Graduate Level Course for Teachers- Literature Circles for K-12 Classrooms

If you're a teacher who is looking for graduate level courses, MTI may be a great option for you.
Midwest Teachers Institute is national provider of inexpensive and university-accredited K-12 teacher professional development.  It was founded by teachers,who strive to provide exceptional learning opportunities at very reasonable prices.

I'm teaching an online class called Best Practice Reading Strategy: Literature Circles in the K-12 Classroom.  It begins on April 13, and there is still time to sign up.  Everything is run and turned in online, so you have the flexibility to work from home within a schedule that works for you.

Click to view the syllabus for this class-MTI 516or to view the MTI lineup of online classes.

Literature Circles

One of my favorite activities to do with my students is literature circles.  I think it's because they love them so much.  It wasn't always like this for me.  Why?????  Well that's because it used to seem like a daunting task.  With literature circles, it's all about student generated discussions to foster deep understanding of the text.  It's very difficult to get students to be able to discuss among themselves.  So, I spent a lot of time several years thinking about different learning styles and Bloom's Taxonomy to develop activities, games, and journal pages for students to use in literature circles.  Now, with some training, students are able to run their own groups while having powerful discussions in which they learn so much from one another.  Below are some of the materials that I use and some pictures some AWESOME fifth graders working on the activities.  Click on any of the materials (or this link) to get them for yourself!



Cameron & Zolin work on
the Acrostic Poem for
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

 

Kat & Manuel work on the Party Invitation
for
The Mouse and the Motorcycle.



Nayeli and Melissa work on the
Party Invitation for
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Emely and Jessie work on the
Acrostic Poem and Party Invitation
for Someone Named Eva.

Everardo, Adriana, and Odalys work on
the Character Interview Activity
for Homer Price.

Camila and Alyssa work on the
Word Search Activity for
Homer Price.



       

Jaylynn works on the Word Search
for Someone Named Eva.



Get These Materials for Yourself
 

Literature Circle Bundle with all Literature Circle Materials



 



Character Map Activity

Acrostic Poem Activity



 

Book Recommendation Activity



Word Search Activity

 

Illustration Summary Activity

 

 

Literature Circle Activity Rubric

 

Literature Circle Job/Role Cards

Literature Circle Question Cards

Literature Circle Journal Cover

Literature Circle Journal Pages

Literature Circle Student Evaluation Form

Literature Circles in Action

My students are amazing...simply amazing!  I am so impressed with the work they have been doing in literature circles. 

Literature Circles can be really difficult to manage, organize, and keep straight.  It seems that once all of that is done, it's even more difficult keeping students engaged with interesting conversation and activity.  With much hard work and effort on their part, my students have really been running their own literature circles successfully.  I rarely have to sit with groups for more than a few minutes at a time because they are able to generate interesting conversation among each other.  They understand their roles and take them seriously, but most importantly they end up learning from each other based on the conversations they have.  Here's what I just happened to listen in on today.  (Because of the file size, I had to break it up into 3 videos.)  In the third video, you can see the value of literature circles as one group member figures something out with the help of the others.  I was so proud!  If you're interested in how my students were able to get to this point, read on.  Enjoy and way to go kiddos!

Students doing their literature circle jobs and having a conversation about the book Island of the Blue Dolphins. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

This didn't just happen overnight.  As you can see, the students have a lot of materials in front of them.  First, I spent two weeks during shared reading using the same book to model six different roles that the students would be expected to do in their groups. 

 While completing their reading assignment, they complete a literature circle journal that requires them to analyze vocabulary words, summarize, ask questions, make predictions, infer, visualize, and think about an idea they'd like to share with their group.  This along with the role cards are what they they use to guide their discussion. 

 

  

After they've had about 10-15 minutes to discuss, they have the option to complete items from the literature circle activity set or play a literature circle game- both require more discussion and higher level thinking. 

 

They stay on task for 45 minutes.  It's amazing to have seen them come this far, and the best part is that they are enjoying their books and really working well together, and that's what it's about.

If you want to know more about these materials, just click on any of them.