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Proposal
for Adoption of Literature Circles at School Street
Submitted October 29, 2000 by Robert Ferguson
Students
participating in Literature Circles can be assigned definite roles.
The �Red� Team at Fretz identified the following six roles that they
have students take:
�
Discussion
Director
constructs questions to bring to the Literature
Circle.
�
Context
Connector
relates reading to his/her own experiences in life
or to other literature.
�
Word
Wizard
[Vocabulary Enricher] selects words from the passage
to bring to the group. They record the word, the page number on which it
appears, the dictionary definition and they use the word in a sentence. They may
also ask other group members to use the word in a sentence.
�
Story
Summarizer
gives a brief overview of the passage and points out
the main ideas of the passage under discussion.
�
Passage Picker
[Literary
Luminary]
selects four (arbitrary)
memorable passages to bring to the group. Passages chosen may be funny,
shocking, surprising or have some strong interest for the luminary. They can
either read these passages to the group or ask other group members to read them.
�
Artful
Artist
[Illustrator] makes a graphic representation to
represent a selection from that day's passage. When the graphic is brought to
other group members they are asked to speculate which part of the passage is
being represented and why the artist chose to represent that passage.
The
�Red� Team at Fretz explained that it is very important for the teacher to
properly model each of these roles so that students have a thorough
understanding of what is expected of them.
To facilitate successful implementation, I
suggest that we request six of the best sixth graders [Josh Britton et al] from
Fretz to visit School Street to model the roles. The Fretz students� main job would be to role-play one of
the six roles listed above using a story they have previously read.
They should also explain their roles, probably before modeling it.
Assessment.
This was an area that the Fretz team felt they needed improvement.
Their grading policy was quite subjective.
They have not developed criteria or rubrics to assess students. To facilitate successful
implementation, I suggest that we establish criteria and rubrics for grading
prior to implementing the concept.
Fretz
has a large selection of books at varying reading levels available for students.
To facilitate successful implementation, I
suggest that we select interesting books for the reading ranges at our grade
levels prior to introducing the program to our pupils.
The books we select should have AR tests available to allow us to obtain
an objective result for each student�s comprehension.
The
�Red� Team also mentioned that some students do not read their assignments
and let down their group. Their
main way of dealing with this problem is peer pressure.
I suggest that we use a daily self-assessment
checklist and a group evaluation of performance to help monitor this problem.
Final outcomes. The
�Red� Team requires each group to do some type of
presentation to the whole class. It
can be a puppet show, a skit, or whatever.
By requiring a �performance� or a �product� at the conclusion of
the book, requires some synthesis of what they have read and requires them to do
something new with it. If
we plan to use this component, our team should brainstorm appropriate
�outcome� activities prior to implementation.
Interest
and involvement. The
majority of students participating at Fretz appeared to enjoy literature
circles. The pupils are allowed to
choose from among ten different books. Several
commented that they felt they learned more from the selections by using the
literature circle format�it forced them to think more deeply. They also felt they had more opportunities to share their
ideas and didn�t feel as threatened in a small group as in a whole class
setting. If
we plan to allow for student choice and interest, we may need to group among
different classrooms to maximize the number of options.
Alternately, we may wish to offer only three selections for pupils to
choose from.
For
more information on Literature Circles, visit:
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For questions about this Website, please e-mail Robert
Ferguson.
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