February 14 - Observation - J/K Book Club

Guided Reading: Small group (5 students, all boys) 02/14/08, 9:25AM

Context: Teacher finishes teaching point and students go back to their seats for book club. I go over to this particular group to do a guided reading with them. They are reading Mr. Putter and Tabby Pick the Pears.

[There is a lot going on today at the school – Mayor’s visit, picture day, and Valentine’s Day celebration in the afternoon]

As I walk over to the group, I see that all five of them are doing different things at their table. Jesse is reading a different book, and Jon and Nathan are sharing one book, but having difficulty focusing (not enough copies), Ken is reading and distracted by people around him, and only Sam is reading and ready to write his thoughts down on post-its.

I first approach to Jesse who is reading a different book and ask him to put it away. He refuses. I have at least spent more than 10 minutes to get him to put the book away and read the guided reading book like the rest of the group. At the meantime, the rest of the group members are arguing about their “goal of the day”. Sam suggests that they should read two chapters by the end of class, while Ken and Nathan disagree. I have to pause my conversation with Jesse at this point, and try to settle the disagreement. At first, none of them listen to me. They keep on telling Sam that they can read more than two chapters. So I suggest that we do a walk-through of the book together and see how many pages are in each chapter, and consider the time we have. Finally, we come to an agreement that we should read two chapters. During reading, I see that Ken and Jon are having trouble sitting still. Ken and Jesse are kicking each other under the desks. Again, I have to stop the whole group and spend some time on settling them down and talking to them about good reading posture and respect of others during independent reading time. After settling this issue, they seem to be disengaged in reading, except for Sam. Eventually, I toss out my original plan with them, and decide to have a group talk about the purpose and structure of guided reading. After the talk, I have the chance to listen to 4 of them read, except Jon because I run out of time. We manage to try out the strategy that my host teacher has taught. They use post-its to jot down their implications about the main character’s feeling and thinking.