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Structure | Materials | CCSS | Classroom | Plans | Multi-Book | Tips | Think Sheets | Assessment | Index | Bibliography
The Structure of the Book Club Program
New Ideas About Literacy
The Book Club program began as a collaboration between a group of teachers and researchers in 1989. Since then we've developed and refined a reading curriculum centered around small, student-led discussion groups. The children themselves assume responsibility for deciding the course of their conversations, but these conversations occur within a context of balanced literature-based instruction that fully integrates reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
The Book Club program is grounded in some exciting new ideas about literacy. As we all remember from our own school experiences, literacy was once defined as the ability to decode text and identify main ideas and details. Today, however, people have begun to view literacy as a process — a process of making meaning by interacting with text in a social context. In the Book Club program, we've incorporated two perspectives that have defined a new course for reading instruction: social constructivism and reader response theory.
A Social Constructivist Approach
The social constructivist perspective defines reading as a complex mental process that takes place in a specific social, cultural, and historical setting. Knowledge, according to this theory, is constructed within the context of meaningful, collaborative activities. The meaning and purpose of these activities is determined by the cultural standards at a particular moment in history. At present, the standards for literacy in American schools emphasize constructing meaning, valuing a variety of textual interpretations, responding to text in personal and aesthetic ways, and responding to reading through writing and discussion. Social constructivist theory suggests that interacting with others not only enriches a reader's appreciation of literature, but in fact is the means by which children develop literacy. We reflect the social nature of literacy in Book Club's focus on student-led discussion groups and in whole-class discussions.
Reader Response Theory
In the past, literacy instruction maintained a narrow focus on literal comprehension. Students were asked to read a text and identify the main ideas, which were defined by the people who created the curriculum. Reader response theory, one of the foundations of the Book Club program, suggests that reading involves more than extracting information from a text. Instead of assuming that meaning lies buried within text waiting for readers to unearth it, the reader response perspective recognizes that what readers bring to the text is just as important as what they take from it. Readers construct meaning by bringing their prior knowledge and their affective responses to the text. Discussing the text with others—asking and answering questions, debating, reflecting—forms another crucial aspect of constructing meaning. In Book Club, we try to incorporate all of these aspects of literacy.
Book Club Materials
The tools to turn your classroom into a vibrant community of readers and learners are virtually at your fingertips. Whether you're an elementary or a middle school teacher, familiar with Book Club or just starting out, these are the materials you'll need.
Book Club: A Literature-Based Curriculum is a comprehensive guide to implementing Book Club in your grade 3 through 6 classroom. The handbook includes an introduction to the program, teaching tips, and five teaching units with detailed lesson plans.
Book Club Plus! A Literacy Framework for the Primary Grades offers practical advice on adapting Book Club methodology to any primary-grade classroom in any school district. Introductory chapters cover such topics as content and curriculum, writing, talk in the classroom, assessment and classroom management.
Book Club for Middle School contains everything you need to adapt Book Club to your middle school classroom (grades 6 through 8). The handbook outlines the program components, discusses the specific needs of adolescent learners, and offers several fully developed teaching units.
Book Club Reading Logs help students explore and organize ideas as they participate in Book Club. The logs help them respond to literature and prepare for discussions. They also prompt them to plan research, set goals, and assess their work.
Book Club Video is the perfect companion to the teacher's handbooks. Through classroom footage and interviews with program authors, it provides an overview of the Book Club program, examples of how it works with real students, and tips from experienced teachers.
Book Club Novel Guides provide teaching units based on the best literature for young readers, from time-honored classics to the most recent Newbery Award winners. Novel guides provide background information about each book, detailed daily lesson plans, and blackline masters.
Book Club Online Novel Guides enable teachers to adapt the Book Club program to online or remote learning. Each online novel guide provides detailed lesson plans for reading and discussing a great book and for optional theme-based extension activities. It also includes tips and tools for making the instruction work through a meeting app.
