Book Club Reflection: Wilhelm’s “You Gotta Be the Book.”

 

 

Book Club Reflection: Wilhelm’s “You Gotta Be the Book.”

My Reading Process

            Like I mentioned in my earlier post our book club selection was a real page turner for me.  Right from the start I was glad I chose the book I did because I felt Wilhelm took a very practical approach to his study that I could relate to.  He offered teacher take-aways (e.g., modeling is a primary mode of teaching) that I felt were beneficial.  He also offered the social contract that he and Michael W. Smith created.  After reading this I wanted to make the contract a part of my teaching philosophy.  I also felt like this was a text I would want to draw from in my future teaching.  I can see myself consulting this book in the future. Wilhelm gives several good activity examples of how to engage readers that could be adapted into a post-secondary reading course.  In all the reading of journal articles and books I do I am always looking for practical examples of things I could do in the classroom. This book actually does that and more.  I think a book like this can make me a better teacher.  I look forward to experimenting with the ideas and activities presented by Wilhelm in my own classes.

The Book Club Process

            I wish we had more time for our book clubs.  We only met two times as a group.  The first meeting we had a good discussion about our selected book, but one of our members wasn’t able to make it. I have to admit this frustrated me a little bit.  I was really enjoying the book and wanted to share my ideas with all of my group members. Our second meeting we felt the need to start preparing for our presentation.  I feel like we didn’t have ample time to discuss the book fully.  Our book was so interesting and I really wanted to enter a deep conversation with my fellow members about it.  Unfortunately, that never had a chance to happen.  I would suggest scheduling more time for book clubs, so students have several classes to critically think about the reading and then a couple of classes to prepare for a presentation. 

Working as a Group

            We worked really well together as a group discussing our book and crafting our presentation ideas.  Julie was our note taker and took on the leadership of our group.  She kept us on track and reported our discussions back to the professor.  I feel I was supportive of my group members’ ideas and took the responsibility of leading the discussion portion of our presentation. Syeda did a wonderful Job of presenting slides and Ray was our tech guy who designed the power point.  I think Wilhelm’s book made our presentation more engaging because it suggested many interesting activities that we had our classmates explain their ideas of how they would implement them into a post-secondary reading context.  I feel our classmates enjoyed this discussion and I had wished we had more time to unpack the reading even more.  I don’t feel we had any weaknesses in our procedures because we came together as a group and put together in my opinion a very stimulating presentation on an important book for reading teachers.

Teaching a Book Club

            I am still very interested in teaching a book club unit in one of my classes. I think that I learned from this experience that book clubs need a good amount of time.  I think we could have dedicated at least another couple classes to the book club and we are graduate students, so I would imagine that developing readers would need even more time. I really liked the discussion and presentation aspects of the book club for this class and I would probably want do the same thing.  I would give my students time to discuss what they have read with their peers and have them share their insights with each other.  Problems I would anticipate would be students who didn’t do the reading or don’t show up for their book club meetings.  A way I think instructors can address these possible problems is to have students write a reflection about what they and their fellow members contributed to the book club.  I still have many more questions about book clubs, but am determined to experiment in teaching one because I think it is a great way to engage students, have them consider other points of view and express what they got out of a reading.