How long do literature circles take

If a book seems really popular then I just offer it again the next time around. Yes, all the skills that the kids are practicing with their novel have been taught lots of times before. I do almost no teaching during this time… I'm just a facilitator.

For me, the purpose of lit circles is to a. Our reading period is minutes long and I have an additional minute writing period with the same students so I can always spill over if I need to , so kids usually have about 1. Usually that means reading about 50 pages and completing an activity.

I haven't found this time frame to a problem. But, it's one of the reasons why I don't do lit circles until the second half of the year. It gives us lots of time to increase reading stamina. Also, for my 7th graders, I tend to pick books that are written at a about a 5th grade level. I teach on a block schedule, meaning each class is 75 minutes every other day. How would you suggest doing literature circles? I have taught lit circles before where every student is reading a book of their choice.

I give parameters of what it can be, but they get to choose. They could then do these same activities and talk about their book and compare to each others books. If you set the parameters so that they are all reading the same type of book biographies, non-fiction about 'x' topic, etc they can still have fantastic conversations about books.

My school used to be an AR affiliated school. One thing I did was make sure it is an AR book using arbookfind. After that, I read the books making sure the content was appropriate. Next, I found multiple copies of the same book either from our public library, school library, AEA media library or a combination.

Literature Circles can work with any book. It's the skills they are learning more rather than teaching a specific book. How do you test the students on these books? Are you making the students each literature circle take different assessments? Or…just how do you assess this? I've done Lit Circles in 2nd grade for 4 years now, and I love them!

We spend a lot of time in the beginning of the year learning how to get along, how to rotate to their Lit Circle spots, how each job is done etc… I have been using rotating job cards, which haven't been boring yet, but I think the age of the student makes a HUGE difference. I've tried to help other teachers implement this in their rooms and I've seen two consistent mistakes which can lead to a failing to function. Teachers fail to make it their own.

When a teacher tries to teach the someone else teaches, it typically won't feel comfortable and will have too many things that never make sense. Take all of these ideas and transform it into something that flows for you! Prep time. Teachers need to relax and be ok with the fact that it will likely take 4 weeks of teaching procedures for this concept before you even get to begin reading, and that's ok!

Too often we jump right in because we as teachers are geeked about it, but the students still don't really understand what you want it to look like and why they are doing it in the first place. I love your blog and I actually plan to use some of your materials in my new position as an Elementary LD Special Ed teacher.

I think these are great conversational pieces that I could lead with students through book walks. I'm eager to differentiate the materials for the many levels I'll be working with. Thank you! My school does AR and I do literature circles as well. For me it's kind of a work in progress to figure out what works best since this is my first year playing with them but I tend to pick books that will work for a lot of students.

Most kids have a range of books they can select so if I pick a book that's toward the bottom of one student's range and toward the top of another's they can both read it. Also, I've found when I do book tastings I call them book passes in class the students tend to naturally gravitate toward books that are in their reading level. I purchased it on TPT, and then a coworker and I were talking and she showed me a book that she just bought from Amazon…and it IS the same, exact material.

No, it should NOT be on Amazon. I'm sorry to ask you to do this, but could you ask your co-worker to give you the link they used to purchase it? Sometimes people pirate our work from TpT and we need to shut it down.

Love that idea! Stealing for next year…not enough time left this year to plan it, but now I have a summer project! I am trying to figure out how to incorporate this next year…we are moving to a 43 minute period and putting reading and writing together in that 43 minutes.

I do NOT want to give up literature circles! When you said, "In each group, I give each student a number from " — where do you get the activities to put in each of those folders? What a great idea to do a "book tasting" session so students can get a sense of which one s they prefer! This is such an awesome and easy way to conduct Literature Circles! When the kiddos are finishing their activities, do they have time to share what they learned with their group to spark further discussion?

Thank you for all this info! We are going to start Lit Circles this fall and I've never done it before. I'm hopeful that it bring a new level of engagement and differentiation, but I'm trying to get my head around several obstacles and try to creatively problem-solve some of these before I'm in the thick middle of it. How many students are on your total roster?

How many students on average do you have per class? You say you grade their work every two days? What do you do for the kiddos who can't keep up with the pace of reading in class and won't or can't read at home and consistently arrive to class having not read the material?

Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Like when you learn a new word and then, like magic, that word is all around you! If so, how? I try to give them no more than class periods to prep their projects. Then, I allow one day for presentations. So, are you a fan of lit circles? How do you run them in your classroom? Do you group the kids by ability or heterogeneously once they make their choices?

Voices from the Middle, 13, 4 , Gallagher, K. Readicide: How schools are killing reading and what you can do about it. Graff, J. Language Arts, 87 3 , Keene, E. Mosaic of thought: The power of comprehension strategy instruction.

Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Krashen, S. The power of reading : insights from the research. Westport, CN: Libraries Unlimited. La Marca, S. Knowing readers: Unlocking the pleasures of reading. Carlton: SLAV. Matar, H. Mills, H. Talking about talk: Reclaiming the value and power of literature circles. The Reading Teacher, 64 8 , Nodelman, P. Thomson, S. Melbourne: ACER. Our website uses a free tool to translate into other languages. Many read far below grade level and had been turned off from reading in elementary school.

Many were beginning to associate reading with a kind of person that they could never envision being. I had to get them hooked. So I asked, "Why read?

I talked to my students, all the time, about what it meant to me to be a reader. When I read and where, what I talked about with my book club, and how I perused used book stores on the weekend. I read passages to them from books I was reading. I very intentionally shared the pleasures of reading, the distraction it provided, the way it helped me solve problems and deal with life's challenges and how I learned from reading.

I provided articles and stories on the same subject written by public figures and authors with similar backgrounds and ethnicities of the students. Malcolm X, Luis Rodriguez, Oprah, and many others have written about how literature changed their lives. Are you getting the picture? In order to get to the joy of reading and the skill development, I had to build a foundation starting with expanding students' intrinsic motivation.

I continuously worked to get them bought into this challenging task. Simultaneously, I taught skills:. I read aloud every day and gave kids opportunities to talk.

I love reading picture books because they're short, packed with meaning and great for discussion. I crafted questions to prompt students to make personal connections to the text, to draw inferences, make predictions, and to call their attention to the vocabulary and language. In literature circles, students need to become experts at creating questions. I also provided feedback to students in pair-share discussions.

I listened in and then gave very specific instructions, in the moment, about how to engage each other in dialogue. I modeled the skills I asked them to use -- over and over. I showed them how to respond to someone else's statement, how to find and share evidence from the text, how to disagree respectfully.