Common Core State Standards
Book Club provides many opportunities to integrate the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). This chart provides tips for covering the Grade 5 CCSS for English Language Arts in the context of a Book Club unit.
Use these links to find correlation charts for specific units in the Book Club handbooks:
Book Club: A Literature-Based Curriculum
Book Club for Middle School
Book Club Plus! A Literacy Framework for the Primary Grades
The charts show standards that are covered in the units as written, but Book Club lessons are flexible and may be enhanced with further instruction in particular standards as needed.
Classroom Management
Beginning Book Club
There are many decisions to make when using the Book Club program. This chapter is not intended to make those decisions for you but to provide you with information that will help you make your own decisions. Each teacher using the program will need to evaluate the issues and come up with answers that work in his or her own classroom. However, those of us who have been doing Book Club for a while have some suggestions for you to consider. The issues you will need to think about as you begin to implement Book Club include literature selection, grouping students, daily instruction, reading aloud, developing a special classroom library, and inclusion of special-needs students. Our suggestions will help you think about each issue more fully and will let you in on the things that have worked for us over time.
Literature Selection
Selecting appropriate books to use for Book Club is very important to the success of the program. You'll want to choose "quality literature"—books that are well written—but you should also consider several additional factors. These factors include potential for discussion, the background of your students, readability, curriculum, and availability.
First, and most importantly, a book should have potential for discussion. Look for books that raise some interesting questions or issues that students will want to talk about. When children read books that address serious, real-life issues, they can discuss and form opinions about these complex issues. At the same time, we would caution you to consider the developmental appropriateness of a book, since some issues are simply not appropriate for young readers. Many picture books today, while relatively easy to read, present very complex and mature issues. Books such as Hiroshima No Pika (Maruki, 1980) and Pink and Say (Pollaco, 1994) deal with serious issues that many lower elementary students could not handle. Even some fourth- and fifth-grade students struggle with the content. Use your own discretion when determining developmentally appropriate material for your students. You alone know your class and are best able to judge the kinds of materials they can handle.
Your own experience with a book will affect your success in using it for Book Club. When you use a book that you have read with students before, or a book that you have simply read and loved, your passion for the book will encourage students to look for the good in it. If you really love a book, your class will be able to tell, and they'll probably like it, too.
Another factor to consider when selecting literature is content. The book's content should be something about which students have some prior knowledge. If you want students to make connections to books, they need to know something about the topic from the start. In some cases, you may decide to provide this knowledge in a brief unit on the topic of the story, thereby providing your students with the appropriate knowledge base.
Readability is another factor to think about. You should select a book that most of the students in your class can read. Since most classrooms contain a wide range of reading abilities, we suggest that you look for a book at your grade level. You can provide support to lower-ability readers in many ways, since you'll probably have students who cannot read the text independently. Students reading above level can supplement their reading with other books by the same author or within the same theme.
Yet another concern deals with curriculum. Book Club integrates very easily with other content areas. It's fairly easy to find books focusing on many social studies and science topics, and to build a unit focusing first on content building, then on literature with Book Club. Therefore, when you select literature, think about the curriculum or unit topic with which you may want to integrate Book Club. The Lesson Plans section in the Book Club guides contain sample units along with many suggested book titles and theme links.
Lesson Plans
Literature-based Instruction
Lesson plans form the instructional core of the Book Club program. The lesson plans in Book Club: A Literature-Based Curriculum, Book Club for Middle School, and in the individual Book Club Novel Guides were developed by teacher-researchers during eight years of classroom research.
The Book Club lesson plans are built around high-quality children's literature such as Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. These books all touch upon important topics such as prejudice, respect, survival, and kindness. The Book Club handbooks provide lesson plans for individual titles, author study units, and multi-book units with underlying themes.
The lessons are based on the curricular target areas of language conventions, literary elements, comprehension, and response to literature. The curriculum was developed using the curriculum guidelines for our particular school districts, current reading research, and our experience with a wide range of commercial programs. Individual lessons were created to match the content of each book.
