Synthesis Blog #5: Book Clubs

I have thoroughly enjoyed participating in my book club this past week. My group is reading City of Ember and it is such a great book! There are small topics that relate to science throughout the book so I feel like it would be a great read for a science content class. The book clubs have been successful in our class, and I believe it would also be effective in a middle school class.

I think being able to read a novel related to content in class not only enhances reading skills, but it also is beneficial for learning content too. Being able to read about content with regards to a storyline or plot would really help students connect curriculum to real world applications.

I have thought about whether it would be more beneficial for all students to read the same book or have students choose from a selection of books to read. The benefit of having all students in one class read the same book would be that you could better track how on-task a student is, as well as have whole group discussions over topics in the book. However, letting students choose from a selection of books gives them (somewhat limited) freedom, meaning that they would probably feel more motivated to participate since they would be able to choose what interests them most. It also would give them small group interaction with their peers, possibly with classmates whom they may not always interact with in other scenarios. This builds social skills and community in the classroom which I think is very important when it comes to literacy.

I will probably incorporate book clubs into my classroom. I feel like they might work better in a science class in comparison to a mathematics class, mainly because there are more books out there relating to science content. On the other hand, I feel like math-based novels are on the rise, so having a book club in a math class might be more realistic as time progresses.

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