[Amy Jerke]

LITERATURE CIRCLES

I use literature circles in two ways.  For the first method, I break the class up into groups of six.  Each person in the group will fulfill one of the roles below.  I use the second method for large class discussion.  In this, I might assign 3 people to be discussion directors, 3 to be passage masters, and so on.  I like this method because it forces students to prepare for class, AND it eventually gives everyone a chance to speak.  I use this every class period. To add variety, I have students move down the list so that they get a chance to try all of the roles at least once.  You can modify this to fit your class size, deleting, adding, or doubling roles as necessary.  The written preparation for these roles—for instance, the discussion director’s questions and his/her responses—count as that day’s reading journal entry.  I prepare too, but I don’t complete every role.  I usually have backup discussion questions as well as key passages and important words marked.

Outside of class, I use a listserv discussion as a supplement to our in-class discussions.  Those who are wallflowers in class often participate much more in the listserv.  You probably don’t want your entire class responding each week—it’s too many emails for you and your students.  I require that different groups respond each week, and in the beginning, it’s wise to appoint discussion leaders.  I try to stay off this list as much as possible.  I’m not lazy; I just like to empower the students.  Although I’ve heard stories of the discussions getting out of hand or students even getting into fights on the list, I’ve never experienced that myself.  However, if that happens, you should intervene and use it as a teaching tool.  One last point: the listserv is an excellent discussion starter and a great way to pull quiet students into the class discussion.  You can bring up something that a student mentioned on the listserv and ask her or him to elaborate.

Roles

1.       Discussion Director: Your job is to develop a list of questions that your group might want to discuss about today’s reading.  Don’t worry about the small detains; your task is to help people talk over the big ideas in the reading and share their reactions.

2.       Passage Master: Your job is to locate a few special selections of the reading that are worthy of the group’s review and to share them with the group.  You could select passages that are important, surprising, funny, confusing, informative, controversial, well-written, or thought-provoking.

3.       Vocabulary Enricher: Your job is to mark roughly 10-15 words—important, interesting, or puzzling—words that group members need to notice and understand—and check their definitions, either in the text or in a dictionary or other source.  Not only should you define particular words, but you should also pay close attention to words that are repeated often or that seem to have a lot of meaning in our particular text.

4.       Creativity Master: Your job is to create some form of art related to the reading. It can be a collage, photo, sketch, cartoon, diagram, flow chart, or stick figure scene.  You can create this art based on something that's discussed in the text, something that the reading reminded you of, or an image that conveys any idea or feeling that you got from the reading.

5.       Connector: Your job is to find connections between material your group is reading and the world outside.  Possibilities include connections to your own life, to happenings at school or in the community, to other people or problems, to other texts, to other times and places.

6.       Researcher: Your job is to bring some sort of background information to the topics that we are discussing.  You might want to research the historical context, the culture or ethnicity of the characters or the author, or biographical information about the author.  One final option is to read additional literature by or critical essays by the author and report your findings to the class.

 

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