These lesson plans provide a guide to help students develop a complete understanding of each book and also develop their reading skills and strategies. Each lesson plan gives a goal, assigned reading pages, and one or more writing prompts. The body of each lesson outlines how to guide a class through the reading, writing, student-led book club discussions, and community share discussions that occur as part of Book Club.
Multi-Book Units
Introduction
In schools today we hear a lot about giving children choices within which their learning can occur. In the Book Club program, we allow choice through the literature students choose to read, their written responses, and their membership in book club discussion groups. Multi-book units, in which each small group reads a different book that the children have selected, give students the greatest amount of choice and are thus a natural extension of Book Club. However, introducing too many choices overwhelms students just beginning the program. We've found it best to limit choices at first and then gradually allow more freedom as the year progresses.
Over the course of the year, we expand students' choice to include literature selection by moving to multi-book units in which four or five thematically or topically related books are offered as reading options. The children enjoy having a say in the choice of literature, and they feel motivated to read books that they've chosen themselves. They also gain several additional advantages in multi-book units. First, they are encouraged to develop and articulate their individual tastes in literature. Second, by hearing about the books their peers are reading, students are exposed to other texts that they may, in turn, decide to read themselves. Last, as several related titles are discussed in the classroom, students learn to make intertextual connections, relating ideas from their own reading to the books read by their peers. These intertextual connections help children construct meaning about the theme or topic and enhance content-area learning.
Theme and Curriculum
There are many methods that teachers use to select themes for classroom study. Themes can take all year to develop, can connect to subject-matter learning, can exist within a grading period, or can simply be tied to a particular set of books. For example, for the year-long theme "Survival requires adaptation," you might focus units on American colonization, species adaptation, and the Civil War — all of which help children develop the theme. (For further reading about theme/topic selection, see Lipson, Valencia, Wixson and Peters, 1993, cited in the Bibliography.) The same methods that you use to select themes for other areas of instruction can be applied to Book Club, and especially to multi-book units.
Parallel to identifying a theme for study, you'll need to consider the curriculum needs of your students. There are several curricular foci for teaching through the Book Club program. During theme-based, multi-book units, students will learn about content, literature, and literacy. First, there may be general content knowledge that you want your students to gain. This content will be reflected in the theme or topic of the unit (e.g., civil rights, the Civil War, ecosystems, the life cycle). Second, your students will learn about literature as they read various titles and genres. Finally, there will be literacy curricular content in the areas of language conventions, literary elements, comprehension, and response to literature.
Multi-book units provide as many advantages for teachers as they do for students. Instruction becomes more meaningful and more relevant when the students share a variety of books about a theme or topic. It can be easier to facilitate discussions in which children are eager to share their own book and use that book to develop an issue or idea with the whole class. Despite these advantages, though, multi-book units can be challenging to create and to teach. Book Club: A Literature-Based Curriculum and Book Club for Middle School provide suggestions and ideas to help you implement multi-book units in your classroom.
Teaching Tips
Curriculum
It's always a challenge to start a new instructional program with your class. Here are a couple of specific curriculum questions addressed that beginning Book Club teachers often ask us.
Within each of the Book Club handbooks you'll find a "Teaching Tips" section which answers more questions. Those sections can be used as quick reference guides to find the practical information you need to get your own Book Club program under way. For your convenience, the questions are divided into three categories: curriculum, management, and student diversity
How can I make cross-curricular links in the Book Club program?
- Select books, both fiction and nonfiction, that deal with content-area material.
- Encourage students to make intertextual links between Book Club books and the materials they're reading in other subject areas.
- Build a special classroom library with books in the content areas that are also related to the Book Club books you're using.
- Use community share as an opportunity to point out cross-curricular connections and to model intertextual links.
- Create thematic or topical units that involve content-area studies and related Book Club readings.
- Include research components in Book Club units to increase the depth of students' understanding about content.
