Literature Circles

Our class has been working in literature circles the past week or so. In lit circles, students gather together to discuss a piece of literature. This is how our circles have worked so far...

The students are split into 4 groups and meet with their group 2-3 times a week. Each day before the meeting students have 40-50 minutes to read their assigned chapters and complete their assigned role. Each group member has a specific role they must fulfill during the meeting. Students have the opportunity to fulfill a new role each meeting. The roles are as follows; discussion director, checker, illustrator, summarizer, connector, literary luminary, and vocab enricher.


So far, meetings have been extremely successful and that may be partly due to the amount of practice each student has had with each role. I prepared lessons for each role that provided students the opportunity to ask questions and understand their expectations for each role. Literature circles are completely student driven and all responsibility is on each student to complete their assignment.

The hardest part about lit circles is managing all of them at once. I can only be in one place at one time. I try to spread myself out and get to every group, but sometimes that doesn't always happen. I often focus my attention on those groups that are off task or are struggling to work together and not spending enough time with the groups that seem to be having amazing discussions. I am thinking that we will hold an "online" lit circle by having each student blog about their role.