Reading to Learn: Nonfiction Book Clubs Within a Content Area
Mid-workshop Teaching Point
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- Navigate this page:
- Conferring
- Pre-teaching
- Reteaching
- Book Club Support
- Strategy Groups
- Strategy Lesson 1
- Strategy Lesson 2
- Strategy Lesson 3
Mid-workshop Teaching Point:Non-fiction not only have a "wow" reaction to the text when they learn something new, but they can also have a "wow" reaction when notice something that doesn't go with what they already know. Minilesson 4-3Teaching Point: Non-fiction readers hold onto key ideas and form an overall theory about their topic. Readers can do this by asking themselves “What did the author want me to learn and how does this fit with the information I have read?” Connection: Readers, you have been doing so much smart reading work. You have become experts on your non-fiction topic by doing what all smart non-fiction readers do. You have created pictures of your topic in your mind and added new information to that picture. Today, I want to teach you that Non-fiction readers hold onto key ideas and form an overall theory about their topic. Readers can do this by asking themselves “What did the author want me to learn and how does this fit with the information I have read?” Teaching: So, readers, I just finished this book on my topic, Africa. You guys know this book too, we read it as a class. Watch me as I hold onto key ideas and form an overall theory about their topic. Readers can do this by asking themselves “What did the author want me to learn and how does this fit with the information I have read?” Hmm... What did the author want me to learn? The author wanted me to learn that Africa is a very diverse place in many ways. It has people from all around the world, it has different land features, such as deserts, rain forests and mountains, it has cities and country land. How does this fit together? I already knew that Africa was near the equator, so that connects with the type of land features that make up of Africa. I also knew Africa was made up of cities and country land, so that information makes sense! So I’m thinking, my theory is that Africa is a diverse continent, its people, its land and this diversity affects the way people live. Did you see how I held onto keys ideas and formed an overall theory? I did this by asking myself “What did the author want me to learn and how does this fit with the information I have read?”
Jot this down in your reader’s notebook. (This is a great place to push their writing about reading, they have accumulated a sufficient amount of information on their topic, so this is a great way to push their thinking). Readers, turn and tell your partner you overall theory. Share one or two theories students have formed based on their key ideas.
Work with Egypt group (our struggling readers) : Pooling individual knowledge for the use of the group. Tomorrow’s minilesson will reveal a strategy for pooling knowledge from all club members in order to create a greater understanding of the text, which is a focus of our book club work throughout this unit. This conference would be a pre-teaching conference in order to lay the groundwork for the minilesson the students will be participating in the following day. Students need to gather with their writing about reading, their post-its and your provided large paper for gathering and grouping ideas (a sheet of posterboard would work, a sheet of chart paper, etc.) It would likely go something like this: So readers- I’m calling you together today because I need your help. Your book club has been gathering so many brilliant facts and ideas from your reading and you’ve been talking about them but I’ve noticed it can get hard because one person is talking about their post-its, and then someone else is talking about when they have written about and sometimes it seems like there is so much you know but it doesn’t all go together. I want to show you a way you can help things to go together and gather your thinking as a group. Can you please gather up all the post-its and writings you have so far on Egypt? I want you to bring them over and we’re going to get organized as a group now. We’ll share our brain power and pool our knowledge. What I want to teach you today is that we can organize our thinking around subtopics, just like how many nonfiction book are written, and that will let us see what we know a lot about and what we need to learn more about. I’m going to start with a post-it I made in my own reading. It says, “Egyptians eat bean stew.” I read that in one of my books. Now, instead of all of us just putting down any post-its we have, let’s use this one post-it to start and look to see if anyone else has something that connects with this. Let’s make a little collection of post-its about this same sort of thing. When I read that post-it, I’m thinking it’s mostly about food in Egypt. Does anyone else have a post-it or writing like that? (I’d keep a pad of blank post-its on hand, for students to copy short info from their long writing onto during this exercise. I’d let the group go and add on around that post it, talking about the topic as they went. When there were no more post-its to add, I’d do one of the following:
