Literature Circles

Literature Circles allow students to:

• think critically about what they read
• relate literature to their own lives
• practice active listening
• Practice discussion strategies

Students adopt different roles for each literature circle discussion:

• Discussion Director
• Passage Picker
• Vocabulary Enricher
• Real Life Connector

Students are graded based on their work completion of Discussion Day preparation (reading the assigned pages, filling out their role sheet, creating game cards) and participation on discussion day. Discussion Day also involves a student group-created board game about the book. Students are responsible for creating question cards for game play. Since the nature of literature circles depends on group discussion and game play, frequent absences may make it difficult for a student to access all of the valuable information during class time. Of course, illnesses and emergencies happen, and absent students should communicate with their teacher and group members.