Dear Stellar Teacher: How Do I Effectively Teach A Novel Study?

Sara
Hey, teachers, welcome back to another episode! We’re kicking off October, and I am so excited to welcome Emily back for another episode of Dear Stellar Teacher. This is our monthly segment where we have a more casual, laid-back conversation. We talk a little bit about our teacher experiences, answer your questions, and yeah—hopefully, it’s kind of like listening in on two colleagues chatting in the break room.

So, Emily, welcome back to the show! Always love having you on.

Emily
Hey, Sara! Always love to be on.

Sara
So we usually start off our episodes sharing books we’re currently reading—a little book banter. However, this month, we’re answering a question related to novel studies, which I know our audience is going to love, because it comes up often. So rather than sharing a book you’re currently reading, what’s one of your favorite novels or chapter books that you read to your students when you were in the classroom?

Emily
I love this question! First of all, I was an elementary Battle of the Books coach, so every year I got the list, and the novels on these lists were amazing. I loved reading them with my students. My favorite novel—and this is still a current book—is Save Me a Seat by Sarah Weeks and Gita Varadarajan. It’s an amazing story about inclusion, cultural differences, and navigating school life. It’s great anytime of year, but especially at the beginning of the year. It’s about fifth graders, so super relatable: navigating bullying, loneliness, and just general school life. An excellent, excellent book. If you’re looking for a novel study…

Sara
I haven’t read that or even heard of it! As I was preparing for this episode, I realized how much I miss reading kids’ chapter books and novels. I used to do it every year—always read the Newbery Award winners and a few new chapter books over the summer on my own, so I could update my classroom library. Now, I can barely remember what I read to my students, let alone what’s new! I think I need to carve out some time to start reading kids’ books again, rather than just adult books.

Emily
I’m sure you could get through them in like, two hours too.

Sara
Yeah, they’d be quick and easy.

Emily
But are you going to add them to your Goodreads?

Sara
It’d be an easy way to inflate my Goodreads list for the year—200 pages is 200 pages.

I had a hard time picking just one favorite. I absolutely loved reading The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane to my students. That book holds such a vivid memory for me. The first time I read it to my students, it was part of the Global Read Aloud, which is an organization founded by Pernille Ripp. I had her on my podcast a couple of years ago. The idea is that during October, teachers commit to reading the same novel to their students and connect with other classes globally. We read it with our class, and we connected with a class in China and another in Montana—sending emails and video messages back and forth, sharing thoughts, asking questions. It was such a neat experience. It reminded me why we read: to create memories and connective experiences with students.

Emily
Yeah, Edward Tulane is such a fantastic book. When you first mentioned it, my brain immediately went to how amazing it is for character development. But I also think there’s a shift in thinking for novel studies. Don’t base your novels on standards. Base them on experience, like you were saying. Let the novel be the star of the show. I remember reading Edward Tulane and seeing students make deep connections with the characters. That’s what it’s all about—the reading experience.

Sara
Yeah, we taught a bunch of standards, but I promise you, my students don’t remember the standards we covered—they just remember the reading, the discussions, and connecting with kids all over the world.

Emily
Yeah, I have a couple more to mention: Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt—she also wrote Shouting in the Rain. Those are both excellent. Anything by Katherine Applegate is also amazing.

Sara
Yeah, I feel like I recognize her name, but I couldn’t tell you if I’ve read any of her books.

Emily
Yes, she’s fantastic. And for something a little different, there’s a science-fiction book called At the Bottom of the World by Bill Nye and Gregory Mone. That one’s really cool because it brings in real-world science with humor. It’s a funny book, and it’s a whole series—great for any STEAM classroom.

Sara
That’s awesome! All my honorable mentions go to anything by Kate DiCamillo, like Tiger Rising and Because of Winn-Dixie. Towards the end of the year, I would just do a Kate DiCamillo author study and read her books back to back. When you read a lot of her books, you start to see recurring themes, like coming-of-age stories or children who have lost a parent. You can spot patterns across the books when you read them sequentially.

Emily
Yeah, she does have some… I don’t want to say heavy, but potentially heavy themes for an eight-year-old—but very important. She’s an awesome author.

