Book Clubs

As a way to allow my students to become self-determined readers students have been discussing their books on Edmodo. If you don't know what Edmodo is you need to go check it out! Click on the link to see it in action in the classroom.  If I have 4 students in a reading group and 2 are done with their reading group assignment, they log onto Edmodo and start discussing the book. This is a huge motivator for the other 2 members to get their assignment done so they can join them. I post open ended questions to add to the discussion.Sometimes in place of meeting they discuss their books on Edmodo - it depends on the week. I still meet with the reading groups in addition to them discussing their books on Edmodo. My collegue, Annie Mitchell, presented  at TCEA earlier this month for Edmodo about the awesome ways she uses Edmodo in her classroom.

Another way I am going to facilitate the book clubs is by giving students bookmarks that have discussion sentence stems on it. This will help students stay focused on the discussion, lead to a more meaningful discussion, and help my shy kids and ESL kids participate in the discussion.