Book Clubs for Secondary Educators

Vincenzo Joseph Frosolone

Student ID #0961185

EDUC-595

Master’s Thesis

Book Clubs for Secondary Educators

Submitted to:

Dr. Patricia Mulcahy-Ernt

June 20, 2021

Book Clubs for Secondary Educators

Toward the end of May 2021, seventh-grade language arts teachers at my internship site, Fairfield Woods Middle School, in Fairfield, Connecticut, were involved in the creation and execution of an end-of-the-year book club unit. The Fairfield school district had made the initial decision to incorporate book clubs into the curricula for the Fairfield middle schools. This decision confirms that the Fairfield School District desired for its seventh-grade students a “strong, meaning-centered curriculum in which learners read and write copiously for real purposes” (Parsons et al., 2011, p. 23). As an intern, I was given the opportunity to participate in this unit as a supervisor of student behavior and as a moderator and observer of student discussions, making sure that students remained on task throughout their book discussion meeting sessions in class. Hence, this opportunity to participate in the school’s book club unit inspired the writing of this thesis.

Book clubs, alternatively called “literature circles,” “book circles,” and “book groups,” help students develop their “metacognitive skills, including recognition of success and failures in reading” (O’Brien, 2007, p. 9). Moreover, book clubs are “highly effective in developing reading ability, knowledge about literature, and critical and analytic thinking” in a way that assures that “students are aware of their own growth” (Parsons et al., 2011, p. 23). Ideally, book clubs contain students who “respond to literary texts in ways that are ‘intellectually responsible’” and they should “embrace the notion that all readers have something potentially useful and interesting to offer to collective understanding and appreciation” of literature (Soter et al., 2010, p. 216).

Harvey Daniels (2001) described the key elements of traditional literature circles (i.e. book clubs), which include

the ability for students to choose their own reading materials, establishment of small groups that continue temporarily based on choice of reading materials, different reading groups working with different reading materials, establishment of a routine schedule for students to meet in their reading groups, use of notes to guide further discussion either in writing or in drawings, student led discussions, including student selection of topics, focus on natural dialogue in open group discussions, teacher as facilitator not dispenser of knowledge, assessment performed through teacher observation and student self-evaluation, positive atmosphere of reading for enjoyment, and group conclusions that include a sharing session with classmates. (O’Brien, 2007, p. 9)

Pertinent to book club units are “five features of cooperative learning that promote greater productivity than other instructional approaches: an explicit focus on positive interdependence, extensive group member interaction, a clear focus on individual work to contribute to the achievement of the whole group, established use of interpersonal and small-group skills, and open reflective discourse regarding group functioning” (O’Brien, 2007, p. 8). Additionally, book clubs produce students who possess an increased ability to think critically and greater social skills and communication skills (Wiebe Berry & Englert, 2005, p. 53). Book club units are built upon generative learning experiences which “connect to and built upon the learner’s life experiences and those things that are of value to [them,]” as well as develop in students a sense of “intrigue, bringing the learner to wonder and to want to know and experience more and more” (Parsons et al., 2011, p. 24). Certainly, all of these benefits of book club units correlate with the mission statement for Fairfield Public Schools, which is “to inspire students to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to be life-long learners, responsible citizens, and successful participants in an ever-changing global society by providing, in a partnership with families and community, a comprehensive, rigorous educational program” (Town of Fairfield, CT).

Clearly, there are many benefits for using book clubs in secondary school settings. Therefore, in order to explore those benefits, this paper will delve into how secondary school teachers develop book club units. Three key questions are answered in this paper: (1) What are the external, constructive elements of a book club unit? (2) What are the internal, procedural elements of the book club unit? (3) How are these elements combined to create a well-developed book club unit? In order to answer these questions, I will include the responses to my interviews with four teachers developing book club units at a local suburban middle school in Connecticut.

Methodology

For background information on the development of this book club unit, which began on Thursday, May 27th and ended primarily on Friday, June 11th (with summative assessment activities concluding on approximately Wednesday, June 16th,) I interviewed four of the seventh-grade language arts instructors involved in the execution of this unit, Jacqueline Benway, Maxine Minalga, Kelly Nathan, and Margaret Formato. These interviews were conducted via email (Benway, Minalga, and Nathan) and in an informal conversational form (Formato) before the beginning of the unit. Interspersed with their insights are my own observations and findings gathered from my observation of and assistance within their classes, as well as research gathered independently from scholarly articles considering the elements which contribute externally and internally to the development of book club units. As part of my research, I gathered for my own reference multiple worksheets which were distributed and assigned to students throughout the unit. These are as follows:

