A breakthrough, and a dilemma

After a month and a half of studying character analysis in fiction, and explicit teaching about high-level conversations about texts, my students had a real breakthrough this week. It started when I showed them a video from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project of fifth grade students in New York discussing "Bud, Not Buddy" in a student-led book club. My students were completely enthralled, and easily able to fill a sheet of chart paper afterward with a list of all the things the NYC kids did to make their discussion good. They especially loved how the students in the video stayed on one topic for a long time, and disagreed with each other in a heated way that was still respectful. It was so nice to get to show them such a clear example of where we're headed.

The next day, I taught a lesson on analyzing the recurring images and ideas in a text in order to better understand theme. Students were easily able to brainstorm a list of the recurring images in our class read aloud, "The Tiger Rising." I explained that those recurring images often symbolize something else, and asked them to think about what they might represent in "Tiger Rising." This led to a spontaneous whole-class discussion that was, hands down, the best I have ever heard them have. They were SO engaged, really listening and responding to each other, and sharing incredible ideas that led to this building excitement among all of them. At one point, one of my focal students got a huge grin on his face and jumped up and said, "The tiger is like Rob's feelings, and the cage is Rob keeping them all trapped inside....and Sistine has the key!!!!" The other students literally gasped. They didn't want to stop talking about it.

So they are definitely ready to begin book clubs. The problem is that our school's "Expo" is in several weeks, and the weeks before Expo are always completely consumed by getting ready for it. So it's going to be a tough time time to start book clubs.

This leaves me with a dilemma about my routine data source. I was planning that my data source would be regular video recordings of my focal students' book club, because I really want to capture the quality of the conversations that they're having on their own. I'm wondering what I could use in the meantime. The whole class discussions we have about the read aloud could work, though they're harder to document. I'd love ideas!