Literature Circles

By Sarah Sartor, 8th Grade Language Arts Teacher at Sonoran Heights Elementary School

October 30, 2017

Welcome to week six of our personalization experiment! This week I am continuing with my small group schedule. This schedule really worked out well for both the students and I. I felt like sharing this schedule and having my students choose which day they wanted to participate held us both accountable for actually meeting and completing the work. The data on this truly spoke for itself. Our benchmark data for this standard showed only 6% of eighth grade students showing mastery (I didn’t quite get to this skill before the benchmark assessment). After meeting with all eighth graders, we reached 84% mastery. It’s really working folks! I’m going to continue push myself (and the kiddos) to get to a full 100% mastery. In the meantime, I will be moving on to another skill this week and I will use the same format.

New this week… we are starting a book study to kick off our next unit. This unit is also going to tie in very nicely with the content the students are learning in Social Studies (about the Holocaust). In order to personalize this experience I have given the students many choices in path and product. They were able to choose which book they will read during the book study. They will also get to read the book digitally or in the traditional manner or have the book read to them (online).

I’m also incorporating depth and complexity critical thinking skills while working on these books. So students were given an option to complete five depth and complexity activities and comprehension questions OR they could focus on all of the depth and complexity components. These were made available both online and in a print version. I continue to hear from the students about how satisfying it is to hold papers in their hands - even if it is a big packet of work. I think too much of one single thing causes them to lose interest, I need to remember to spice things up! It’s funny that spicing things up means a packet of worksheets. If they have chosen this traditional method of learning and showing their work - I consider that personalization!

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