Bookmarks

Students were provided with two Bookmarks throughout the unit, one for the first half and one for the second half. These were worksheets which divided student interpretation into multiple parts. For Bookmark #1, there were five parts. Part 1 had students “record three important events from the book” using specific textual details and citing the specific page number. Part 2 had students “describe an internal conflict and an external conflict the main character faces in the book.” Part 3 had students “write down three questions while reading. This can be about something that is confusing, surprising, or something you’re wondering.” Part 4 had students “describe the initial setting in the beginning of the book as well as another setting later on in the book.” Part 5 had students “find and record two vocabulary words while you read. These can be words you don’t know or words that are interesting to you,” citing exact lines and page numbers from their selected books. For all classes, this first Bookmark had to be completed by Friday, June 4th. Bookmark #2 had to be completed by Friday, June 11th, the final day of the unit. In both cases, Bookmarks were checked for at least half-completion on the prior Wednesday. Minalga told her students that for the first half of Bookmark #1, they should focus on internal conflict, setting, and vocabulary; Nathan had her students hold off on the three questions until they processed more of the book. Bookmark #2 swapped some elements around while introducing new ones, as follows. Part 1 was still the same, having students record important events. Rather than Part 2 having students describe internal and external conflict, it had students “discuss how a secondary character has an impact on the main character,” and now Part 3 had students write important lines rather than questions; this was switched to Part 4 instead. Part 5 now had students think about the theme, and an additional Part 6, previously Part 5, still had students record vocabulary words. Bookmark answers were assessed on specific details and understanding of the novel. Students were allowed to work on their Bookmarks in class during independent reading sessions, but not during group meetings, which were solely for discussion.

Calendars

All students were given Calendars to track their reading progress by pages read per day; it assured student ownership of their reading and responsibilities for themselves and for their groups. Students were to neither read ahead nor fall behind on their reading. Benway had her student groups fill out each day on the calendar with page number goals per day and told them that they had to finish reading on the very last day, June 11th. She suggested that students use the weekend as well as homeroom time to complete the reading as well. I observed that students were deeply engaged in the planning process. Nathan gave out a varied version of the Calendar, on which she and a couple of other instructors had already designated page numbers for each book; this was to increase reading time and to make sure that students were held equally responsible for their progress. Minalga suggested that this may be how the Calendars would be next year upon fuller development of the unit. Minalga’s Calendar was the same as Benway’s, except Minalga’s gave students until Sunday, June 13th to finish reading rather than Friday, June 11th.

Contracts

On the backs of the Calendars were a Book Club Contract, with specific rules and expectations about students being fully prepared for discussion days with their group members, staying on task, using the entirety of the allotted discussion time for discussion about the book, building off conversational topics, not interrupting others, using proper body language, and avoiding distracting side conversations. Minalga and Benway distributed a similar document, except on the back were “back-up plan questions” for further engagement.

Other

On Day 4, Benway had her students briefly discuss conflict because it had seemed to be a point of confusion. To mitigate this confusion further, on Day 5, Benway and Minalga had their students complete an independent journal entry written from the perspective of the main character about a conflict faced by the character. Nathan also assigned this journal entry on Day 7. This assignment aligned with the historical fiction standard for seventh-grade students.

On Day 7, Minalga had her class fill out a worksheet called STEAL, on which students filled in a chart containing five columns spelling out the acronym STEAL: Speech (What does the character say? How do they speak to others?); Thoughts (What does the character think about? What do they believe in?); Effects on others (How do other characters feel about this character?); Actions (How does the character act? How do they treat others?); and Looks (What does the main character look like? How does the main character describe this character?) This was the only instance of this chart being used, yet all three classes were preparing for an interview assignment, which they would complete on Day 8 in Minalga’s class, Day 10 in Benway’s class, and Day 11 in Nathan’s class. Nathan and Benway had their students focus specifically on interviewing a secondary character, while Minalga had them interview any character. Regardless, this assignment, along with the journal assignment, aligned with the historical fiction standard for seventh-grade students.

On Day 8, Benway had her class brainstorm about and discuss the concept of theme. They could start by thinking broadly about a large topic, character traits of the main character, a conflict, or a lesson or moral. On Day 9, Nathan also had her students discuss the concept of theme; she had them think about various types of topics that may have come up, such as hate, greed, family, et cetera, and answer what the story showed about the topic in a broad sense. Potential sentence starters included, “People often” and “In life…” Ideas for brainstorming included thinking about what the story shows about people or life, what the author is trying to teach, what the characters learn, and/or why the characters grow or change. She specified further that theme will be a major part of the studies of eighth-grade students and that they will have to eventually come up with “sophisticated theme statements.” There can be multiple themes, and in eighth grade they may have to write essays identifying multiple themes.

On Day 9, Minalga’s students discussed the impact of setting and historical context on characters in their books. She engaged them in an activity where they had to tell her that it was currently the year 2021 without saying it directly; the purpose was to illustrate that all of the influences of pop culture today distinguish this year and era from others just as the setting, dialogue, events, and historical background of the characters and situations in their books uniquely affected the characters within their own eras. She wanted students to keep their discussions of character perspective focused.

On Day 11, Benway had her students complete a body biography assignment, which Minalga had also assigned earlier as an interjected formative assessment on Day 3, with some elements taken out for the sake of comprehension and time. Students could request help from their peers, but ultimately, the work was independent. They filled in the head (internal conflict), eyes (what the character looks like), mouth (what the character says or does not say and how that affects the character), heart (the character’s relationship with others), legs (external conflict), and the feet (the setting and the character’s connection to the setting).

On Day 11, Minalga gave her students the extra-credit option to complete a Pixton storyboard which would outline the five most important events of their books. Benway used this same assignment as her final required summative assessment for the unit.

