LiteratureCircles

Literature Circles in Schools and Classrooms

In the small group discussions over the last few weeks a number of groups have ended up talking about reading in schools (I apologize in advance to those of you who are not teachers or in education...feel free to ignore this message!). Many of you have not heard of literature circles, which is one teaching strategy that I advocate for classroom reading to avoid the full class novel study that was popular when I went to school. As I have mentioned in a few groups, I have concerns about whole class novel studies--this approach does not allow students to choose their own reading material, does not allow for individual or differentiated instruction (e.g. not every kid reads at the same level or has the same interest, so one novel is not going to work for every kid in a class), and it does not take into account the different genres and formats that different kids enjoy reading.

I much prefer approaches like literature circles which allow kids to choose books themselves (often from a pre-selected group of materials, but not always), talk about their reading with a small group of peers, and read a variety of genres and formats. Essentially literature circles are the school version of the adult book club, where people read and talk about their books, which helps reading become a social activity, rather than a solely individual act.

Harvey Daniels is the best known person who has been writing and thinking about literature circles for many years. His books are available at Coutts library. There are also some good websites available that might be of interest to you if this is a new idea--this is just a small sampling of what is available online on the topic.


 * Check out:**

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature_circle

http://olc.spsd.sk.ca/de/pd/instr/strats/literaturecircles/index.html

http://www.gecdsb.on.ca/Staff/Teachers/Just%20Read/litcirclewhy.htm

http://www.centralischool.ca/~bestpractice/litcircles/assessment.html

http://www.portageandmainpress.com/lesson_plans/plan_42_1.pdf


 * Here are some videos that might also give you ideas:**

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 * Sample literature circle discussion:**

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 * This is a literature circle group's culminating project on the book //The Giver://**

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