Suza+Sharp,+Book+club,+Round+1

=Put a Short Activity/Lesson/Project Title Here= Book Club Groups Members can go in and comment on anything another member has written on his/her page, and so can the teacher. Students meet in their groups once a week with the amount of reading predetermined by the groups. They use their wikipages to help their discussions along and can add to their pages during the meetings. After the meetings, students go back and reflect on what they learned, something positive about the discussion, and how they could improve upon the discussion next week. Students can also read other students' comments from different book club groups who are reading the same novel. ||
 * **Title**: ||< Book Club Discussion Groups for Independent Reading of //Jane Eyre// or //Great Expectations // ||
 * **Subject**: ||< English IV AP ||
 * **Grade**: ||< 12th ||
 * **Time Frame**: ||< 4-5 weeks ||
 * **Summary:** ||< Students post their pre-meeting discussion notes on their individual wikipages as a way to prepare for what they want to contribute to the meeting (with a focus on motifs noticed and how they are connected to theme/memorable or confusing quotes/questions that arise as they read. They all post reflections after the weekly meetings on their wikipages. ||
 * **Tasks**: ||< Groups formed a tag and then each individual member has a page to write down their ideas (motifs, themes, questions, quotes) they want to discuss during the weekly group meetings.
 * Objectives: ||< * Students are analyzing literature for specific elements and collaborating with each other. ||
 * Assessment: ||< I check the wiki pages the morning of the discussions to see if students are prepared for their meetings and assign points for preparation, as well as points for the reflection. Right now, the students have requested that this count as a daily grade until they become accustomed to this format. ||
 * Resources: ||< Novels (either paperback or electronic downloads of the novels), laptops (students have complained that they cannot edit or save their information on wikipages from their phones or ipads, but they can open the wiki). ||
 * **Teacher**
 * Reflections:** || Initially, I gave my students choices of the platform to use for their postings, but as we found out, Todaysmeet.com has a word limit, so it was not a viable option for writing indepth discussion notes. Even though the wiki turned out to be better, students complained that they couldn't edit or save information on their wiki when using their phones or ipads, so they said it was a hassle to stop reading and plug in their laptops to post on the wikipages. At least one third of my students said they would prefer to have handwritten pre-meeting discussion notes instead of using the wiki although posting reflections on the wiki would be fine. My solution or compromise has been to allow those who prefer to write out their discussion notes to do so, and the others will continue to use the wiki. Everyone will post reflections on the wiki, though. ||
 * **Examples**: ||< * http://shsfallbookclub.wikispaces.com/Grace+Touchstone ||

Discussion:
Use the Embed Widget tool to add a Discussion Area widget. Bump the number to 100. This will take the comments from the discussion tab and add them to the bottom of the page. This will encourage teacher reflection and modification.include component="comments" page="Suza Sharp, Book club, Round 1" limit="100"