Sara
Okay, let’s talk about novel studies. We had a teacher send us a question. Rachel is a third-grade teacher, and she asked, “How do you effectively teach a novel study?” That’s a great question. Hopefully, we give her a sufficient answer. There’s so much we could say, and we have about 20 minutes, so we’ll do our best.

First, let’s talk about terminology. Emily, I’d love your input. Sometimes people hear “novel study,” “book club,” or “literature circles,” and think they’re all different. How would you define a novel study versus a book club or literature circle?

Emily
To me, a novel study is more like a whole-group activity. I picture everyone in the classroom with a copy of the text, reading it together—it’s a shared experience. A book club is more like an adult book club: you read on your own and come together to discuss. That can be awesome, but it’s hard to achieve if not every student is willing or able to do the reading. As for literacy circles… I’m not sure how different that is.

Sara
I agree. Novel study is a whole-group activity. Ideally, every student has their eyes on the text, reading together. Book clubs and literature circles, in my mind, are basically the same—students read independently and then discuss in small groups. The teacher may or may not facilitate. Back in my day, literature circles had roles like discussion director, summarizer, questioner, etc. I always thought everyone should do everything—everyone asks questions, everyone summarizes. Whether or not you use roles, I think it’s indifferent.

Emily
Yeah, it’s great when everyone has their own text. I know that’s difficult, but novel studies are wonderful because it allows everyone to experience the book together. I hesitate to assign chapters as homework because you never know what’s happening outside of the classroom. Students may not have support to be held accountable. I loved doing novel studies in my third-grade classroom.

Sara
Okay, let’s talk about what we did well with novel studies and what we might do differently now that we know more about the science of reading. What worked well for your students?

Emily
Excellent question. Just making it a priority—I think that’s key. This is what we’re doing during our reading block. We did read-alouds every day, read together, asked questions, and wrote about reading as we went through chapters. We led discussions chapter by chapter. Edward Tulane has so much figurative language—I remember discussing what it meant and exploring those ideas with students. Great discussions—but there are definitely things I would do differently now.

Sara
I can’t wait to hear what you’d do differently! I feel similarly. When I think back, we didn’t do a ton of novel studies, but we always read a chapter book aloud. In a way, that was a novel study.

Emily
It really is.

Sara
The only difference is, I didn’t always have the luxury of giving every student their own book, but we were always reading a chapter book out loud. We did it every single day—I always made sure we had 10–15 minutes for it. One thing I always did, and I thought about this, is that anytime I read aloud to students—whether a picture book or a chapter book—I wanted it to be a fun and cozy experience. So I’d have my fourth graders come down to the carpet and let them sit wherever they wanted. Let’s just settle in to enjoy the story.

We always read together every day and made sure we had a space to document our discussion. We usually had anchor charts displayed. I taught my last couple of years in fourth grade at an International Baccalaureate school, so we were always trying to connect our novels to the topic we were focusing on. Often there was an enduring understanding or central idea that we would revisit. We might have a poster with the enduring understanding displayed, and every day as we read, we’d ask: How does what we read connect back to this bigger idea? That way, it wasn’t just: “Okay, what happened in the story?” We were really thinking about deeper analysis—extracting themes or ideas beyond what the characters did.

I also always tried to plan some kind of end-of-book project—whether an art project, writing a letter to a character, or rewriting the ending. Something simple that wrapped up the story. We never did anything super fancy. They were always basic and straightforward, similar to what you mentioned. Looking back now, I’d do things differently with my understanding of effective comprehension instruction.

Emily
Yeah. If you’ve been in the Stellar Teacher world for any amount of time, you’ve heard us talk about the 3-2-1 routine for reading comprehension. People sometimes ask: “How do we adapt this for a novel?” 3-2-1 is perfectly adaptable. You just need a chunk of text. If you map out what you’re going to read each day, you can easily incorporate 3-2-1—chapters make great, natural divisions.

Before reading, we want to build and activate background knowledge so students have context for what they’re about to read. We also introduce and explicitly teach vocabulary words. This is a big difference from what I did previously—I often missed this step. Another thing to do before reading is to highlight elements of the genre or preview the text structure. This takes a bit of preplanning on the teacher’s part to pull out key highlights for the day.