(Appropriate only if there were very few post-its for the topic) Wow, readers… when I look at this group of post-its, it makes me wonder… is food in Egypt something we as a book club know a lot about, or is this something we need to read more about? What do you think? From now Let’s do that. (Appropriate if there are a lot of post-its for the topic) Look at all the things we already know about food in Egypt. It looks like a lot, but I’m thinking we might still find out more about this as we read on. Let’s make a plan to add anything else we find out about food . Okay, who else has a post-it we could build on? (Select a student idea, get students started and pull back. Watch until the group runs out of post-its for that topic and see if they are able to maintain a transition to another subtopic. If so, let them be and move along. If not, lean into one of your needier students and encourage them to start with one of their ideas). ReteachingThroughout the unit, readers will need to do several different actions as they read on a daily basis in order to support their reading and comprehending of nonfiction texts. All of these actions are crucial to successful work in this unit of study, and will warrant spending time conferring on them and reteaching. Readers will need to be writing about reading in ways that are meaningful and help them make sense of not only the text that they are reading right now, but the current text within the framework of the topic as they know it to that point. This means that writing about reading becomes a true working document where ideas are explored, changed and expanded upon on a daily basis. Conferring around writing about reading might take the following forms: Readers can add book and page information to their writing about reading to make it easier to support their ideas in conversation Readers can choose to use post-its to organize and reorganize their thinking as they learn new things from the texts that they are reading. Readers often question texts, particularly when information presented in different texts seems to disagree. Writing about reading allows a reader to think on paper and prepare their ideas to bring to their book club. Readers write about reading to keep record of their thinking. Readers return to their previous thinking to see how it has been affected by new learning. Readers write about reading for their own use as readers. Readers write about reading in ways that make them want to go back to prior writing and add to it, change it, question it, etc. Readers need to be reading with the purpose of learning to become experts about a topic. This means that they must be constantly gathering information as it comes up in texts, seeking information in areas that they feel they don’t know enough about, looking for ways that information can be connected together and trying to make sense of information. Conferring around reading nonfiction to become an expert on a topic might take the following forms: Readers read nonfiction to learn as much as they can about a topic. It’s hard to learn from reading in a distracting reading spot. Readers can fix this by making smart choices about reading locations. Readers of nonfiction read (or reread) texts to gather information in an area they do not yet feel they know enough about. One way readers locate this information is by using the index or table of contents. Readers think about new ideas and concepts by connecting them to prior knowledge or reading. One way to do this is to read and think, “What else do I know that fits with this?” Readers of nonfiction often read to find the answers to questions that they have created in their mind. One way readers can guide their reading is to think of questions they have about a topic that they want to locate answers to. Readers know that books are not the only source of information about a topic. Readers can gather information about a topic by going beyond books to locate information in magazines and on the internet. Nonfiction writers write to teach about something from their own perspective. Readers consider the perspective of the writer in order to better understand what they are reading. One way to understand a writer’s perspective is to read the “About the Author” to understand how they came to know about the topic. Book Club SupportThird grade readers at this time of year are relatively new to book clubs, so there are predictable situations that are likely to come up as they navigate how to make book clubs successful structures within their reading workshop time. Below are some of the ways conferring with a book club might go during this unit: Book clubs are a place for readers to learn through conversations. Readers learn from conversation by listening to other people’s comments and responding to them. Book clubs are a place for readers to learn through conversations. Readers learn from conversation by listening to a comment and planning a response by asking themselves, “Do I agree or disagree with what they just said? Why?” Book clubs are a place to bring the ideas you have been having during your independent reading. Readers help their book club conversations run smoothly by thinking ahead to the next club meeting and planning what they might want to talk about in the club. Book clubs are a place to bring your questions about what you are reading and get some ideas. Readers become more independent by really using their book club as a resource for questions, not just asking the teacher. Clubs usually have a clubhouse, or a place to call their own, where they do their work. One way book clubs can do this is by choosing a consistent meeting spot and a consistent place for all their club materials. Strategy GroupsAccording to Lucy Calkins, “We gather a group of children who would be benefit from the help with a similar strategy and can do some work (easily or only with our support) with the shared text that we’ve chosen.” (Calkins, 2001) With this mind, below are lessons that are based upon reading skills that students may have trouble with during this unit of study. These strategy lessons are not in isolation, these strategies lessons follow a single line of thought between lessons and throughout the lesson (Calkins, 2001). It is often the case that students struggle with stating the main idea of a section, carrying the main ideas across a text and synthesizing this information into one big idea. The following strategy lessons address this skill. Strategy Lesson 1Materials: Book: A Visit to Egypt Teacher Pages: 10 & 11 Student Pages: 12 & 13
