Tips for Reading a Class Novel

We want to expose them to different genres of texts and different levels of complexity.
So every day might look different, which isn’t a bad thing!
But there are some practices we might want to avoid. Two of the biggest ones? Round-robin and popcorn reading.
It’s been accepted for a quite a while now that those practices aren’t effective when it comes to a shared reading experience. But we still see them in classrooms, very frequently. Why do you think that is?
I think it’s a comfortable practice that requires little to no preparation.
I think it’s what happens to many of us teachers: we revert to the way we were taught when we’re not sure what else to do. Many people have reasons that they use these practices, but I haven’t ever seen the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.
I won’t spend time getting into what those are in this post – maybe at a later date, I will! But in the meantime, I thought I might share some ideas with you that you can use instead of those practices. These are some tips for rolling out a class novel!
Why Read Class Novels?
Again, this is a debated practice. I wouldn’t take up independent reading time to read a class novel. The most precious time of day is when kids are engaged in reading independently in a book or text of their own choosing, and nothing else can replace that.
But class novels can serve many purposes!
1. A shared reading experience is great for creating anchor lessons and experiences.
2. Shared reading experiences are excellent opportunities to have kids speak and share their thinking about a text.
3. As students move into reading novels, they often have to be taught how to read them. That sounds silly, but I’ve had kids who think you read a chapter each day and then just stop. They don’t realize you can continue reading until you want to stop.
4. The gradual release model fits into a class novel really well – and then you can extend the You Do into independent reading.
Tip #1 Choose Wisely
For students to comprehend to the best of their abilities, they’ll need some support. One way to do this is to have conversations using the book itself to make some very thorough predictions.
If you don’t already have a reader’s notebook, now’s the time. It doesn’t have to be fancy. If you’re looking for some tools to help you get started, you can check out my Reader’s Workshop Resource here, but you can start with a simple spiral or composition book for each child.
This is where the trouble sometimes starts. There are a few problems with kids serving as the main reader-aloud-ers of the novel. One of these is that they are not necessarily great models of reading. The teacher, hopefully, is! Another is that, when kids are reading, they won’t pause to talk. When the teacher is reading aloud, he or she can pause where she/he wants in order to have great conversations. Kid readers don’t encourage conversations. They are more focused on decoding, of course.
Tip #5 Be Planned & Purposeful
Don’t just start reading and hope for the best. Before you read with kids, you’ll want to have a few
things planned out:
1. What is your purpose for reading (what strategy or skill will you help kids grow with that part of the text)?
2. What sections of text will you have kids read or reread to practice the strategy or skill?
3. How will students apply the strategy or skill – in speaking or writing?
Next week, read all about what a shared reading lesson might look like!