What is a book talk, and how can it be useful in helping students select literature for themselves?

During a book talk, students discuss with classmates books they have read, heard or discovered. The teacher can have a book talk in her/his classroom every month.

For example, teachers can pair up students for a free choice book and give the students a deadline to finish the book. Then, in class, the students can discuss the book and they will need to name five important things they liked about the book (intriguing setting, changes in setting, intense conflicts, exciting plot events, interesting twist, changes in character, characters they love or hate, how the protagonist and antagonist interact, mood changes, or an ongoing theme). The students will be given a “chat form” to fill in while they are discussing with their partner. 

  

Then, it will be useful for the teacher and the students to follow a rubric. Ann Tanona has created an interesting rubric with her class. I have found very interesting because rubrics are important for providing feedback. Ivey said that “the more specific feedback is, the better” (99). 

Figure 2 BOOK TALK RUBRIC
Criteria	Quality
Did I get my audience's attention?	Creative beginning	Boring beginning	No beginning
Did I tell what kind of book?	Tells exactly what type of book it is	Not sure, not clear	Didn't mention it
Did I tell something about the main character?	Included facts about character	Slid over character	Did not tell anything about main character
Did I mention the setting?	Tells when and where story takes place	Not sure, not clear	Didn't mention setting
Did I tell one interesting part?	Made it sound interesting - I want to buy it!	Told part and skipped on to something else	Forgot to do it
Did I tell who might like this book?	Did tell	kipped over it	Forgot to tell
How did I look?	Hair combed, neat, clean clothes, smiled, looked up, happy	Lazy look	Just-got-out-of-bed look, head down
How did I sound?	Clear, strong, cheerful voice	No expression in voice	Difficult to understand- 6-inch voice or screeching

      

Authentic Task

Middle and High school students need to develop their critical thinking skills with the help of critical literacy. Critical literacy helps teachers and students “analyze bias, perspective, audience, and the underlying assumptions and purpose of a piece of writing.” Critical literacy will develop their thinking skills and they will become active thinkers. They will learn to look and look again, think about thinking and how to “apprehend subjectivity and objectivity in their dialectical relationships” (Freire, 1985).

Teachers can develop numerous strategies for delivering academic content within a framework of critical thinking skills.  

Firstly, teachers should help students develop a critical consciousness by focusing on authentic literacy tasks. Through authentic tasks, adolescents will develop a critical consciousness and they will learn to interrogate assumptions. For instance, in science, they can research the relationship between life expectancy and access to safe drinking water. In Cotonou (Rep of Benin), people have to walk sometimes 5 km to search for potable water. 

Secondly, in maths, they can use graphical representation of data and data analysis to accompany their science research. Then, they can develop inferences, predictions, and arguments in their literacy class based on the math data. 

Therefore, unauthentic tasks will only disconnect students from real life experiences. Adolescents need to engage in important and real topics in order to be motivated (Cassidy, 2006). So, they need authentic tasks.

Furthermore, in order to expand students’ critical thinking skills, there must be a dialogue in the classroom, a dialectical exchange in which their ideas will take shape.  

Paulo Freire argued that it is only through thinking and feeling, along with action that students can make sense of the world. 

They need to read the word and the world. 

Teachers must use texts which will initiate student-centered discussions so these texts must highlight controversial issues. Then, teachers will ask a series of open-ended questions in order to make students find points of “intersection between their lives and the text” (Beck, 2005). 

 Examples of generative questions can be

·         What if…?

·         How could it be if…?

·         I hear what you are saying and it seems to be this…

·         Why are things the way they are?

·         Who benefits from the status quo?

As Giroux (1993) described it so well, teachers will have “messy, vibrant and noisy” classrooms. But “messy and noisy” should not be seen as negative terms to describe debates. On the contrary, if the dialogue is well organized by teachers, students will learn to listen to each other and respect each other opinion!  

An effective dialogue has a beginning, middle and an end that are all controlled by the agenda. A healthy dialogue will help students to work actively with the ideas and the concepts that are being pursued. Students will reflect on their own experiences and they will adopt a questioning stance toward texts. 

Teachers can ask students to ask questions and continue the dialogue through diary entries. If we want to develop students’ critical thinking skills, we should look beyond the school and let students deal with issues of equity and issues such as gender, class, and prejudice. Teachers must use books were voices seem credible. 

For example, teachers can use the book called The Other Side of Truth by Beverly Naidoo. This book helps students evaluate their own critical writing about texts. It will encourage adolescents comment on the authorial perspectives offered in texts on individuals, community and society from different cultures. They will analyse ways in which different cultural contexts and tradition have influenced language and style. Then, the debate can be about leaving home, country, refugees. 

Critical literacy will help students and teachers “expand their reasoning, seek out multiple perspectives, read from a critical stance, question rather than passively accept information and become active thinkers” (McLaughlin & DeVoogd, 2004).

 Students and teachers must be able to “read the world” and not be manipulated by it. 

School leaders and teachers should understand that school work cannot be monolithic and traditional one size fits all. This approach will lead to a lack of critical literacy instruction and to the use of unauthentic tasks. Teachers must use authentic Literacy tasks in order engage adolescents in active learning and in meaningful real world activities.  

