Engaging the Disengaged: Using Learning Clubs to Motivate Struggling Readers and Writers By Heather Casey Untangling the

struggling learners frustrations with reading and writing is a complex process of understanding ability, considering engagement, and providing access to appropriate materials. Learning clubs can evolve as an intervention to work with struggling literacy learners that weaves together principals of motivation, engagement, and literacy development. Learning clubs are a grouping system City Year Corps embers!teachers can use to organi"e active learning events based on student#selected areas of interest. $ositioning the struggling student within learning clubs can be done through either %pull#out& or %push#in& interventions and this supports City Years 'ier ( )nstructional *upport by allowing the Corps embers to %pull#out& or %push#in& +if space permits, small groups or individual students to focus on literacy areas where our students struggle in. *tudents who struggle with literacy typically bring a history of frustration and failure to their transactions with text. This frustration is compounded by the expectation that students are no longer learning to read, but instead of reading to learn. 'hese students, often dismissed as lost, fre-uently are asked to engage in reading and writing activities across content areas that are frustrating. )t is not uncommon for students to respond to this frustration with inappropriate outbursts or passive disengagement. )t is a lot of work to encourage struggling students to assume ownership of literacy events. aking the struggling students part of the process motivates them to consider what is being learned and how they construct that learning. 'his is powerfully motivating for students who feel marginali"ed by the larger literacy community. .eading groups, learning clubs, or book clubs offer a different picture. .eason being, these struggling students are engaged because their ideas about literature and literacy matter to us, and in turn, to their peers around them. 'his engagement motivates these students to actively pursue literacy events because they want to become readers and writers. Literature circles and books clubs +.eading /#0, .eaders 'heatre, etc., in practice, both offer spaces for students to participate in facilitated conversations about common texts, which are generally, but not always fiction. )n a book club, the teacher +Corps ember, becomes a facilitator of student communication and comprehension as the focus is the process of constructing and deconstructing text. /s students decode, describe, and react to a shared reading event, their individual identities and experiences shape conversations and the texts being considered while the conversations and texts shape the individual identities and experiences of the participants. *tudents are engaged because they have the opportunity to make choices about their reading and their participation while sharing responsibility for learning with their peers and their teachers +Corps embers,.

Using shorter selections that can be read in class allows corps members to directly monitor student reading and scaffold the group process. 1hen students are working with shorter text, the reading and responding happens within the session and the struggling students are more engaged because they are able to comprehend the selected text. )n conclusion, learning clubs unlock the potential to motivate disengaged and frustrated readers and writers because these clubs refuse to dismiss students who struggle and do not view themselves as readers and writers as a powerful vehicle for transforming and motivating engaged and interested learners across content areas to use literacy to build learning not only for a school year but to build a foundation of learning for life.