Virtual Book Clubs

At my school we are a literacy and technology magnet. What this should imply is that we are using technology to enhance our students literacy experience. The problem is that right now most teachers need training on how to do this. Right now our students take AR quizzes to track their reading. However AR is pretty light when it comes to some of the instructional models that we are used to using to gauge our instruction. As far as AR is concerned it really just assesses our students ability to recall events in a story.

While I think that these lower level exercise have their place the fact is that we can use technology to more richly enhance our students experience with literature. Most recently I was able to connect with a teacher in New Zealand. Here is a link to his class blog.

  http://koda26.edublogs.org

 About a month prior to starting this book club with Mr. Field's class I had the opportunity to join a book club with a few classes in South Carolina. The teacher's I worked with did a really great job of posting a reading schedule and assignments every day. It was through this first experience that I had a great opportunity to see first hand how to do a virtual book club. The experience my students had with this first book club was such a positive experience for them that I knew that I had to do another one. I was very fortunate to stumble across Mr. Field's blog, so I emailed him and he said that it sounded like a fantastic idea. Doing a project with a class or school in another country is one of the things I have always wanted to do, so of course I jumped on the opportunity.

 The first step is have a platform, as far as I'm concerned the best one is Edmodo, but there are plenty of others out there. Next you create the group and email the code to the other teacher or teachers involved and everyone joins. If you don't know how to do it, below is a great tutorial on how to create a group.

 Given how complex many other technology related tools are to use this is a pretty easy thing to do. The next thing you do is pick a book, organize a reading schedule. For our club we chose to read Esio Trot by Roald Dahl. Which worked out well because my class has a pet tortoise. Once they got going my students had some great discussions with their classmates in New Zealand. Not only did they read a book and enjoy it, they also got a chance to learn first hand how some students live and go to school in another country.

The biggest thing I noticed is how eager my students were to participate in these groups. Below is an example of some of the exchanges that happened between our students.

I blanked out the names of the students so you can't tell who they are. This is an exchange between our two classes. We also created Padlets for any really good student generated questions. (See my previous blog on interactives to see what a Padlet is and what it looks like.)

If we are going to expect to engage our students in a 21st century world we have to start engaging them in a way that appeals to them. More importantly we need to teach them how to love reading. Far too often we teach them how to prepare for a reading test and that is wrong. If our kids can learn to enjoy reading they will gain so much knowledge on their own because kids will read on their own. Instead of teaching to assess let's assess how we teach, and make changes to how we teach 21st century learners.