Synthesis blog 5

Teaching, more specifically, teaching effectively can sometimes be a hard task. As teachers, it is our job incorporate different methods in order to best reach our students. Throughout our reading of Subject Matters, I have learned different ways to being literary into my future classroom. This chapter in particular talked about book clubs. Although the idea of a book club in class may first seem as if it could only be successful in a literature class, after reading this chapter, it is clear for me to see that, if implemented well, a book club can actually be very successful across the curriculum. I say “implemented well” because I do think there is room for it not to be successful in, for say, a math classroom. If the books used for the book clubs aren’t a great fit with the curriculum, we may lose student engagement as well as not covering what we had planned to cover. However, when done right, I think a book club can be quite beneficial. Something I really liked from Subjects Matter are the steps they have for using book clubs in the classroom. I think book clubs allow for students to work together and break down a text. We must make sure we don’t assign too many or too few people to a group in order to make sure each student has a role in the group and one person isn’t pulling all the weight. A book clubs allows students to bounce ideas off one another and hopefully leads to better understanding for all. Overall, I think as long as it it done well, a book club can be very beneficial in any classroom. I look forward maybe trying to use a book club in my own classroom one day. 

WC: 295