- Use a teacher read-aloud book as a way to link Book Club with a content-area discussion.
How can I integrate inquiry-based learning with Book Club?
- To build background knowledge, have students complete an inquiry or research phase before they start the Book Club phase of a thematic unit.
- Tell students the topic of the Book Club book they will be reading, and have them develop a list of related questions to research.
- Develop an inquiry unit to follow the Book Club phase and have students explore questions that arose during their Book Club readings.
- Divide students into their book club groups for the inquiry phase, so they can work together as research teams.
- Include books related to the inquiry questions in the special classroom library.
- Create a bulletin-board display of the information students have collected during the inquiry phase, and refer back to this information as students read the Book Club book.
- Draw on parents and community members as resources for interviews about topics related to a Book Club theme.
Blackline Masters: Think Sheets
Each Book Club teacher handbook contains blackline masters or "think sheets" that you can copy and distribute to your students.
Think sheets give students a starting point for responding to their reading and for writing log entries that will inspire rich book club discussions. You'll probably find that think sheets are most helpful at the beginning of the year, when students are just getting used to Book Club and learning what kinds of written responses are appropriate. The think sheets provided are some of the most basic ones that we've used in our classrooms. You'll certainly be creating your own think sheets as you tailor the Book Club program to the needs of your own students, but we hope that the ones in the books will help you get started.
The Think Sheet blackline masters include: Needs and Wants, Strategies for Wonderful Words, Fantasy Genre Chart, KWL Chart, Character Map, Story Elements Chart, Conflict Chart, Understanding Setting, Tripod Response Options, Questions for My Book Club, Charting Imagery and Symbolism, Revision Checklist, Denotation/Connotation, Euphemism, Analyzing Setting, Foreshadowing, Problem/Solution Chart, Summary Sheet, KWL Chart, and many more.
Assessment
New Ideas About Assessment
New ideas about literacy—such as the social constructivist and reader response theories discussed above—have already led to changes in the way we teach. It's often tempting, however, to resort to the same old assessment techniques to measure students' achievement and progress. The problem with this is that traditional tests, in particular, not only fail to reflect the new goals of literacy instruction but often stand in the way of reaching these goals.
When reading was seen as a collection of isolated skills, it made sense to test reading achievement by checking students' mastery of these discrete skills. In the context of our new understanding of reading, however, a focus on low-level skills no longer shows all that our students are learning. Worse, it sends a message to students that we value these skills more highly than the more authentic literacy events that take place in the classroom, because the results of such assessments can determine their grades, their placement in particular groups, or even their participation in special programs.
Thus, a dangerous gap exists between current instructional goals and the outmoded assessment methods still used to gauge the success of our instruction. Further complicating the matter, many districts continue to emphasize the standardized tests that equate literacy with the mastery of discrete skills. However, many educators have developed models that align assessment with instruction in today's classrooms. Two of the most prominent new approaches to emerge from this research are portfolio assessment and performance-based assessment.
Portfolio Assessment
A student portfolio serves the same purpose as that of a professional artist or photographer. It provides samples of the student's best work at a particular moment in time. A typical portfolio would contain writing samples, art work, a student's own evaluations of his or her work, and so on. Portfolios have a number of advantages over traditional tests. Perhaps the most important of these is that portfolios reflect the true nature of learning, which involves many trials and errors on the road to one's "best work."
Tests create very unnatural situations in which students have one shot at coming up with predetermined right answers. The process of developing a portfolio, on the other hand, encourages students to stretch themselves, to try new things, and not to be afraid of making mistakes as they learn new skills. Students have time to reflect upon their work and the progress they are making, revise earlier entries in their portfolios, and develop new ones.