Research Findings

There are multiple elements which come together to form book clubs. These include book selection, cultural diversity, standardization, the role of secondary teachers, student grouping, and finally reading progress as evaluated through discussion. This study can be divided into three questions.

What are the external, constructive elements of a book club unit?

Book Selection

The process of choosing books for student dissection and discussion has historically been a struggle. Student choice is important because it is “central to effective literature studies, as each participant needs the opportunity to work with a text that matters to him or her” (Parsons et al., 2011, p. 26). After all, “motivation and engagement are key factors in helping students adopt literate behaviors” (Watkins & Ostenson, 2015, pp. 246-247). It is key to let students choose their reading material because “choice can play a powerful role in helping students cultivate engaged and responsible reading lives” (Boatright & Allman, 2018, p. 2).

For this book club unit, students had been provided a book selection sheet. Students were asked to rank six predetermined choices by interest rating. The choices were (with their Lexile levels noted) Mississippi Trial, 1955 (870L) by Chris Crowe, The Lions of Little Rock (630L) by Kristin Levine, The Watsons Go to Birmingham-- 1963 (920L) by Christopher Paul Curtis, One Crazy Summer (750L) by Rita Williams-Garcia, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (920L) by Mildred D. Taylor, or The Rock and the River (HL550L) by Kekla Magoon. This customized teacher ranking was determined not by the Lexile levels of the novels as determined by the Lexile framework as developed by MetaMetrics Inc., but rather by the complexity of the portrayal of each historical event covered by the novel.

For example, Mississippi Trial, 1955 weaves together the motivations and developments of the fictional characters of the novel seamlessly with a historically accurate outline of the events surrounding and inclusive of the murder of Emmett Till to the point where both the fictional and historical elements of the novel are to be equally scrutinized, while The Watsons Go to Birmingham-- 1963 waits until the final chapters to briefly, albeit indirectly, portray the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in favor of having readers observe for the vast majority of the novel the motivations and developments of the fictional characters. In other words, the greater the focus on the historical event, the more complex the novel is for students.

The novels on the book selection sheet had been chosen because of their relative complexity to students. According to Benway, out of the four primarily chosen novels, Mississippi Trial, 1955 (870L) has the highest reading level, followed by The Lions of Little Rock (630L), with the lower level novels being The Watsons Go to Birmingham-- 1963 (920L) and One Crazy Summer (750L); additionally, The Rock and the River was a higher-level selection. Benway added that for special education students of a certain comprehension level, picture books and alternative books were chosen; these students received modified assignments and were pulled out into a special education resource room for more focused instruction.

By the second day of this unit, I observed students reading The Lions of Little Rock, One Crazy Summer, The Watsons Go to Birmingham-- 1963, and Mississippi Trial, 1955. Out of these four books, I had been provided the latter three so that I could independently read and take notes on them. The purpose of this was for me to develop the background knowledge for engaging in meaningful discussions with the students. One other book that I observed some students reading is The Hero Two Doors Down by Sharon Robinson (640L). This book was chosen specifically for English-language learning students or students with reading levels “significantly below grade level.”

For teachers still looking to develop lists, it is important to keep in mind that “book selections for middle grades learners should be about things that matter to young adolescents who are discovering themselves and making their marks upon the world” and discuss “generative themes” which “offer layers of meaning, rich in symbol and metaphor, that leave sufficient room for personal interpretation” as well as simultaneously relate to readers’ lives and illuminate broader truths beyond their own personal experiences” (Parsons et al., 2011, p. 25). In this regard, fiction may be a good place to start looking because “fictional texts read better than informational texts” (Hinton et al., 2014, p. 25). Specifically, “young adult fiction ‘can offer a connection to alienated students, mirror the lives of young adults, and provide a forum for adolescents to discuss what it means to come of age, including navigating difficult problems, accessing tools needed to become problem solvers, and fostering empathy’” (Hinton et al., 2014, pp. 23-24). Boatright & Allman suggest that “in making subject matter a component of a student’s experience... it helps students develop self-reflective lenses on thematic issues in literature, which can translate to how students view their own worlds” (Boatright & Allman, 2018, p. 6). Students can search for books which have won awards endorsed by organizations such as the American Library Association (Boatright & Allman, 2018, p. 2) or the International Literacy Association and YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) as well as look for books reviewed positively by “sources such as Kirkus or Booklist, in The ALAN Review and The Horn Book Magazine, and on websites such as teenreads.com or voya.com” (Watkins & Ostenson, 2015, p. 270).

For decades, school districts have relied heavily on the canon, which has allowed “for Americans to have a common set of knowledge upon which to understand history, language, and culture, with all its foibles, problems, and inconsistencies;” this is “especially true for teachers in rural and urban school settings where commonalities in curricula [are] key to educational opportunities” (Boatright & Allman, 2018, p. 2). The district has to follow the Common Core State Standards (CCSS,) and as a result, the texts chosen, which appear on their “exemplar lists” are commonly unappealing and impersonal for young adult readers, resulting in lower engagement with the material overall, as “readers learn more from interesting texts; and students’ personal connections to a text’s content are of critical importance to their engagement” (Watkins & Ostenson, 2015, p. 269). As it is, students with behavior and learning problems “may need more support in reviewing the text” (O’Brien, 2007, p. 9).

