Literature Circles

Engagement: Students will be informed that they will be participating in literature circles. They will view a short video of a group of students participating in a literature circle to see how it works. The teacher will also explain to the students that it is difficult for him to run several small reading groups at once, so students will be using Flip cameras to film their literature circle for both the teacher and them to view later.

Explanation: Students will meet in small groups and be presented with a short piece of text to read independently. In addition, each student will be assigned a specific "job" to be completed prior to the literature circle meeting. The jobs represent important parts of comprehension and are as follows:
-Vocabulary Enricher to identify and define higher level vocabulary
-Literary Luminary to identify parts of the text that are important or interesting
-Discussion Director to create higher-level comprehension questions and lead the meeting: decide the order of jobs, call on students, etc. The director will also be responsible for taping the meeting using the Flip cam.
-Artful Artist to draw a picture of a part of the text where the author was very descriptive
-Investigator to investigate people, places, or things in the text that aren't explained very well
-Connector to make connections between the text and themselves, the world, or another text
Students will be assigned a job and the teacher will answer any questions the students have about their responsibilities.

Exploration: Students will read the text independently. They will then complete their assigned job. Finally, students will meet in their literature circle to discuss the text and share their jobs. The Director will film the meeting using the Flip video, and he/she may designate another student to film while the Director is speaking.

Evaluation: The teacher will watch the videos of each literature circle and meet with groups, as needed, to review what happened in the meeting.

Extension: The class can watch each video. Students can use video editing software to turn their video into a future literature circle tutorial video.