A second advantage of portfolios over traditional assessments is their flexibility. A portfolio can contain samples of a student's work from many different types of activities, including the complex activities associated with literature discussions. A student in the Book Club program, for example, might include in his or her portfolio an audio tape of a book club discussion along with an evaluation form on which the student has commented about what he or she did well in the discussion and what could be improved. This gives you a much richer source of information about the student than a list of responses to comprehension questions. Portfolios also allow you to collect data at any time by drawing on your students' ongoing work. This form of assessment provides an excellent general picture of a student's evolving skills.
Portfolio assessment does have some weaknesses, however. First, it does not facilitate in-depth analysis of students' work in any particular area. While a broad sampling of work in many areas provides a good overview of a student's progress, the amount of data potentially contained in a portfolio could become so overwhelming that you would not have time to evaluate any of it very deeply. Second, portfolio assessment offers few clearly defined scoring guidelines. Thus there is little data available for comparing different students' work or for comparing one student's work at different times of the year.
Performance-Based Assessment
Performance-based assessment shares some features with portfolio assessment. Both involve collecting a range of materials that demonstrate students' abilities in reading, writing, and discussing. Both methods draw these materials from authentic literacy activities. Performance-based assessment, however, is based on more controlled literacy 'events' from which you can create a detailed portrait of each of your students at a particular point in time.
A typical performance-based assessment takes place in the context of a one-week unit similar to the instructional units of your regular curriculum. The assessment unit engages your students in all of the activities that they normally do in the classroom, from which you gather specific information to assess their achievement.
Performance-based assessment offers the advantages of clearly defined scoring criteria and in-depth analysis of your students' work. It's relatively easy for you to compare different students' performances and to compare a single student's work across time. On the other hand, performance-based assessment is time- and labor-intensive for the teacher. You must prepare for the assessment in advance, and you must analyze your data afterward. Since the assessment is part of a structured unit, data collection is less flexible and occurs only during the specific days or weeks set aside for assessment events.
Index
This index focuses on topics discussed in the Book Club Program
|
A About the authors B Beginning Book Club C Classroom, arrangement of D Difficult students, grouping of E Environment unit resources F Flexibility of components |
G Getting along, students not H Heterogeneity I Inclusion L Language arts, integrated M Management, classroom P Participation in book club groups |
R Reader response theory S Scoring rubric T Teaching tips W Writing |
Bibliography
Children's Literature
Avi. The Fighting Ground. New York: Harper & Row, 1987.
Babbitt, Natalie. Tuck Everlasting. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975.
Beatty, Patricia. Jayhawker. New York: William Morrow Co., 1991.
Bellairs, John. The Trolley to Yesterday. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 1989.
Boston, Lucy M. The Children of Green Knowe. San Diego: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1989.
Bradbury, Ray. The Halloween Tree. New York: Knopf Books for Young Readers, 1988.
Bruchac, Joseph. Gluskabe and the Four Wishes. New York: Cobblehill Books/Dutton, 1995.
Bunting, Eve. Smoky Night. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1994.
Burnford, Sheila. The Incredible Journey. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers, 1996.
Choi, Sook Nyul. Year of Impossible Goodbyes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1991.
Collier, James L. and Christopher Collier. My Brother Sam Is Dead. New York: Scholastic, 1985.
Cooke, John P. The Lake New York: Avon Books, 1989.
Creech, Sharon. Absolutely Normal Chaos. New York: HarperCollins Children's Books, 1995.
. Chasing Redbird. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997.
. Pleasing the Ghost. New York: HarperCollins, 1996.
. Walk Two Moons. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.
Curtis, Christopher P. The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers, 1995.
Cushman, Karen. The Midwife's Apprentice. New York: HarperCollins Children's Books, 1996.
Fox, Paula. Monkey Island. New York: Orchard Books, 1991.
Fry, Virginia L. Part of Me Died, Too: Stories of Creative Survival Among Bereaved Children and Teenagers. New York: Dutton Children's Books, 1995.
George, Jean Craighead. Julie of the Wolves. New York: HarperCollins, 1996.
Griffin, Peni R. Switching Well. New York: Puffin Books, 1994.