Through my internship observations, I noted that the seventh-grade language arts classes studied The Outsiders, a classic member of the literary canon of young adult literature, for character analysis and development, plot development, theme, and symbol among others; sixth-grade students studied what I personally perceive to be a relative newcomer to the growing canon, Seedfolks, which features individual character stories. I unfortunately did not directly observe the instruction of Seedfolks, but I think that this text fares better as a text to which students can more closely relate and which students can better understand because its chapters depict individual stories and are therefore easily digestible. This is based on how I surmised that it has become more difficult for students to relate to The Outsiders because of its stereotypical representations of 1950s character types and possibly because of the fact that it is a canonical text which has been assigned to students without much space for input. Based on this admittedly spotty evidence, it does not surprise me that the students participating in my site’s book club unit did not choose the one classic canonical text, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor.

Cultural Diversity

Cultural diversity is critically vital to implement, as students “need to learn ways of living as a community that values and discusses different perspectives” and “multicultural and multivoiced YAL can provide space to contemplate the role of community both in our classrooms and beyond and to foster this vital literacy life skill” (Lillge & Dominguez, 2017, p. 37). Additionally, using divergent student perspectives, students consider “how insider and outsider status is ascribed or usurped” (Lillge & Dominguez, 2017, p. 37). Especially considering the subject matter of the books chosen for this unit, which all focus on civil rights and racial segregation, diversity was of the utmost importance. Because student choice is “one of the tenets of democratic teaching,” it is vital that students “ask what’s missing, what’s not being communicated on the page according to the author’s choices, and how those choices are indicative of an agenda that promotes one life preference-- say, heteronormative versus other ways of living in the world” (Boatright & Allman, 2018, p. 3). Culturally diverse young adult literature “helps students develop self-reflective lenses on thematic issues in literature, which can translate to how students view their own worlds” (Boatright & Allman, 2018, p. 6). Students reading diverse literature selections have “opportunities to examine cultural issues and historical events from their diverse perspectives” and personally relate to culturally diverse characters (Woodruff & Griffin, 2017, p. 112).

Indeed, teaching with literature is “political” (Boyd et al., 2015, p. 379) and this political stance must be reflected in a positive manner in the classroom because “‘bumping up against ideologies’ in texts reflecting multiple perspectives and diverse experiences leads learners to interrogate their own experiences and beliefs, resulting in development of strong, cogent, and articulated belief systems” (Parsons et al., 2011, p. 25). Due to the inherently political act of choosing culturally diverse texts for the classroom, teachers commonly fear controversy and “community discontent” because texts may “frighten or corrupt” students’ minds, fail to “uphold accepted societal values,” or merely bring up sociocultural issues including race (Watkins & Ostenson, 2015, p. 250). I believe that especially in 2021, this fear is baseless because these discussions need to be started.

Secondary teachers scouring for award-winning books specifically as a result of excellence in portraying cultural diversity should look for books which have won one of the following literary awards: the Coretta Scott King Award and Honor, the Pura Belpré Award, the Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award, the American Indian Youth Literature Award, the Asian Pacific American Award for Literature Award, the Arab American Book Award, the Schneider Family Book Award, the Batchelder Award, and the Stonewall Book Award or Barbara Gittings Literature Award (Boyd et al., 2015, pp. 381-382).

For those worried about standardization as per the CCSS, even though there is a scant amount of cultural diversity exhibited by the exemplar list, the listed texts “are of the highest quality” (Boyd et al., 2015, p. 381). However, all is not lost, as in my research, I came across one wonderful resource from Worlds of Words: Center of Global Literacies and Literatures, sponsored by the Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language, and Literacy, founded by the University of Arizona, which attempts to globalize the Common Core exemplar list by including culturally diverse companion texts to the ones listed on the exemplar list (Worlds of Words, 2021).

Standardization

The shadow of standardization has become the most intimidating yet substantial factor in the book selection process, as the CCSS determine the grade levels of books and in turn, based on quantitative measures of text complexity and college readiness standards, the books that schools choose for students to read (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2010, p. 3). One roadblock which teachers encounter in the book selection process is “the reality of needing to include test-taking lessons and skills to prepare students for required end-of-the-semester and end-of-the-year assessments” (Boatright & Allman, 2018, p. 4). This efferent stance of reading literature as proliferated by standardized testing, “has stripped away students’ motivation to become readers because it has little to do with students themselves” (Bowers-Campbell, 2011, p. 565).

I must interject that the secondary teachers involved in this unit were lucky to have been able to place the unit after the administration of the STAR reading assessment, which is distributed by Renaissance Learning (Renaissance Learning, Inc.) and performed three times a year as per the Connecticut state mandate. This timing avoided the issue of the book selection being initially restricted by factors measured by standardized testing, yet data from the assessments were used in order to scaffold and support students in the book selection process in order to assure that they were reading at a desirable level, although teachers tend to see these data as inaccurate in comparison to data gained from actual classroom observations and activities. According to Formato, the strict Common Core standards did not have a major impact on the book selection process. The curriculum standard for seventh grade only specified the genre of historical fiction and the school chose to concentrate on civil rights; the main issue was the availability of the books in the book room, especially considering that they needed to have “three hundred books of a certain era” available, equally distributed by reading level.

