Kayla Jamerson

READ 595
Final Project
Activating Student Interest through Book Talks
As I stated in my audio response, Dr. Lester Laminack told us that we
should teach students to read and learn with an open mind, open heart, and
open soul. Only then will we be able to reach our students and they will
reach understanding. He emphasized reading and critical thinking during the
workshop and his concurrent session; however, during the concurrent
session, he mentioned students need to have background knowledge in
order thoroughly understood what they are expected to learn. He said that
asking students to understand something that they have never seen is like
writing bad checks on the comprehension accounts or asking children to
assemble a puzzle without letting them look at the cover of the box. It is
extremely difficult to assemble a puzzle without looking at the end result.
Otherwise, you are going-in-blind and struggle the entire time. Eventually,
you find that you are never going to reach an end result and you simply give
up.
This is what happens to students when they are reading and they do
not fully understand the purpose. Furthermore, if they have not been
provided with substantial background knowledge, then they will not have the
sufficient information necessary to interact with the text. For example, if
students are expected to read a novel about the Holocaust and they do not

even know what the Holocaust was, then they can not be expected to
visualize the settings or associate with the characters. In this situation, the
teacher should frontload, as Dr. Lamniack stated, the students with
extensive background knowledge.
With that being said, considering Dr. Laminacks pedagogical
suggestions pertaining to reading and book clubs, the initiative that I would
take in my classroom would be to develop students background knowledge
and activate their interest in the topic to be studied.
In order to explain how I would implement this initiative into my
classroom, I will continue the aforementioned example pertaining to studying
the World War II Holocaust. First, students will need to be provided with an
extensive amount of information about the Holocaust. This can be done by
using newspaper articles, documentaries, pictures, news reels, etc. Any
material that will provide the students with background knowledge and
visuals of what they will be asked to read about can help them to better
understand and interact with the text. After this has taken place, students
should be presented with multiple books to choose from. As suggested by Dr.
Laminack, the best way to do this is to conduct book talks. Book talks can be
used to present multiple books to the students to choose fromfor example,
when learning about the Holocaust the following books could be presented;
The Promise by Eva Schloss, Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl, Night by Elie
Weisel, Number the Stars by Lois Lowry, The Book Theif by Markus Zusak.
After the book talk, students should be provided with 3x5 index cards so that

they may record their top three book choices. On the back of the 3x5 index
card, the students should justify their choices by briefly stating why they
want to read the book. The purpose of the justification is mainly for the
teacher to help determine if a student really wants to read the book or if they
just want to be in a group with their friend. These 3x5s will later be used to
determine groups. Students should be given choice and the teacher should
try her best to place students in groups that best suit their instructional
level, as well as their interest.
Assessing student accountability can involve any medium that the
teacher wants to implement. My favorite things to use are journals. Journal
entries can be treated as mini-essays and later used to assess students
grammar and writing skills. However, literature circles could work just as
well. At the end of every class, all of the students should have the
opportunity to come together and, having the groups previous designate a
speaker for the group, each group could present on their novel. The downfall
of this is that others in the class may feel that they do not have to
participate. To offset this effect, all of the students could be required to
complete exit tickets with a specific requirement in mind.
It is important to remember that the discussion should be student lead
and the teacher should merely act as a facilitatorinterspersing specific
questions throughout in order to provide directions or to help move the
discussion forward if the conversation goes stale and to ensure that students
meeting specified requirements.

In addition to the book clubs, I think that it would be highly beneficial

for there to be a whole group text. I would suggest using the text that all of
the students could enjoy, for example, I might use the Boy in Striped
Pajamas by John Boyne because it looks at the Holocaust from a entirely
different perspective than any of the other books suggested during the book
talks. The reason I suggest this text is because of that fact. All of the other
texts are from the perspective of those who endured, survived, or aided
those in need. This provides commonality for whole group discussions and
allows students to connect to each groups text.
By doing this the students have an authentic purpose for reading and
their engagement in the text should increase because they are provided with
choice. Furthermore, by frontloading the students with an extensive amount
of background information related to the texts, they go into the text with
background knowledge and they do not struggle as much when it comes to
putting the pieces together.