Lit. Circle Reflection

Andrew Hylen

Professor Black

ENG 311

26 April 2022

YA Literature Circles Reflection

1. Literature circle one occurred in class on Wednesday, March 16th, 2022.

Literature Circle #1

Group: Queens

Role: Discussion Director

Novel: Cinder by Marissa Meyer

1. In what ways do you see connections between how cyborgs are treated and racism in America?

2. What are your thoughts on how Marissa Meyer adapted the fairy tale of Cinderella in Cinder?

3. Why do you think the moon people (Lunars) are so antagonistic toward Earth, or at least how their aristocracy, elites, are.

4. What are some similarities and differences you drew between the disease Latamosis and the Covid-19 pandemic we are currently experiencing?

5. What do you think the author’s choices were in giving Cinder a mechanical lower leg/foot?

6. What would you do if you were a Lunar with the ability to alter your appearance and control people? Would you use the “gift,” or suffer the psychological consequences of not using it?

7. How has the use of technology, robots, etc. changed life for people, is life better than it is now or do the disparities simply take different forms?

Literature Circle #1 went well. Hannah and I found it challenging to only talk about Cinder and not the next books in the Lunar Chronicles series. Although I was the discussion director, I let the conversation go where with the flow of what we had to talk about. Some of the questions I had come up with were discussed without me having to ask them. Hannah mentioned how the backdrop of a pandemic going on in the book was not something she remembered until she re-read the book. With the Covid-19 pandemic we are still experiencing, this plot point seemed more at the forefront of the book than it most likely was when the book was published in 2012. I remember asking my group question #6 about what you would do if you had the lunar “gift.” Ian said something bold, then talked more in-depth about how he would use the visual manipulation so he wouldn’t go mad. My thoughts were that I would do something similar. Overall, I enjoyed Cinder more than I thought I would, as is evident when I listened to the rest of the series as audiobooks. Those audiobooks did the novel justice, with different voices. The older version of the cover for the book put me off, which I know that’s judging a book by its cover, but well, we all do it sometimes.

Literature circle two occurred on Wednesday, March 23rd, 2022.

Literature Circle #2

Role: Artist

Novel: Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

For Walk Two Moons I was the artist. I thought back over what had happened in the book and decided to draw some of the noteworthy, interesting, or funny parts. I would not consider myself much of an artist and tried my hand at tracing some of what I drew. Since the book takes place during a road trip with a story within the story, I tried to show this by drawing a van. All of the other drawings are coming out of the van and the mind of Salamanca Tree Hiddle. I drew her kissing a tree, her grandparents' marriage bed, the English class where her teacher did a cold read of his student's journals, a gravestone to represent Sal’s mother, and a roadmap of the US encompassing where their road trip took them. What I took away from this book is that you should never cold read students’ journals.

Literature circle three occurred on Wednesday, March 30th, 2022.

Literature Circle #3

Role: We didn’t get that far

Novel: Dear Martin by Nic Stone

We didn’t get around to assigning ourselves roles for literature circle #3 because we were more focused on our reader's theatre script. We did all read Dear Martin, I think. Like all of the literature circles, I listened to the audiobook of this book. It took me longer than I would like to admit to realize why the author chose the title to book the way they did. Before I listened to the book, I thought Martin was a person sent to jail and Justyce was writing to him in jail. The story makes more sense with Justyce writing to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. about his struggles as a black adolescent facing police brutality. As a group, we talked about the story in general along with a summary and connected the story with continued current events. I recall bringing up the point of how Justyce would drift away from journaling to Martin, but eventually come back to it so he could talk to someone about his feelings.

2. Based on what I recall as a reader and a participant in my group’s literature circles, discussed above, hearing others’ perspectives on what we read helped the most. Talking as a group, I learned what we all took away from the books and our opinions of them. As a reader, I gained the benefit of looking at three stories and learning from the character’s struggles to move forward. I cannot think of anything that necessarily felt forced or clunky about the literature circles themselves. I did find Walk Two Moons plot “clunky” at times though. This is more because I did not like the character of Phoebe.

I liked having the choice of choosing the trio of books my group got to read. The set up was good where you would tell us the agenda at the beginning of class and let our minds not have to think about the literature circles right away. Sometimes my group had enough time to talk about our book and other times we could have used a little more to get to everyone’s role. This could also be due to letting the conversation move on its own. We overcame the challenge of now assigning ourselves roles for our final literature circle. I think with my own students, I will either need to assign them roles or have a set guideline where each group member is each role for part of the unit. I know some students will forget to or not read their literature circle books for the days we meet in literature circles. I could remedy this by giving reading time at the beginning of the period and reminding students they can look back over their literature circle books if they need to refresh their memory before they meet. For resources, I would create general reading goal bookmarks that tell students how much they should read to finish the book by the end of the unit. I would give the option of groups choosing how much they read, but that they need to have read certain parts of their book each week. I thought about creating some examples of what each person’s role would entail, but so as not to limit creativity, I will tell my students to give their best effort. Some alterations I see to fit this into my own Teaching Practice are giving more structure to the literature circle discussions and beginning with a short story as a whole class. I would randomly assign students to groups so they can try out roles as they go over the short story and get a feel for how literature circles will work. An addition I thought of to add to literature circles is to have students give their book a rating and write a brief paragraph about why their classmates should read the book.