Nevertheless, in order to address a gap caused by the fact that “while the complexity of reading demands for college, career, and citizenship have held steady or risen over the past half century, the complexity of texts students are exposed to has steadily decreased in that same interval,” the CCSS “emphasize increasing the complexity of texts students read as a key element in improving reading comprehension” (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2010, p. 1). ATOS, a service offered by Renaissance Learning, Inc., is “a popular reading incentive program” which is “freely available” and scans the text complexity of student novels, yet it “requires users to purchase their tests that are aligned to specific books, which, in turn, limits students’ book choices” (Watkins & Ostenson, 2015, p. 248). Not only are teachers held back by standardization protocols, but also by budgetary restrictions.

Much of the time, students end up choosing a selection from the classroom bookshelf, for which limited budgets force teachers to “choose the ‘lesser of the evils’ from the texts that are already available to them—either based on the titles on a district-approved list or from those texts that are physically in English department closets or on classroom shelves;” despite this, “teachers report feeling autonomy because, compared to having a dictated set of texts from which they must work, these teachers feel that they have latitude (within the practical concerns mentioned) to choose the texts they see as best” (Watkins & Ostenson, 2015, p. 264). In order to avoid these extra costs, teachers end up looking to the CCSS exemplar list, which mostly offers books free in the public domain (Watkins & Ostenson, 2015, p. 268). Ironically, this setback may be beneficial for book club units, as they actually “require students to read text closely and to participate in a variety of discussions” in which “students have to present information about the text, evaluate evidence, and build on one another’s ideas,” all qualities of everyday book club discussions regardless of standardization efforts (Lightner & Wilkinson, 2017, pp. 435-436).

Benway noted that the Fairfield school district decided to designate “historical fiction as the genre for book clubs” in order to meet the standards for grade seven as specified in the Connecticut state standards. Formato confirmed this in our interview, adding that in years past the school had let students choose from a more general selection based on student interest. She added that this standard for historical fiction emphasizes content for which students are to retell stories from the historically accurate perspectives and voices of characters using historically accurate details. However, for this year, the specific concentration chosen by the curriculum coordinator was civil rights. Benway articulated that it was “the only topic for the historical fiction book club.” She went on to express that “most teachers are not happy about this and prefer doing historical fiction in general. We have so many great books” about other concentrations for historical fiction such as the Holocaust and World War Two “that we cannot use now.”

One issue brought up to me by Formato was that assigning various whole-class texts about different eras in history had made it more difficult to assign general informational assignments, as there was not a singular focus because of the emphasis placed on student choice. In order to focus on one specific era for whole-class study, the central office for the district of Fairfield pushed the school to pick one time period by combing through the books available from the bookroom of class text sets, which covered topics such as World War Two and the Civil Rights era. This selection process was facilitated by the fact that coverage of World War Two was transitioned to the eighth-grade language arts classes because it aligned with the curriculum, which left seventh-grade students with the Civil Rights texts in preparation for the first unit of eighth grade, which would cover the Civil Rights era anyway.

Nevertheless, “the gauntlet students rais[e] when challenging each other to see for themselves speaks to students understanding the value of textual evidence when engaging in academic endeavors, which inadvertently helps build test-taking skills” (Boatright & Allman, 2018, p. 6). In spite of all of this talk about quantitative measurement, the CCSS classify books by qualitative measures including the conventionality of narrative structure and sequences, the conventionality and clarity of language and the usage of domain-specific vocabulary, the assumptions made about readers’ prior knowledge and life experiences, and the layers and complexity of determining the meaning as intended by the author (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2010, p. 5).

What are the internal, procedural elements of the book club unit?

Teacher Role

While student autonomy is paramount for a well-run book club unit, secondary teachers still need to monitor the situation somehow. During book club units, “the teacher takes on the role of facilitator and expert participant rather than director of discussion” (Parsons et al., 2011, p. 23). They model dialogue and modes of interpretation of the material as well as read the same books as their students “as a reader-- noticing, wondering, and making personal determinations about what matters” (Parsons et al., 2011, p. 27). Acting as facilitators rather than sages on the stage, the teachers involved in this unit modeled certain elements. For example, Benway provided students with a model of the Bookmark on Google Classroom, filled out with information about The Outsiders, a book which they had all previously read as a whole class. Benway and Minalga both went over how to incorporate specific details into the “important event” by demonstrating a poorly written paragraph versus a more detailed paragraph. Students needed to make sure that they expressed their knowledge as if the teacher did not know the page numbers or details as well as the student did; they tend to not write these things down because they “know” already, so it is wise to mitigate that assumption head-on. Teachers should inspire discussions rather than authoritate them, “encouraging a democracy of voices” and acting as both the “shepherd” and the “partner participant” at the same time (Woodruff & Griffin, 2017, p. 111). The teachers always advocated for specific details found by asking “why” questions. Some additional “follow-ups that use uptake” and encourage elaboration, clarification, and even productive disagreement “may include quoted words and employ pronouns such as this/that and I/you/he/she/it” (Sherry, 2017, p. 300).