Critical literacy and authentic literacy tasks will create active, effective citizens for democracy. I believe that the central purpose of education is to prepare our children to maintain and improve democracy. Here, in our African continent, we have so many dictators who do not think about their countries. They just want to secure a bank account in Europe and corruption is part of the landscape now! 

In school, it is my role and it must be the role of every teacher to use critical literacy and to use authentic tasks (inquiries that reflect societal concerns) to help adolescents develop a critical consciousness. 

Critical thinking skills are imperative for creating life-long learning. We want to stimulate their motivation and engagement, right? We need encouraging critical literacy which will help students to analyze bias, perspective, audience, and the underlying assumptions and purpose of a piece of writing (Irvin, 2007). 

I also think that the literature should help students conduct inquiries for reasons other than it being an assignment or an exercise. In Africa, teachers need to choose good African Literature in order to develop critical literacy in the mind of the future African or international leaders. 

Pugh recommends the use of literature by non-native English authors in the teaching of English which is used to carry out a myriad of social, cultural and personal, as well as bureaucratic and commercial functions (as cited in the Journal of Language and Communications, 2007).

Sagbo First Black Russian Politician Win

Jean Gregoire Sagbo has been elected as the new councilman of Novozavidovo, a rural community about 65 miles north of Moscow.

The residents of this town would stare at him because they had never seen a man of his colour! 

But some residents have recognized in Sagbo a rare quality, a quality difficult to find nowadays, honesty! He is an honest politician and he was able to convince the people of Novozavidovo of his good intentions.

Sagbo is indeed the country’s first black immigrant elected official. Sagbo is from a tiny West African nation called Benin, Republic of Benin. Sagbo has lived for 21 years and raised his family in this small rural community of 10,000 residents. He is 48 years-old. 

Let us not forget that Russia is plagued with violence and racism. But Sagbo was able to convince the Russians of his town of his clear and long term plan of fighting drug addiction, cleaning up the polluted lake and delivering heating service to deprived homes. 

Sagbo is a man of strong civic ideas who had always cleaned the entrance to his apartment, planted flowers and spent his own money on street improvements. He organized volunteers who started collecting garbage and cleaning up the streets. 

Russia’s black population has always suffered racially attacks but many African students are still attracted by the less costly universities. The Russian universities are indeed less costly than in the west. 

Sagbo is the first Black Russian politician to win. "Novozavidovo is dying," Sagbo said in an interview in the ramshackle Municipal Building. "This is my home, my town. We can't live like this."

According to Marke, an author, poet, songwriter, and activists for the voiceless and underprivileged, “People around the world are curiously asking, is this really happening in Russia, once an incubator of racism and still a somewhat insular society?” 

“But times are changing rapidly, and people around the world, whatever their ethnicity, have similar basic needs for freedom, justice and equality. 

As Sagbo said, "I am one of them. I am home here." 

His skin is black but he is Russian inside,” said Vyacheslav Arakelov, the mayor. “The way he cares about this place, only a Russian can care.” 

Sagbo isn’t the first black in Russian politics. 

Another West African, Joaquin Crima of Guinea-Bissau, ran for head of a southern Russian district a year ago but was heavily defeated.

Hasta La Victoria Ouattara!

Ouattara made a final appeal to Gbagbo to step down, and called on the rest of the army to defect. You cannot do more than that Mr. President Ouattara! You have given Gbago many chances to leave but he did not take them! Many good advisors told him to go and to GO NOW, but he does not listen!

Gbagbo has refused to step down since a November election that UN-certified results showed he lost to Ouattara, triggering a bloody civil war that has killed hundreds and rekindled the country's 2002-3 civil war. 

But has the UN failed Cote D'Ivoire? According to Akyaaba Addai-Sebo (2011), "the UN is capable of saving Cote d'Ivoire but it cannot do so as long as it plays 'second fiddle' to the western powers that 'pay the piper.' He adds that we must not forget that whenever the West and the UN mess up in Africa, it is left with African leaders to clean up the mess. He is convinced that the UN has all that it takes to save Ivory Coast from collapse. Akyaaba is an independent consultant on Preventive Diplomacy and the National Interest.

Ca suffit Gbagbo! After spending 5 years beyond your normal mandate haggling over the definition of voter eligibility, NOW, you are contesting the result of the election which had been certified correct by the UN... la vraiment CA SUFFIT GBAGBO!!!!

  

The West Africa Civil Society Forum (WACSOF) has added its voice to the call on President Laurent Gbagbo to step down for peace to prevail in Cote d’Ivoire and for that matter the entire African continent. But Gbagbo did not listen!

Gbagbo’s loss came as a shock to him because he thought he was going to be the President forever and no one could remove him from his position. Well, he was wrong!

France has accepted the accreditation of Alassane Ouattara’s envoy to Paris. France has acted in line with the entire international community, as Europe, the United States and African countries have all called for the dictator Gbagbo to step down.

There is heavy fighting near the residence of Laurent Gbagbo in Abidjan. C'est fini, Gbagbo, it is the end of your bloody game! But does he really see that the game is up??? I am not sure...

Gbagbo, enough, enough, ca suffit! enough of your wars, enough of your bloody coups, enough of the inhuman sufferings that you have imposed on the population of Ivory Coast (Ivorians & foreigners)

Ca suffit, enough!