Literature Circles

1. Literature Circles

2. What are Literature Circles? • Student-led book club • This unit will focus on your responses to the literature you will be reading • What did you think about characters, setting, theme, etc. • Do you understand where a character is feeling? • Can you connect this story to another you have seen or read?

3. What are Literature Circles?

4. What supplies will I need everyday? • Reading book • Paper • Pencil • Post-it notes • Role Sheets

5. What is a wiki? • Students write and post their responses on an internet blog site and respond to other student and teacher responses. • Allows students to write to a specific and authentic audience – not just the teacher, but a global community.

6. What kinds of thing will I be doing? • Reading aloud • Shared reading • Guided reading • Independent reading • Shared writing • Interactive Writing • Guided writing or writing workshop • Independent writing.

7. Elements of a Good Discussion Chart of Elements of a Good Discussion here

8. Your responsibilities • Participating in group discussions about the poem, short story, or book • Preparing for discussions by preparing your group assigned role sheet and pre and post discussion worksheets. • Writing responses on the online wikis

9. Roles within your Literature Circle Groups • Discussion Leader • Literary Luminary • Illustrator • Experience Connector • Vocabulary Expert • Summarizer • Quotation Expert • Character Analyst

10. Discussion Leader • Responsibilities • Develop a list of questions from your reading to help spur conversation • What is important about this book? • What is it teaching you? • You will be responsible for your group assignments and conversation • Present to the group

11. Literary Luminary • Responsibilities • Locate a few sections of the reading that you would like your group to hear. • Help people to remember something interesting, powerful, funny, or puzzling • Present your findings to the group

12. Artistic Interpreter • Responsibilities • Draw a response or create a collage about the happenings within the section you read • Write a poem about that section • Song lyrics that connect? • Present your findings to the group

13. Experience Connector • Responsibilities • Find connections between situations in the book and real life • In your life • In your school • Other books • Other people • Other writings from the same author • Present your findings to the group

14. Vocabulary Expert • Responsibilities • Find 5 important words in your reading • Looking for words you do not understand, new, different, strange, funny, interesting, important, or hard • Present your findings to the group

15. Summarizer • Responsibilities • Summarize the sections that has been read • Make sure that it is understandable to the group • Including key ideas and points • Present your findings to the group

16. Quotation Expert • Responsibilities • Quote passages that are interesting, powerful, funny, important, or puzzling and worth hearing. • Present your findings to the group

17. Character Analyst • Responsibilities • Selecting characters and list their character traits and the text that helped you decide why this was important • Tell why the character is important to the story • Present your findings to the group