While secondary teachers should clearly manage their classrooms and prevent chaos by explaining objectives, activities, assignments, and feedback and time limit procedures for discussions, their students should be left to “manage team interactions and decide roles for each other” in order to “help to establish accountability and promote learning” (Espey, 2008, p. 766). While secondary teachers are still responsible for scaffolding and assessing the overall atmosphere of the classroom, this transfer of control from instructor to student is beneficial even beyond the book club unit as it “has been found to be an important basis for the successful instruction and self-regulated use of cognitive strategies in a number of literacy contexts, such as reading and writing” (Wiebe Berry & Englert, 2005, p. 36). The proper execution and training of this transfer of control is essential because it can be difficult to get students to easily switch their focus from the student discussion to the teacher lecture. On Day 2 of the unit, in order to mitigate this issue, Minalga engaged her students in a preliminary practice meeting for five minutes to make sure that they could behave well in discussion groups by building on the conversational topic. She would provide feedback on this practice meeting, engage students in a second meeting for eight minutes, and discuss this afterward. As was done throughout the entirety of the unit, students would be assessed for participation. Minalga did this in order to emphasize face-to-face communication due to the overuse of Chromebooks throughout the year due to the onset of COVID-19 and, in her words, “text-to-self connections.” This practice meeting had students answer basic comprehension questions such as, “Who is the main character? How would you describe the character? What is the initial setting? What problem does the character have?” Students were given a chart in which they filled out points of discussion; the left side was for pre-discussion, and the right side was for post-discussion. Points of discussion included questions, confusing parts, and surprising parts. Benway’s class had their practice meeting on Day 3, during which they only talked about the setting and how it impacted characters, as well as what students knew about the main character thus far.

Student Grouping

There are two ways in which secondary teachers can think about student grouping: through the physical arrangement of the desks, and through gauging the abilities of students.

As for the physical environment for book clubs, it is commonly accepted that there should be between three and six students per group (Boatright & Allman, 2018, p. 5; Parsons et al., 2011, p. 26; Sherry, 2017, p. 306). Circular desk arrangements have been found to “promote quicker problem solving and result in higher member satisfaction” (Espey, 2008, p. 767). Students tend to appreciate having an ample amount of space between student groups to increase comfort and decrease distractions (Espey, 2008, p. 774). Classrooms with “movable tables and chairs” may “facilitat[e] the ability to work in groups,” and natural lighting has been shown to positively affect student engagement as well (Espey, 2008, p. 773). Sitting students outside of the classroom is a gamble. On Day 5, Benway determined that the hallway was too distracting, which I observed would be the case for Minalga’s class during the entire final week of the unit as well. Overall, I found that having students sit in the hallway to reduce distractions produced mixed results, but ultimately, because there was still a relatively equal balance of disengagement and proper time management, I do not think that it made much of a difference. Meanwhile, Minalga’s class lost their privilege to work outside in the warm weather because they took advantage of the opportunity and fooled around. The physical arrangement of the desks can be a byproduct of student behavior and grouping by ability.

Overall, students were grouped by ability level into groups of three to four students and seated and arranged within the classroom based on student behavioral levels; some groups were given preferential seating based on their observed behavior levels, which determined whether their groups would be placed in the front of the room close to the teacher’s desk or in the back of the room where students could be more independent. Formato told me that in the past, the teachers would experiment by mixing and switching group members around in order to see how focused students were and to keep the conversation active. Unfortunately, because of safety measures and logistical restrictions brought about because of the outbreak of COVID-19, teachers resorted to resubmitting their seating charts so that students in the same group could sit closer to each other in class in order to reduce the chances of students moving around the room and increasing physical contact with one another. Formato mentioned that she was not a fan of the mixed-ability grouping model because of its detrimental effect on “higher-level” students; she claimed that “you are taking that child’s growth away” and not letting them “go” and autonomously learn. She suggested that this is a common, growing mindset among educators.

Literature circles or book clubs have been found to be “designed to meet the needs of different types of learners-- gifted learners, struggling readers and writers, English learners, students with learning exceptionalities, and general education students-- which suggests that this approach can positively influence literacy education in various educational settings” (Woodruff & Griffin, 2017, p. 109). This makes it that much more indispensable to properly integrate students with special educational needs into these discussion groups because “as much as typically performing students, students with learning and behavior problems benefit from the opportunity to engage in meaningful learning as well as increased interaction with their peers in order to discuss relevant social issues and global concerns” (O’Brien, 2007, p. 8). As it is, students with intellectual exceptionalities as well as “children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds” are less fit to carry on conversations on their own accord and may require intervention from the teacher (Wiebe Berry & Englert, 2005, p. 35). If all students are given particular roles during the discussion, then individual student capabilities and self-determination shine because they are then “expected to be interdependent by emphasizing their strengths in their role” (O’Brien 2007, p. 9).