Juster, Norton. The Phantom Tollbooth. New York: Knopf Books for Young Readers, 1988.
Lasenby, Jack. The Mangrove Summer. Auckland, N.Z.: Oxford University Press, 1988.
L'Engle, Madeleine. Many Waters. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986.
. A Swiftly Tilting Planet. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1981.
. A Wind in the Door. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973.
. A Wrinkle in Time. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1996.
Lewis, C. S. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. New York: HarperCollins Children's Books, 1994.
Lowry, Lois. The Giver. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1993.
. Number the Stars. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1996.
. A Summer to Die. New York: Bantam Books, 1984.
Marrin, Albert. The War for Independence: The Story of the American Revolution. New York: Atheneum, 1988.
McKean, Thomas. The Secret of the Seven Willows. New York: Simon and Schuster Trade, 1991.
Naidoo, Beverley. Journey to Jo'burg: A South African Story. New York: HarperCollins Children's Books, 1988.
O'Dell, Scott. Island of the Blue Dolphins. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1994.
. Sarah Bishop. New York: Scholastic, 1991.
. Sing Down the Moon. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers, 1992.
Paterson, Katherine. Bridge to Terabithia. New York: HarperCollins Children's Books, 1996.
. The Great Gilly Hopkins. New York: HarperCollins Children's Books, 1987.
. Jacob Have I Loved. New York: HarperCollins Children's Books, 1990.
. Park's Quest. New York: Puffin Books, 1989.
Paulsen, Gary. Brian's Winter. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers, 1996.
. Hatchet. New York: Viking Penguin, 1988.
. The River. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1993.
. The Voyage of the Frog. New York: Orchard Books, 1989.
Pitts, Paul. Racing the Sun. New York: Avon Books, 1988.
Rylant, Cynthia. Missing May. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1993.
Smith, Doris B. A Taste of Blackberries. New York: HarperCollins Children's Books, 1988.
Speare, Elizabeth G. Sign of the Beaver. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers, 1995.
Spinelli, Jerry. Crash. New York: Random House Books for Young Readers, 1996.
. Maniac Magee. New York: HarperTrophy, 1990.
. There's a Girl in My Hammerlock. Old Tappan, NJ: Simon and Schuster Children's, 1993.
. Who Put That Hair in My Toothbrush? New York: Little, Brown and Co., 1994.
Taylor, Mildred D. The Friendship and The Gold Cadillac. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers, 1987.
. Let the Circle Be Unbroken. New York: Puffin Books, 1991.
. Mississippi Bridge. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 1990.
. The Road to Memphis. New York: Puffin Books, 1992.
. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. New York: Puffin Books, 1991.
. Song of the Trees. New York: Bantam, 1984.
. The Well: David's Story. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 1995.
Thomas, Jane R. The Princess in the Pigpen. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1989.
Tsuchiya, Yukio. Faithful Elephants. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1988.
Uchida, Yoshiko. Journey Home. New York: Maxwell Maximillian International, 1992.
Wiseman, David. Jeremy Visick. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1990.
Woodruff, Elvira. George Washington's Socks. New York: Scholastic, 1993.
Woodson, Jacqueline. Between Madison and Palmetto. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1995.
. Last Summer with Maizon. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1990.
. Maizon at Blue Hill. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1994.
Yates, Elizabeth. Amos Fortune, Free Man. New York: Puffin Books, 1989.
Books Describing Book Club
McMahon, Susan I., and Taffy E. Raphael, with Virginia J. Goatley and Laura S. Pardo. The Book Club Connection: Literacy Learning and Classroom Talk. New York: Teachers College Press, 1997.
Raphael, Taffy E., and Elfrieda H. Hiebert. Creating an Integrated Approach to Literacy Instruction. Ft. Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace, 1996.
Chapters and Articles About Book Club and the Book Club Project
Goatley, V. J. (1996). "The Participation of a Student Identified as Learning Disabled in a Regular Education Book Club: The Case of Stark." Reading and Writing Quarterly 12, 195-214.