While reading, we highlight sentences that are particularly difficult or important—this is our syntax instruction. Maybe it has a conjunction, a replacement pronoun, or some other feature that helps students deepen their understanding. We also want to be intentional about the questions we ask as we read. You did this naturally during discussions, right?

Sara
A little bit.

Emily
That one feels most natural to teachers—asking questions while reading. It’s great because it enhances students’ verbal reasoning skills.

After reading, it’s important to assign writing about reading. This is research-backed and gives students time to process what they read through writing. It doesn’t have to be complicated—you can ask them to summarize the section or chapter, or answer a simple question like: “Would you recommend this chapter to a friend?” Simple, but very meaningful.

Sara
Yeah. I think if teachers want to improve their novel study instruction, using the 3-2-1 routine is easy. It includes so many elements we know are important for comprehension. It’s an easy framework to follow, and like you said, it can be used with any text, including a novel. So if you’re looking for ways to effectively teach novel study, first, put the 3-2-1 routine in place.

Another thing I’ve been thinking about more—and I did this a little when I was in the classroom—is the importance of creating a related text set. This came up when we did our Shifting the Balance book study a couple of summers ago. So often, when I selected a novel, it was just because I loved the book, and it had nothing to do with what we were teaching or what students were learning. And you can still do that as a teacher. If there’s a book you love, rather than teaching that chapter book in isolation, you can add picture books with related themes, nonfiction articles about content in the book, or poems with similar themes that students can use to practice fluency. Use your novel study as the core text and build a related text set around it. That way, during the three to four weeks students are reading the text, they’re also getting exposure to a variety of genres, which helps build background knowledge around your novel’s topics and themes.

Emily
Yeah, I love that idea. Thematic units are just a big bang for your buck in building content knowledge. As you were talking, I was thinking that nonfiction can be tricky—nonfiction novels, or well, I guess they wouldn’t really be considered novels, but nonfiction chapter books.

Sara
They’re harder to find, and harder to find engaging for students. But that’s where, if you have a fiction text, you can pair it with nonfiction articles. Any book has topics, settings, characters, and a time period, so you can easily find nonfiction texts that relate to those elements.

Emily
Yeah. One more general tip for novel studies: don’t feel like you have to cover everything in the book. When you’re using the 3-2-1 framework, it’s more manageable. You don’t have to cover every single detail, and by the way, your students will notice details whether or not you point them out. Take that pressure off yourself and just focus on your 3-2-1 objectives.

Sara
Yeah, and along those same lines, think about assessing. A lot of teachers feel like they have to assess students on the content of the book—Can they remember characters’ names? Can they recall events? We also need to realize that if a book takes five to six weeks to read, assessing the entire novel at the end can be tricky. Students may forget early details. So if you’re going to assess, consider doing it in smaller sections. And also, do we even need to assess the content? What’s the ultimate objective of the novel study? Ideally, it’s to create a central, shared reading experience connected to a bigger topic or theme, not just memorization.

Writing about reading is an excellent alternative for assessment. It’s research-backed and meaningful. Students could write weekly reflections or a multi-paragraph essay about a portion of the text, reviewing all their previous writing about reading assignments. It’s an easy way to bring writing into the process without giving a huge test on every detail.

Emily
Definitely not. How many times have I asked you, after reading the same book, “Wait, what was that about?”

Sara
Exactly. We don’t always need to assess students on every reading experience. Sometimes, the purpose of a novel study is simply to enjoy the book and develop discussion, reading, and writing skills—and that’s enough in itself.

Emily
Yeah, I love that focus. It’s about creating a shared literacy experience. Implementing novel studies cultivates a culture of love for reading.

Sara
Exactly. And finally, I want to remind teachers that there’s no single way to do a novel study. These are ideas that have worked for us or that we’ve learned from research. It can be as simple as reading and discussing, or as fancy as scheduling a Zoom call with the author and connecting it to other projects. It’s about finding what works for you. If you pick a high-quality text and spend time digging into it with your students, you’ve nailed it.

Emily
Yeah, and we’d love to hear your favorite texts to read with students.

Sara
Definitely. We always love getting recommendations to pass along to teachers, so reach out and let us know. We’ll see you back here next week.