I believe that perhaps the teachers running this unit should have more thoroughly considered incorporating student roles rather than keeping the conversation filtered primarily through discussion questions and prompts, especially to combat student disengagement which grows more rampant toward the end of the school year, because “departure from these individual roles to a less structured format sounds good on the surface, but presents a challenge to students with limited academic skills who may no longer feel they have anything to contribute” and leads to these students with learning and behavior problems becoming “spectators” rather than active participants “while more academically talented peers take over” (O’Brien, 2007, p. 9). In contrast to this, Formato told me that these roles tend to be counterintuitive to student progress because they allow for students to slack off in certain focus areas which are solely possessed by other students and this is why the teachers have stuck to using prompts and guiding questions rather than incorporating specific student roles. I did observe students who blindly wrote down their own thoughts or the thoughts of other group members without putting in more effort to emphasize; some students read from their Bookmarks and did not have the confidence (or perhaps the reading background) to contribute further. This was due to their lack of “intratopic coherence” (Wiebe Berry & Englert, 2005, p. 37). By Day 5, students in Nathan’s class outwardly expressed that they had no intention to read their books over the long weekend, so she warned them that this kind of behavior does not prepare them for high school. It made her and I question whether students truly understood what they were reading, and it made me wonder further if students thought of this whole unit as merely another assignment leading up to a test. She wanted students to get into a better habit of reading on schedule so that they would not later regret missing reading time.

I can concede that student roles may not be as necessary as one may think they would be for the construction of a book club unit. Fittingly so, it has been found that these roles can “stil[t] conversations, resulting in students’ reading responses from their role sheets,” or Bookmarks in my case, and “students do not react to each other or question each other; instead, they simply give each other their answers” (Bowers-Campbell, 2011, p. 558). In the end, roles or no roles, student groups should be “formed to take greatest possible advantage of intellectual and experiential diversity;” the students in these groups should ideally have different academic strengths and experiences to “ensure a fairly even distribution of academic capabilities” and secondary teachers may also want to consider “geographic diversity to complement the intellectual diversity” (Espey, 2008, p. 766).

How are these elements combined to create a well-developed book club unit?

Reading Progress as Evaluated Through Discussion

During the development of book club units, it is natural for secondary teachers to debate how much autonomy should be given to students during the conversation process.

The strategies used during this unit did not prioritize an aesthetic, free-flowing reader response journaling approach, which “meet[s] the needs of all learners” and encourages students to get personal and “relish the experience of reading for an authentic purpose by recording their thoughts about a text” (Woodruff & Griffin, 2017, p. 113). This in turn leads to the genesis of individual student interpretations of books, which is auspicious as “discussions in book clubs are open, freeing readers to not only enter discussions with their individual interpretations, but to be influenced and to influence each other’s understandings of texts through conversation” (Childress & Friedkin, 2011, p. 51). Given free reign, well-grouped students tend to have conversations “charged with incisive wit and imagination, as well as close readings and analysis as proof for their claims;” at times, these conversations may also be charged by, “without guidance from their teacher, a sense of empathy for the characters’ travails” (Boatright & Allman, 2018, p. 6). I definitely observed this vigor in various groups among the three classes, even though some groups went a bit off the beaten path and contemplated conspiracy theories about the characters which were clearly not reflective of the reading material; and yet, the ending to one book, Mississippi Trial, 1955 was on the verge of being ambiguous, opening the floor for these kinds of responses.

This anecdote reflects a gray area or middle ground for authority over the discussion and the pertinence of guiding questions, as given the proper environment and preparation, “readers naturally begin to talk about literary elements” because they “understand these elements within the context of a story well before they can actually name them” and as a result they “understand and can use this new knowledge to gain deeper insights when they read (and write) again” (Parsons et al., 2011, pp. 24-25). Other than digressions such as aforementioned, another issue facing student-run discussions may be malformed “intertopic coherence,” the ability of students to transition among and sustain appropriate topics at respectively appropriate intervals (Wiebe Berry & Englert, 2005, p. 37). After their first practice meeting on Day 3, Benway’s students felt that their conversations went well because they had had things to contribute and began to agree on certain topics, yet they simultaneously felt that it was easy to run out of topics to discuss. Benway reminded them to use their back-up questions and to ask questions that lead to longer conversations, for example, not asking who your favorite character is, but rather, ask why. Generally they were to avoid questions which would yield one-word or yes-or-no answers. Despite this guidance, I observed that this kind of behavior would become endemic of certain groups of students in all of the classes throughout the unit; despite having back-up questions available, students did not take the fullest advantage of them and ended up slacking conversationally. Perhaps they were simply tired or overheated, or perhaps the questions did not provide enough student autonomy and interest in the conversation. On Day 4 in Benway’s class, I observed that students started discussing conflict but could not keep up the conversation. The class would have little bursts of discussion and then quiet down. Some claimed that they were writing down answers or that they were tired because of the shortened day on Wednesdays. Again, I observed this behavior in various groups.

