Homework from last week: 2-14-13 Homework from last week: Do any homework needed to allow you to finish your first book club. Work on your formal paper (due Feb 28). Keep reading. Read books you might use connected to your class, but read some “recreational” titles, too. Tonight: Books for recreational reading Value of independent reading Book talks Book club discussion #1B Book club reports

Why spend valuable class time on independent reading, especially in a non-ELA class? ADEPT Standards APS 8 – Maintaining an environment that promotes learning Creates a safe physical environment that is conducive to learning Creates and maintains a positive classroom environment Creates and maintains a classroom culture of learning that includes modeling positive interactions, including cooperation/teamwork/ respect

Literally hundreds of correlational studies find that the best readers read the most and that poor readers read the least. These correlational studies suggest that the more that children read, the better their fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Report of the National Reading Panel, 2000, p. 12 It’s true that correlation does not equal causality, but these and other studies, as well as common sense, suggest that the act of reading helps students improve their… …vocabulary, …knowledge of grammatical and syntactical structures, …general knowledge, …endurance, and even …writing (to include spelling, grammar, and style).

A larger knowledge base leads to better reading. Consider this passage: The hunter said, “There’s a grouse across that field, maybe 100 yards away.” His friend said, “Well, shoot.” Does “shoot” mean “take aim and fire,” or is it merely the equivalent of “darn”? Knowledge of hunting (or lack thereof) affects one’s ability to interpret this text.

Familiar with baseball Unfamiliar with baseball A larger knowledge base leads to better reading. Daniel Willingham describes an experiment in which two groups of readers – “good” readers and “poor” readers, as determined by scores on a standardized reading test – read a story about baseball and took a test about the story. “Good” Readers “Poor” Readers Familiar with baseball Unfamiliar with baseball 47% 69%

Silent Sustained Reading (SSR) can help create a culture in which reading is expected , valued, enjoyed, and discussed. Apparently, LHS had incorporated DEAR time (Drop Everything And Read) once before, but a lack of faculty buy-in had crashed the program. Knowing this, the newly formed literacy team put together a proposal that addressed the faculty’s hesitance and “sold” the initiative. Luckily, the general irritation about the [alternative] that was in place also made SSR an easy sell, and when we took it to a vote, no one voted against it. Now, our building is silent from 9:13 to 9:33 a.m. four days a week. Almost every person in the building (including students, teachers, office staff, and administrators) reads during this time. . . . There are kids in my SSR group that openly admit that they would never read on their own time (and claim that they have read few or no books since elementary school) who have read several novels and enjoyed them. Last year, we saw a slight rise in reading scores, and the library is enjoying much more frequent use. Seth Mitchell, describing implementation of SSR at Lisbon High School

Conclusion: “Spending” classroom time on independent reading both tells students that teachers value reading and helps students become better readers – and better readers are likely to be more successful students, regardless of the content area. To make independent reading (SSR, DEAR, or whatever) succeed: Provide interesting books (in the classroom, readily available). Provide regularly scheduled, uninterrupted time to read. Read with your students. Allow students to talk about what they’re reading.

then have book club time. BREAK Following the break, we’ll have book talks, then have book club time.

Book Clubs Continue your discussion from last week. Each group should have a scribe. The scribe’s job is to record the process: what you do, and in what order. The point is to collect different models for how clubs might function. Scribes will “report out” when we gather again as a whole class, telling us something about your discussion. For ONE of your three book club discussions, you’ll make some sort of presentation, maybe with handouts or an artifact of some sort. For the other two discussions, you’ll simply tell us what you talked about, and maybe how you might use the book(s) in class. Discussion time = 30 minutes (or more, if you’re on a roll)

Book Club Reports Content: Tell us what you talked about. Process: Tell us how the discussion worked. (Did you assign roles other than scribe? Did you assign topics as homework? Did you speak in a particular order? Did the group have a facilitator?) Application to the Classroom: How (and/or “how well”) would your process transfer to the classroom? If it would need tweaking, what changes would you make? How might you imagine using this activity in your own particular classroom setting? in a different setting?

For next week: Read as needed to be ready for Book Club Discussion #2. Work on formal paper as needed; it’s due Feb 28.