The Book Club Plus model is one that seems quite contrasting to what I see during Reading. On a typical day, the students are assigned an assessment/assignment and they are left to do it for their own day. The students sometimes (when assigned) get to talk to each other and discuss different questions related to the book, but most the time the work is individualized. That being said however, the class is divided by two books. The lessons usually differ based on what books are being read, but sometimes the two overlap. The differing book groups never engaged with each other and there is a strong separation between the classes. The students rarely write in their reading class, because they have a separate hour for writing, so that normally the reading and writing do not correspond to each other. Right now, the students are reading Animal Farm and My Louisiana Sky while writing poetry in writing class. I wish they were more aligned with each other, but I guess different classes, different standards, different teachers, different emphasis.
Both the reading and writing teachers use different standards to assess their students. The reading teacher uses the results of the NWEA/MAP test to gauge which content needs to be covered and which students are in each group. Contrarily, the writing teacher uses here own set of standards (I'm not 100% sure where hers come from) that don't always line up with the reading standards. Its sort of unfortunate because I don't think the students are aware of how interconnected the two subjects are...I wish they were able to incorporate them more.
I like how the Book Club Plus method encourages the teacher to use all kinds of materials to assess the students growth. It is impossible to gauge how much a student has learned through one activity. I plan on using multiple forms of assessment in both reading and math to get a good, thorough idea of where my students are coming from and where I want them to go.
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