lit. circles

Home

Chat

Blogs

Collection

Directory

Home : 2003 : July : 17

lit. circles
By Susan

I started them by modeling how I wanted them to do each "job" of the lit. circles. We read a book together and they would have a different job each day - that we would go over together and they would do on their papers.
The jobs included finding vocabulary, illustrating, etc... Then after that book was completed, and everyone knew how to do the jobs, I'd read the selections of books for their circles. I had 6 books - and they couldn't read them if they already had. After all books were selected, they picked their job for their group (no arguing or I picked for them). We then started by letting them

write a journal entry on what they thought the book would be about - based on the cover and back of it. Then daily when they came to class they:
1. Wrote a journal entry about what they had read the day before.
2. Discussed the book in their group.
3. Read together (either round-robin or let one or 2 read - their group's choice)
4. Did their job for their group(turned in daily).

I told them how many pages to read per day, to keep them on track - and if they didn't read them, they had them for homework. After they were finished with the book, they decided on a project together - book report, skit, diarama, etc... They had fun with those. I didn't like the literature circles as much as reading with the whole class, but it was good to change things up occasionally.