Book clubs in a classroom as part of the curriculum is a
great idea. This book has stated over and over to add outside reading for the
students. The hard part with this idea is that there is never enough time in a
school year. The use of the book club gives students the opportunity to read a
narrative about what you are teaching and it does not take too much time away
from class. The only thing as a teacher is that in order to pull this off
successful you have to be extremely prepared. During the course of the book
club the teacher’s job is to just facilitate but this only works if the teach
comes to the club prepared. That means knowing the each book option, having read
the books and then know what the desired outcome from reading is. The major
idea that the students should take from the book. This is the one thing that if
I did a book club as a teacher I would have trouble with. I want to be truly
honest here and say that I don’t know if this is something I would do. I
believe it is a great idea and excellent for the students but I cannot say for
sure I would prepare enough for it. As a teacher I want to give the students
the best opportunities but I am scared that I will drop the ball more than once
for assignments. The idea that there will be classes I enter without any prep
and completely fail the lesson and the students. I can say over and over that
it will not happen but the truth is it most likely will.
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ReplyDeleteJodi I appreciate your honesty because quite frankly there's just not enough of that. Yes, we want to put our best foot forward and if there's one thing I heard the administrators say last week it was BE PREPARED, but you're right there are times we will fail. The important thing is to learn from our mistakes, pick ourselves up, dust off and move forward. I agree that book clubs require a lot of time, preparation and classroom management but they are beneficial. I think the thing to take away here is that we are given a lot of great ideas throughout our education courses but we need to pick and choose what works for us. That being said, we also need to push ourselves beyond the comfort zone to ensure we are being the best willing and able teachers we can be.
ReplyDeleteI agree, I know I personally have jotted down a lot of awesome ideas for classes. I think its important to pick and choose as Michele says but also to not forget about the ideas you don't use right away. There's always other years and different classes to incorporate different activities.
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