Update on Donte and Book Club

Donte has been reading many more books that are at his reading level during independent reading. He really, really, REALLY likes writing post-it notes about his reading (see picture below).



When I conferenced with him though, I realized that he was writing down one sentence from every page or so, which didn't necessarily improve his comprehension. When I asked him to explain why he chose to write a particular sentence from the book onto a post-it, he explained his choice it was clear that he had misunderstood the word "attire" which really distorted his comprehension of the page. So, even though the quantity of Donte's reading has really improved, the quality still needs improvement. I think he's really going to benefit from partner reading. Speaking of which...

My boys guided reading group that's reading Big City Otto (graphic novel) is going great! They met for the second time, and began by selecting post-its of questions that they'd written while reading and wanted to discuss as a group. The complexity of the questions selected greatly, but there were some deep ones: Where are Otto's parents? and How did Otto not notice that the Boss smacked Crackers? Tyshaun was able to answer the second question by pointing out a graphic novel feature of showing elapsed time in a square bubble that said "A few hours later", thus showing that Otto did notice, it just took him a few hours to do so.

One issue that I've had to help all groups with, but that this group did a very good job mitigating after my intervention, was listening to others before talking. This is so key because it seems that at book club everyone is so eager to share their thoughts that the conversation is not so much a back and forth dialogue, but instead a schizophrenic monologue. Tyshaun (a vocal boy) in particular, was very mindful of self-censoring and asking people who hadn't already spoken to share. What impressed me most was how the discussion just kept flowing, even when they went on to discuss vocabulary words. They'd chosen words like "vandalized" (which they were able to solve by context clues) and "peckish" (which they solved incorrectly and had to be corrected).

We addressed differences with characters (thinking about which character is smarter) and many other interesting topics that came organically from them. There was productive disagreement around facts from the story, and high motivation to look back in the text for clarification.

As independent reading closed down, I asked them to read the entire text once more, making sure to stop and write down questions, thoughts, vocabulary words, and particular frames that made an impression on them. The next day they voraciously completed this task:





I've never seen such enthusiasm among a group of readers!! I think the book choice of graphic novels, and the privilege of reading it together and discussing it, makes a big difference!