Goatley, V. J., and J. Levine (1997). "Participating in Student-Led Book Clubs: The Case of Jennifer." Language and Literacy Spectrum 7, 14-18.
Goatley, V. J., C. H. Brock, and T. E. Raphael (1995). "Diverse Learners Participating in Regular Education 'Book Clubs.' " Reading Research Quarterly 30(3), 353-380.
Goatley, V. J., K. A. Highfield, J. Bentley, J. Folkert, P. Scherer, T. E. Raphael, and K. Grattan (1994). "Empowering Teachers to Be Researchers: A Collaborative Approach." Teacher Research: A Journal of Classroom Inquiry 1(2), 128-144.
McMahon, S. I. (1994). "Student-Led Book Clubs: Transversing a River of Interpretation." The New Advocate 7(2), 109-126.
Raphael, T. E., and S. I. McMahon (1994). "'Book Club': An Alternative Framework for Reading Instruction." The Reading Teacher 48(2), 102-116.
Raphael, T. E., V. J. Goatley, D. A. Woodman, and S. I. McMahon (1994). "Collaboration on the Book Club Project: The Multiple Roles of Researchers, Teachers, and Students." Reading Horizons 34(5), 381-405.
Raphael, T. E., and V. J. Goatley (1994). "The Teacher as 'More Knowledgeable Other': Changing Roles for Teaching in Alternative Reading Instruction Programs." In C. Kinzer and D. Leu (eds.), Multidimensional Aspects of Literacy Research, Theory and Practice (pp. 527-536). Chicago, IL: National Reading Conference.
Internet and Multimedia Support for Book Club
Book Club: A Literature-Based Curriculum. Directed by Buzz Linnehan. Videotape (VHS). Littleton, MA: Small Planet Communications, 1997.
Book Club on the World Wide Web: www.smplanet.com/planetbookclub/
Background Reading About Classroom Discussion
Almasi, J. F. (1995). "The Nature of Fourth Graders' Sociocognitive Conflicts in Peer-Led and Teacher-Led Discussions of Literature." Reading Research Quarterly 30(3), 314-351.
Alvermann, D. E., J. P. Young, D. Weaver, K. A. Hinchman, D. W. Moore, S. F. Phelps, E. C. Thrash, and P. Zalewski (1996). "Middle and High School Students' Perceptions of How They Experience Text-Based Discussions: A Multicase Study." Reading Research Quarterly 31(3), 244-267.
Cazden, C. Classroom Discourse: The Language of Teaching and Learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1988.
Gavelek, J. R., and T. E. Raphael (1996). "Changing Talk About Text: New Roles for Teachers and Students." Language Arts 73(3), 24-34.
McMahon, S. I., and V. J. Goatley (1995). "Fifth Graders Helping Peers Discuss Texts in Student-Led Groups." Journal of Educational Research 89 (1), 23-35.
Paratore, Jeanne R. and R. McCormack (eds.). Peer Talk in the Classroom: Learning from Research. Newark, DE: International Reading Association, 1997.
Raphael, T. E., S. I. McMahon, V. J. Goatley, J. L. Bentley, F. B. Boyd, L. S. Pardo, and D. A. Woodman (1992). "Reading Instruction Reconsidered: Literature and Discussion in the Reading Program." Language Arts 69, 54-61.
Roser, N., and M. Martinez (eds.). Supporting Children's Responses to Literature: Book Talk and Beyond. Newark, DE: International Reading Association, 1995.
Short, K. G., and K. M. Pierce. Talking About Books: Creating Literate Communities. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1990.
Wells, G. (1990). "Talk About Text: Where Literacy Is Learned and Taught." Curriculum Inquiry 20(4), 369-405.
Background Reading About Assessment
Au, K. H., J. A. Scheu, A. J. Kawakami, and P. A. Herman (1990). "Assessment and Accountability in a Whole Literacy Curriculum." The Reading Teacher 43, 574-578.
