Writing About Books of Choice: Building a Classroom Community in a Middle School English Language Arts Classroom

This qualitative dissertation study examines the use of shared writing about books of choice in an eighth-grade English Language Arts classroom. Drawing on data collected from 23 eighth-grade students, this study investigates how sharing writing in a classroom community impacts how students connect with a novel and how sharing writing helps to shape students’ writing practices and identity. The qualitative data collected for this study includes open-ended surveys, written reflections, interviews,teacher-researcher field notes, and examples of student work and writing. The findings of this study demonstrate the value of book choice, the benefits of peer interaction and feedback, and the usefulness of multimodal composition. These findings present ways that secondary teachers can improve both writing instruction and literature study.