This is the third in a series of blog posts about Literature Circles. You can find the other posts on my Spotlight webpage. My previous submission covered how my Literature Circle students select the books they will read during a three-week cycle and how they create schedules of which pages they will read each night and which roles they will be responsible for during each of the seven meetings they will hold with their group members during that time. I will now turn to how I distribute and collect the work the students do for their various roles and how the Literature Circle meetings are organized and managed.
The Organization of Digital and Paper Resources
As I have discussed in previous posts, there are four distinct roles that students perform during a Lit Circle meeting. From suite to suite and meeting to meeting, roles can vary, so students need to be provided with instructions for their particular roles for each meeting. I do this in two ways. First, I provide instructions for each role in a posting about the upcoming meeting on Google Classroom. In addition to these instructions, students are given access to digital versions of the thinking map jobs that are to be completed for each role. Often, there are also sample maps and other resources included in this space to help them complete their jobs (You can see examples of all of this in the image below). Posting the job sheets and resources digitally ensures that students have access to them even if they are absent or have misplaced their paper copies.
Due to the fact that many students do not have consistent access to computers or printers when they are not at school, I also provide each student with a paper copy of the instructions for their particular job. In the back of my classroom, there is a table with various stacks of paper trays atop it. One set of trays contains all of these instructions, along with any other necessary resources (such as tips on how to identify major events in a narrative).
On the first day of a new Literature Circle cycle, students go back to grab these resources one job at a time. The same routine is followed at the end of each meeting because each student will perform a different role at the following meeting two days later (and because at least two of the Thinking Map jobs change for each meeting).
Meeting Protocols
One of my first priorities at the beginning of each school year is to teach my Literature Circle students how to transition to and operate within a meeting. This might sound like simple stuff, but, as I always tell my kids, if the meetings don’t look and sound right, they probably aren’t going to function well. In fact, I often spend the first three-week cycle of Literature Circles solely focusing on the procedures and protocols discussed below, and I use fishbowls to teach and reteach them throughout the year.
On the day I announce which books students will be reading, I also provide each group with a number. These group numbers correspond to numbers I have written on little stickers on the ceiling above various open spaces around my classroom. I have made sure each open space is far enough away from the other meeting locations to allow each group to have a private conversation. Students are instructed to walk to their designated meeting spot and locate a nearby chair (as opposed to dragging their own chairs across the room).
Once all the group members have arrived, the student fulfilling the Discussion Leader role (a job that involves writing questions based on the six levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy) checks to make sure that everyone has come prepared with their books and completed Thinking Map jobs. The Discussion Leader then reviews the SOLAR protocols. SOLAR is an acronym that stands for:
S- Square off: Sitting in a square (meaning the feet of each chair touch the feet of the chairs on either side of it)
O- Open: Bodies facing each other (meaning each student should face the student across from them with their shoulders equidistant from the shoulders of the kids on either side)
L- Lean: Leaning in (I like to use a yardstick to show them how much closer they are to each other when they lean in instead of leaning back. This makes it much easier to use private voices.)
A- Attend to others: Pay attention
R- Respond: One at a time
Once everyone is sitting properly with their books and work in hand, the meeting begins with the Summary Specialist performing their role (I have already discussed this role in detail in a previous blog post). The logic behind beginning with the Summary Specialist is that it helps to make sure everyone agrees on the major events they have read about in the preceding two days before diving into the finer points of the story. As is the case with all of the other roles, the Summary Specialist’s job is not to simply read the contents of their completed thinking map to the group. Instead, they are expected to elicit a summary from the other three group members. I have included Reciprocal Teaching Protocols at the bottom of each set of instructions so that students can rehearse what they will say when it is their turn to be the “teacher” (You can see an example in the following image).
Once the Summary Specialist has completed their role, the Discussion Leader takes their turn, followed by the Thinking Map Strategy and Thinking Map Skill students. When the meeting has come to an end (I usually allot about 20-25 minutes depending on the circumstances), the Discussion Leader collects everyone’s work and puts it in a paper tray labeled with their corresponding group number. Students then take turns walking over to the paper tray table to grab their job sheets for the next meeting (assuming the completed meeting was not the last one in the cycle).
The contents of the various Thinking Map jobs students do to prepare for their Literature roles will be discussed in future blog posts. Please check back frequently for updates!
Writing Every Day,
Eric Lovein
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