Nevertheless, some may argue as a result that filtering student interpretations through the lens of teacher-created guiding questions “or the recitation of them within groups ‘almost entirely misses the point of why participants are there at all’” (Childress & Friedkin, 2011, p. 51) because these questions work to reduce further responses to fit a predetermined qualitative expectation. To rebut this, teachers should note that students transitioning through the grades in secondary school “must search for a text’s meaning through a process that moves beyond directly stated answers and toward using their schema to infer the meaning of a text” (Woodruff & Griffin, 2017, p. 113). And yet, even though according to one study, “unlike groups that responded to teachers’ prompts, student-created prompts allowed for group ownership and a sense of socially constructed meanings that students found beneficial” (Bowers-Campbell, 2011, p. 559), Formato clarified to me that the teachers largely relied on the creation of their own guided discussion questions and worksheets in order to help students develop “stamina” for discussions. In sixth grade, students had not had much guided practice with talking about the books that they had read. While she added that these questions were not necessarily required, they helped, as these unfamiliar novels were essentially “textbooks” for them. As with reading regular textbooks, students needed to build their communication and comprehension skills, making for less subjective responses to the books which make it “difficult for teachers to determine which answers are acceptable and unacceptable” (Woodruff & Griffin, 2017, p. 111). Fittingly, the Bookmarks and the other worksheets and activities which were at one point or another interjected throughout the unit prioritized what scholar Michael B. Sherry calls “O-HOT” questions, questions which are “open-ended and require higher-order thinking” and “are more likely to promote whole-class, dialogic discussions than questions that require a single, right answer and involve reporting previously articulated information,” or “C-LOT” questions which are naturally “closed-ended, lower-order thinking questions” (Sherry, 2017, p. 300).

Ultimately, secondary language arts teachers should assume the “onus” of engaging all students meaningfully with the books they read “rather than expecting the book and its contents to engage all of the readers in our classrooms,” and the teachers in this unit did so by “craft[ing] learning activities and assessments that are more engaging for students” with their questions as well as journal activities, interviews, and more (Watkins & Ostenson, 2015, p. 266). Overall, I found that the overarching topic of this unit, historical fiction specifically focused on civil rights, was highly enticing for students, thus spurring interesting, genuine conversations about diversity and societal exclusion. This supports the principle that book club discussions should foster “generative learning” experiences which involve “actively building connections between what we know and understand to new ideas and experiences to make meaning and suggest further action” (Parsons et al., 2011, p. 24).

Utilizing guiding questions, secondary teachers do not intend to control their students like they are puppets, but rather to promote thought processes that do not necessarily come naturally to seventh-grade students and to create new conversations, as they may allow for students to “practice skills essential for participation in a literate, democratic society, such as taking up what others have already written or said to form arguments and even to disagree in productive ways” (Sherry, 2017, p. 299). Nevertheless, as a result of these teacher-guided strategies, student responses were easier to grade. Teachers must keep in mind that because “good conversations take time to develop,” they should be on top of the formative evaluation process at all times in order to “infor[m], guid[e], and adap[t] the instructional program in the short run to achieve long-term outcomes” (Wiebe Berry & Englert, 2005, p. 54). Assignments throughout this unit were weighed and graded differently among all three of the classes, although sometimes the teachers discussed procedures of evaluation with one another; by the same token, some assignments varied for the different classes yet all strove for the same goal. Student surveys aided the evaluation process. On Day 3, Nathan had her class fill out a Book Club Reading Check survey via Google Forms, which asked the following six questions: How long did it take you to complete your assigned reading? Can you picture the main character and describe what they look like? What is one of the main character's personality traits and why do you think this? Who are the important characters so far? If you perform the five-finger test, how many words on a single page are unfamiliar to you? On a scale of one to five, are you enjoying the book so far? On the next Monday after the end of the unit, Benway distributed a student survey asking whether they liked their books. Nathan would distribute a similar survey later that week with variations on these questions.

Conclusion

In summary, this study has investigated the components of effective book clubs for secondary schools. Essential to a strong secondary language arts book club unit is good decision making, effective instructional tools, and student choice among other elements such as book selection, cultural diversity, standardization, teacher role, student grouping, and reading progress as evaluated through discussion. When all is said and done, book club units help to resolve “a societal need for an informed citizenry to act as a critical thinking adult population capable of contributing to a participatory democracy” (O’Brien, 2007, p. 7). The thoughts addressed throughout this study regarding these characteristics should provide a more solid foundation for effective secondary language arts book club units for years to come.

References

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Appendix

The interview questions used in this study were as follows. Note that Benway, Formato, Minalga, and Nathan were all given free reign over which questions they felt that they could comfortably answer and to what extent.

1: Who decided to incorporate this book club unit, and why at the end of the school year? Was it a teacher or someone from the district?

2: What is the main purpose for designing this unit? Is it to meet certain standardized goals such as those laid out by the Connecticut Common Core State Standards? Why is this important for students? What life skills do you expect them to gain from this unit? How will this unit make the students enjoy and engage in reading?

3: What is the overarching theme of this book club unit and why was this theme chosen?

4: How were the books selected for this unit and why were these specific books chosen?

5: What kinds of students are participating in this book club unit? Is it for both general education and special education students?

6: How will the students be grouped, both academically and via seating arrangements?

7: How will this unit's sessions be divided and why?

8: How were your guiding prompts and questions created? Do they follow CCSS standards?

9: What kind of information do you want students to look for as they read? Which strategies for comprehension will be emphasized and why?

10: How much freedom of discussion and interpretation will students have during this unit? Will you be more like facilitators than lecturers?

11: How will student responses be evaluated, if at all?

12: Do you have suggestions for outside resources with more information about book clubs, such as books, journals, videos, and others?