Photo: Heping Village Primary School, Dongxiang County. Gansu province, China. Classroom. 2005 Photo: © Liang Qiang / World Bank. Used under a CC license.

Literature circles are on the long-range plans for our grade three students and most teachers start them in January. Last year, when I was scheduled to work with specific grade levels for certain blocks of time, I worked with our seven grade 3 classes when “lit circles” were introduced. Several teachers modeled the roles using picture books and one chose several picture books by one author (Graeme Base) at different levels for groups she chose to work with but most chose novels or quickly moved on to novels. Some let their students choose the novel or created a group that then chose the novel they would work on.

This year, my schedule is slightly different. I see all my classes once every two weeks which leaves me some flexible time when teachers can book me to co-teach their class or to work with them one-on-one during a planning period. About a month ago, one of the grade three teachers approached me to ask if I would be willing to help with lit circles again this year. I suggested we start using a picture book to model the circles and instead of switching straight to novels we have kept going. The enthusiasm among the students has been overwhelming! The quote I used as a title for this post is just an example of the positive feedback we have had from them. Last week at the request of another teacher (she is a very experienced teacher but had never used literature circles), I began working with her class. Her students are also extremely engaged and very excited about the process. (I have heard a rumour that a third teacher may be approaching me soon as well.)

Here is how we went about introducing literature circles using picture books with the first class and how we will be proceeding in other classes (with possible adjustments along the way – of course!):

Lesson 1 (~60 min): Talk about literature circles with the students (I compare them to my book club) and introduce the roles. There are many different roles and the titles for them vary – my most recent class chose:

• Discussion Director – writes down “fat” questions to ask group members and leads the circle
• Passage Picker – picks a passage(s) from the reading, reads it to the group and explains why they chose it
• Word Wizard – chooses words from the story for a variety of reasons – new, interesting, vivid verbs, descriptive – looks them up in the dictionary if they are new to them, and shares the words and the reasons they chose them
• Cool Connector – makes 3 types of connections to events in the story (text to self, text to text and text to world) and shares them
• Artist (these students didn’t feel the need for a descriptor – personally I like “Illustrious Illustrator”) – chooses a part of the story to illustrate and share

Read a picture book aloud (I’ve used Graeme Base’s Jungle Drums a few times and it has gone over very well) and as a group complete the task for each role with the exception of artist.

Lesson 2 (~60 minutes): Let the students know that they will have their choice of one of the first 4 roles for a different picture book that you will read aloud. The teacher pre-selects 4 students to be part of a model lit circle during the third lesson. Read the book aloud, students complete their chosen task in their language notebooks. Some students may require extra time to complete their task and those that finish could also tackle the role of artist. Before the next lesson, the teacher reads over the completed written work of all students.

Lesson 3 (~30 minutes): Using a fish bowl model (or Socratic Circle if you want to be fancy), whereby the four students sit together knee-to-knee and the rest of the class sits in a circle around them, help the four chosen students run a literature circle. You can cut each job short if everyone seems to have grasped the task and “freeze” the lit circle to allow the input of those in the outer circle. I emphasize that I am not part of the circle; I am just there to support them.

Lesson 4 (~60 minutes): Pre-select a number of picture books of which you have at least 2 copies (4 is optimal). The number of titles can match the number of groups you will have but I like to have more variety than that. Briefly book-talk each one and then have the students select the one they would like to read – we set them out around the classroom so students could stand by the book of their choice. In one class, the teacher told the students there had to be 2 girls and 2 boys in each group. Once a book has 4 students, roles are selected and the group reads the book aloud together. Teachers can circulate and listen in on several groups or chose a particular group to sit with. As in lesson 2, students then complete their chosen task in their language notebooks and before the next lesson, the teacher reads over the completed written work of all students. Again we have let students who completed their task quickly also do an illustration.

Lesson 5: Now it is time to sit with each group as they run their lit circle. It often works well to have the class engaged in other independent work and call each group over one at a time. This could be done over the course of several days.

Repeat lessons 4 and 5 until each student has had the chance to complete each of the four roles. This means the groups change with each book and by the fourth round it can be a bit tricky to have everyone doing a new role. In one class we had a group with two word wizards and no discussion director so instead everyone in the group came up with 2 fat questions before completing their own role.

Do you have any literature circles tips to share?

Happy reading!