Literature Circles:

A Reading Strategy

 

Step One: Students are broken up into groups of 5.

Step Two: Each student is assigned the day’s reading and given a designated amount of reading time.

Step Three: During this time, each student is responsible for a specific task and has a handout to fill out.

·      Job 1: Discussion Director – Responsible for creating discussion questions for the group.

·      Job 2: Illustrator – Creates an illustration but does not tell anyone what it represents, during the group discussion he or she will pass the illustration around and allow the other members of the group to interpret.

·      Job 3: Connector – Will make real-life connections to the day’s readings and share them with the group.

·      Job 4:  Literary Luminary – Finds a very poignant, entertaining, or otherwise meaningful passage from the reading share with the group and explains the importance.

·      Job 5: Vocabulary – Finds five new vocabulary words and looks them up.  Is prepared to teach these words to the group and shows them in the context of the reading.

Step Four: Students share their appointed work with each other.

Grading:  Use a cooperative group rubric which includes working quietly, solving problems, knowing jobs, encouragement, etc.