The last three weeks before Christmas break left me in a weird spot in my lessons. We had just finished a unit prior to Thanksgiving break and we only had 12 instructional days before midterms and Christmas break. So…what does one do? I pondered different options and landed on teaching the book La Piñata de Renata with a focus on Chapters 1-6. I figured that since the chapters were shorter and essentially mini-stories themselves, we could do 2 chapters a day with some activities for each chapter in between. We actually skipped chapter 2 because….well, you can! That is the beauty of this book. On top of that, I decided we would be reading this book in a book club style setting. You can read more about this book here!
The first thing that I did to get ready was to break my students into book club groups based on their current readiness levels in the language. I have many learners who I have identified as my “cheetahs”. They grab onto the language faster than most learners and I wanted them to have opportunities to really challenge themselves with the activities we did. This was my red group. Then, I broke down the rest of the kids into 3 other groups. My blue group consisted of learners who really needed extra support with executive functioning and were identified as emerging novice learners in our last assessment. My yellow and green groups were really similar with readiness levels but my green learners were kids that are really branching out of the Novice low level of reading whereas my yellow group consisted of more solid Novice Low learners.
To prepare, I created a lesson plan document that helped me plan out my strategies that I wanted kids to do before, during, and after reading. You can see a picture of some of the document below. I cannot share the entire document because it contains copyrighted materials from the teacher’s guide. Also, this is not the most beautiful lesson plan document that you have ever seen, but it worked for me.
This is how I went about structuring my book club. I am a believer in the workshop/mini-lesson model so I knew that I wanted to start each chapter with something predictable and end each chapter with something predictable. I also knew that I only wanted/needed about 1-2 days per chapter because they are so short and recycle a lot of vocab from chapter to chapter. Here is what I did:
Before Reading
To finish up the first half of the book, I gave my learners a midterm over the book. I had options that mimicked some of the activities that my kids did with their book clubs, but ultimately they were allowed to choose whatever project they wanted. The choices were:
You can read more about my midterm choices here!
I really enjoyed having book clubs with my classes! Here is what I would keep and toss the next time around.
Keep:
Breaking up the groups based on readiness level/proficiency levels worked great for me and allowed me to meet with groups and tailor their instruction to their specific needs.
I loved using this book as our first book club group. The language level was appropriate for all learners and the pictures supported comprehension for my emerging novice kids.
Toss:
I wouldn’t have drastically changed the assignments for each level and would have scaffolded the same assignment for different levels. It became a little tiresome to have 4 different activities for each group. While it was nice to have activities that were really focused for each group, I think I could have saved time by just altering the same assignment for the different groups.
Overall, I loved doing this with my kids. I think it was the best thing that I could have done with them the last few weeks of school. They were engaged with the book, receiving tons of comprehensible input, and were also producing comprehensible output in their activities. I loved that my kids were writing about their reading after each chapter because it supported their comprehension 100%.
Short answer, yes. Long answer: I am using the remaining Renata chapters throughout the course of the 2nd semester to introduce and reinforce new vocabulary that is in our remaining units of the year. When we get back from winter break, my students will be diving into SSR/FVR for the first time and I am also going to offer the remaining chapters as an option for them to read on their own. Speaking of FVR/SSR, my kids are expressing so much interest in Craig Dexemple’s writing that I have to order more of his books so a riot does not break out in my classroom. I am so pleased at their love for reading and how we ended the semester on a great note. I hope you all have a wonderful Holiday season! Thanks for reading 🙂
Curious about how I ended our book clubs with midterms? Read my NEWEST post about project-based midterms here!!!!