information by discussing, organizing, and sharing it together, they deepen their understanding.
When students provide constructive feedback on each other's work, they learn to give relevant suggestions, receive specific ways to improve their writing, and engage in Metacognition.
Having students teach their knowledge, skills, and understanding to their classmates strengthens learning and increases Motivation.
When students explain to others, they deepen their understanding and gain confidence in their learning.
Bringing students' every day literacy practice of texting into the classroom provides regular, low-stakes practice communicating with authentic audiences.
Think-pair-share encourages meaningful student discussion by allowing for extra processing time and multiple shares.
Writing conferences allow students to fully immerse, share, reflect, and receive feedback during the writing process, promoting Motivation for continuing the sometimes lengthy revision process that occurs in the upper grades.
