Literature Circles and Writing

  “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the

time — or the tools – to write.  Simple as that.”  Stephen King’s words really spoke to me because reading and writing go hand in hand, and often times students believe they are two separate learning objectives. Moving into a literature unit with one of my classes, I still need to ensure writing skills are being activated and practiced constantly.  Throughout the duration of a novel, students will be practicing note-taking, writing constructed responses, summary writing, and finally an essay.   Since my last hiccup with essay writing, I decided students must strengthen their writing fluency and stamina by consistently giving smaller writing tasks, which transition into essays. The novel will serve as a mentor text, and expose students to great writing, and hopefully influence their own work.

 Over the past five years, I have modified my Literature Circles to fit each class, and to meet student needs.  I may have found a way to adapt the Literature Circle schedule to add in writing and responding to literature more often.  I looked over all of my reading literature standards and turned them into short response questions on a choice board, which ties together the two focuses.  Students are expected to keep all work in their Literature Notebooks for reference throughout the unit.  Here is my schedule for Literature Circles.

 

Collaborate: Students will work collaboratively on a Literature Station.  The activity is in a folder, and it explains different tasks the group must complete together. Students will focus on a skill such as theme, dialogue, inferencing, setting, figurative language and so on.  Here is an example of one of the tasks.

Focus and Connect: I will assign students three GATE icons to focus on for a portion of their reading, whether it be a chapter or a series of chapters. They will identify icon connections and discuss as a group.  I want to see how they have categorized key events, and if they are using the icons correctly.  If time allows we participate in whole group discussion of their findings.

Write:  Next steps are to write a constructed response using the Choice Board.  Here they can brainstorm what they want to write about, or if they are all going to write on different topics or the same one.  I want to give them choice. This allows students to decide on a topic they feel strongly about, but the student outcome that I need them to achieve is still the same.  

Discuss: This will be the day where they meet to discuss the writing.  They will be given sentences frames to help guide their conversations.  During the Lit Conversation, they will be asked to share their response, ask a follow-up question, agree with a response, and disagree with something.  I want students to feel comfortable, not only sharing their work, but also feel comfortable when someone does not agree with them.

 My hope is through Literature Circles kids will make connections to the reading and build upon their composition skills simultaneously.   My writing instruction journey continues...