Linn, R. L., E. L. Baker, and S. B. Dunbar (1991). "Complex, Performance-Based Assessment: Expectations and Validation Criteria." Educational Researcher 20, 15-21.
Paris, S., R. Calfee, N. Filby, E. Hiebert, P. D. Pearson, S. Valencia, and K. Wolf (1992). "A Framework for Authentic Literacy Assessment." The Reading Teacher 46(2), 88-98.
Tierney, R. J., M. A. Carter, and L. E. Desai. Portfolio Assessment in the Reading-Writing Classroom. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon, 1991.
Valencia, S. (1990). "A Portfolio Approach to Classroom Reading Assessment: The Whys, Whats, and Hows." The Reading Teacher 43(4), 338-340.
Background Reading About Inquiry Learning
Hoffman, J. V. (1994). "Literature to Inquiry: Bridging Aesthetic and Efferent Responses in Thematic Teaching." Presentation at the Michigan Reading Association Conference, Grand Rapids, MI, March 1994.
Ogle, D. M. (1986). "K-W-L: A Teaching Model That Develops Active Reading of Expository Text." The Reading Teacher 39(6), 564-570.
Additional Reading and Resources
Bauer, Caroline Feller. Presenting Reader's Theater: Plays and Poems to Read Aloud. Bronx, NY: H. W. Wilson, 1987.
Gavelek, J. R. "The Social Context of Literacy and Schooling: A Developmental Perspective." In T. E. Raphael (ed.), The Contexts of School-Based Literacy (pp. 3-26). New York: Random House, 1986.
Goatley, V. J., and T. E. Raphael (1992). "Non-traditional Learners' Written and Dialogic Response to Literature." In C. K. Kinzer and D. J. Lea (eds.), Literacy Research, Theory, and Practice: Views from Many Perspectives. Forty-first yearbook of the National Reading Conference (pp. 313-323). Chicago: National Reading Conference.
Lane, Barry. After "The End": Teaching and Learning Creative Revision. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1993.
Langer, J. A. "Literacy and Schooling: A Sociocognitive Perspective." In E. H. Hiebert (ed.), Literacy for a Diverse Society (pp. 9-72). New York: Teachers College Press, 1991.
Lipson, M. Y., S. W. Valencia, K. K. Wixson, and C. W. Peters (1995). "Integration and Thematic Teaching: Integration to Improve Teaching and Learning." Language Arts 70, 252-263.
Pardo, L., and T. E. Raphael (1991). "Classroom Organization for Content Area Instruction." The Reading Teacher 44, 556-565.
Rabbit Ears Radio: Program listings are available at the website of WEOS, public radio from Hobart and William Smith Colleges: http://hws3.hws.edu:9000/weos/Rabbit.html. You can order tapes from the Public Radio Music Source, 1-800-75-MUSIC (1-800-756-8742).
Raphael, T. E., and C. H. Brock. "Mei: Learning the Literacy Culture in an Urban Elementary School." In D. J. Leu and C. K. Kinzer (eds.), Examining Central Issues in Literacy Research, Theory, and Practice (pp. 179-188). Chicago: National Reading Conference, 1993.
Raphael, T. E., and C. S. Englert (1990). "Writing and Reading: Partners in Constructing Meaning." The Reading Teacher 43, 388-400.
Schloss, P. J. (1992). "Mainstreaming Revisited." The Elementary School Journal 92(3), 233-244.
Shepard, Aaron (ed.). Stories on Stage: Scripts for Reader's Theater. Bronx, NY: H. W. Wilson, 1993.
Short, K. G., and L. Kahn (1992). "The Literature Circles Project." A paper presented during K. Jongsma (Chair) symposium Understanding and Enhancing Literature Discussion in Elementary Classrooms. San Antonio, TX: National Reading Conference.
Sierra, Judy. Multicultural Folktales for the Feltboard and Readers' Theater. Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press, 1996.