Friday, October 29, 2010

Book Club

I haven't been able to teach much this week because I couldn't attend 5th grade planning since I was at the career fair on Monday.  Since I haven't been able to teach I have been trying to interact with the kids in other ways.  A couple days ago I was walking around to see what they were reading.  One girl had just started reading "Island of the Blue Dolphins."  I told her that I had just a hard time reading that book when I was in 5th grade and that I would have to read it with her.  Before long, I had 8 other students wanting to read it too.  So I decided that we would read it on our own time and then talk about it at lunch.  We call it our class book club.  Some of my student's will run up to me after they finish a chapter and say things like "Ms. Michael you are just not going to believe what happened in the last chapter!"  They are getting so excited about this book and being able to discuss it as a club.  For the past two days at lunch I would come sit with the kids and they would talk to me about the book and their favorite parts.  Today they decided that wanted to sit at the same table together to talk about it.  It's been really great to see these children get so excited about reading.  Not only are they learning vocabulary through reading this book but they are also learning to relate to each other better through our discussions.  I will definitely be using this idea in my own classroom.

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