lit. circles

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Home : 2003 : November : 17

lit. circles
By Christina

I absolutely love literature circles! At the beginning of the year, I had my group of high readers in one, so they would be experts for when the whole class started.

I just started my whole class last week. The groups
are of mixed ability, and the students choose which books they want to read (I told mine to write their top 3 choices on a piece of paper from a group of 5 choices).
My groups meet 3 times a week. Monday and Wednesday they read and work on their jobs to prepare for Friday's discussion. I stress that the discussion is the important thing, not the role sheets. I don't want it to become

a worksheet activity for them. I have 5 jobs, but there are a lot of jobs/roles out there. Just pick the ones best for your class. Mine are summarizer, visualizer, character sketcher, scene setter, and word watcher.

So far, it's going pretty good. My kids still need to get used to the concept of a natural discussion as opposed to just reading off their role sheets. Good luck!