Literature Circles and Roles

I hated the fact that we had to do literature circles at first. I complained about it while doing the assignments before meetings as well. It wasn't until during the literature circle that I began to really understand the whole purpose of the literature circle and in fact began enjoying it. I like having an assigned role beause I knew what my responbility was right off of the bat. I knew what I had to focus on and I took my job seriously because I wanted to share what I had come up with, with my circle mates. I absolutely loved reading Persepolis so much so that I had my dad read it. He is a hard one to please and even he loved the book- so much so that he passed it along to my older brother and tried to convince my brother (who is a toy designer/creater) to launch a Persepolis product line because he thought young girls, especially from the Middle East might like it. That whole short story is so powerful and I hope you see that.

I loved Step from Heaven too! And I also recommended that to many other people I know because it was a moving book.

From participating in literature circles I learned a lot. I liked that this class was more of small group discussions because it made it more meaningful for me. I really do not like to be in classes that are designed in lecture style- it is so hard to sit and listen to someone talk for three hours. Through participating in lit circles I was able to learn even more about the texts I read because when we all met and began to discuss the books, I found that different people had different perspective about the book, yet we all read the same book. It was like we had our own little book club in which we agreed on certain things and disagreed on other and happily agreed to disagree on some things too. My past experiences are probably some what responsible for how I intrepreted some parts of the book, or are responsbile for how I related to some parts more than others. And through discussing and sharing our roles, we were able to learn more as a whole group. Things were brought up that I hadn't paid attention to or thought much of. Essentially, it allowed me to have a deeper understanding of the text I read. Perspeolis' discussion even evolved into the whole censorship issue about what young children should know and what they should not know- and what to tell them when they ask a question and you know the answer- but don't think it is appropriate but you don't want to lie about it. And in the end, we didn't agree but that was okay because we left stronger as we were challenged to defend our beliefs. So I definitely loved doing the literature circles. I had not done them before either so it was a whole new learning experienece, as most of the class was!

Literature circles are totally applicable in my content area- being a Literacy Specialist I will totally use them for many of the reasons listed above. They make the reading so much more meaningful and they force you to look at the text differently and more critically allowing you to develop a deeper understanding. Based on whatever grade I teach, I would obviously change it to fit the needs of my students. I wish I would have done it student teaching because I think the students would have really enjoyed it. I also like how there are different roles becaues they appeal to the different literacies of students. Artful Artist? Brillant for the student who loves art- instantly getting them engaged and giving them a PURPOSE!!

I could use literature circles or the assignment of different roles in science, history, math and english, and even in foreign languages. In history students could be historians, investigators, reporters, etc as they investigate historical events. Same for science as students perform experiments or solve math problems in math. You could totally have an artful artist in Math- it would be totally cool! There is so much that could be done with literature roles and literature circles in the elementary classroom! Yeah!