Book Clubs in Fourth Grade

As winter holidays approach, the fourth grade students were wrapping up their fall book clubs.  Book clubs were formed in October with a focus on reading realistic fiction. Each club picked a name and wrote a constitution for their club with goals that would help facilitate great book club discussions.

The clubs were then given a choice of three books to read and chose the one they wanted to begin in their book clubs. The first rounds of books chosen were Yang the Youngest and His Terrible Ear, A Week in the Woods, Replay and Frindle.  Each group read and discussed a second book as well. The second round included How Tia Lola Came to Visit/Stay being read by two groups, Ruby Holler and Clarice Bean Spells Trouble.

Each reading workshop begins with the students listening to a fiction novel read aloud, chosen to model comprehension strategies and ways to build on discussions that the fourth grade students can then take back to their book clubs. Freedom Crossing by Evelyn Coleman, our visiting author this fall, is the book that has been read aloud.

Book clubs have incorporated strategies that help students to think deeply about character. A few of these strategies are titled and include: Empathize to Understand: Feel What the Character Feels, What's in the Bubble, Building a Character Web and How's the Character Feeling? Students decide on the number of pages and chapters that they will read in between sessions and then prepare for book club discussion by writing their responses to one of the strategies. They know that including page numbers will help them to facilitate discussions. Book club members have been practicing listening carefully to the other members of the group and building on a line of thinking in order to lengthen and deepen their discussion.  An effective technique has been for each student to add a cube and build a tower when they add to the discussion.

Looking ahead, our next book club round will resume in January with a focus on reading historical fiction.