When we read non-fiction, many books, like this one have section headings. Non-fiction readers can find what the section is mostly about by turning the section heading into a question and answer that question when they are done reading that section. Hmm… So the heading on this page is ‘Homes’. I can turn this heading into a question to find out what this section is mostly about. Homes… ‘What kind of homes do the people in Egypt live in?’ So now I am going to read on with this question in my head and answer it when I’m done reading this section. (Read the section aloud) So, now I want to answer my question, ‘What kind of homes do the people in Egypt live in?’ Well, the people in the city live in small houses or apartments and the people in the country live homes made of sun-dried bricks. After the teacher demonstrates the strategy, it is time for the students to try it out. Active Engagement: Readers, now it’s your turn to try this strategy out turn to page 12 & 13 of the books I have given you. Before you read, turn the heading into a question and answer the question after you are done reading. Teacher will watch as the students use the strategy and coach into what the students are doing. The section they are reading is ‘Food’. If the students are using the strategy correctly their question will be similar to, ‘What kind of food do people in Egypt eat?’ Answer: Egyptians eat lamb, rice olives, spices, beans and tomatoes. They also eat pastries, halva and baklava. Teacher can highlight some of the smart work the students were doing. Readers, remember one thing you can do to better understand the section you are reading is turn the section heading into a question and answer that question after you have read the whole section. Strategy Lesson 2Materials: Teacher copies: Looking at Nigeria: pages 4 and 10-11 Page 4: Where is Nigeria? Page 10-11: Nigerian People Student copies: A Visit to Egypt: pages 6-7 and 14-15 Page 6-7: Land Page14-15: Clothes
When we read non-fiction, we do not just read section by section and forget the information, readers want to put the information together and think, “What does the information mean?” So, one thing non-fiction readers can do to better understand what they are reading is put parts of the text together by saying the important facts and thinking “what does this mean?” (Students in third grade have already done non-fiction work, so it is extremely important to keep their engagement and enthusiasm up while doing this work) For the model and active engagement the teacher can photocopy sections of the text so that the student has the two sections in front of them and the work is explicit for them. Teacher will read aloud the sections and state the facts: Well, this first section states that Nigeria shares borders with four other African countries, and the Capital city is Abuja and it is the fastest growing city in Africa. The second section states that Nigeria has the largest population of any African country and it is called ‘the giant of Africa” because it has more than 150 million people. Nigeria’s population includes more than 250 different groups of peoples. Hmm…so what does this mean? Well, both sections have information on how the city is growing. This means that Nigeria’s location and the influence from the government in the capital city makes Nigeria large and diverse in population.
Teacher will watch as the students try the strategy and coach into what they are doing. Having the students jot down the facts on a post-it and then their thinking on ‘what the information means’ serves as a great assessment. It allows the teacher to make sense of what they are doing and what their thinking behind it is. Students post-its should include some of the following information: Land: Egypt is a hot, dry country. It is mostly desert and mountains. Clothes: Egyptian men like to wear cotton pants and a long shirt. Some Egyptian women wear black dresses or bright colors. What does this mean: This means that the type of land in Egypt effects the way people dress. It is hot in Egypt, so men wear cotton and women wear dresses. Teacher can highlight some of the smart work the students are doing. Readers, remember one thing you can do to better understand what you are reading is to put the text together by saying the important facts and thinking, “What does this mean?” We can do this not only in our Africa reading, but in all reading that we do. Strategy Lesson 3Materials: Egypt:
Teacher Pages 30-31 Student Pages 8-10 Teaching Point: Readers get a better understanding of what they are reading by reading a section/few pages of the text, stop and think about what the author is saying and put the information into their own words. Teaching: Readers, today we are going to learn ONE MORE way to help us better understand what we are reading, Non-fiction readers get a better understanding of what they are reading by reading a section/few pages of the text, stop and think about what the author is saying and put the information into their own words. Teacher will read aloud pages 30-31: Life in the Farm Villages Hmm…so in this section the author is writing about what life is like for those who live on a farm in Egypt. All the family members have their own responsibilities on the farm. They grow crops, take care of the farm animals, they make clothing and the bread. (Teacher can also jot down this information on a post-it to mode how this kind of post-it can look) Did you see how I thought about the big ideas the author was writing about and put the information into my own words?
Student Pages: 8-10: The Land of the Sun Students “own words post-its” should include some of the following: Egypt is a very big country Egypt is almost all desert and it is very hot during the day but can get cold at night. The Sahara desert is in Egypt and it is the largest desert in the world and it usually never rains there. Teacher can highlight some of the smart work the students are doing So, readers, remember when you are reading non-fiction another way we get a better understanding of what we are reading is by reading a section/few pages of the text, then stop and think about what the author is saying and put the information into their own words. You can do all this smart work we have been doing together when you are working independently.
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