Sunday, May 13, 2012

literature circles


I have finally begun literature circles in my classroom,  I actually love all of the amazing learning, and discussions that go on with my students during this time...
One of the first things I do in my classroom is let the entire class experience all of the jobs in literature circles, while we all read a chapter book together.  This year I started with the book Charlotte's Web, which was wonderful..After we finished the book, many groups choose Judy Blume books - The Fudge series, but one of my groups actually choose Stuart Little and I was delighted that they did!  Their discussions usually started with a comparison between the two literary pieces and why they liked Snowbell more than Templeton..
(I had to chime in quite a bit)
But..this one particular group had a very hard time actually moving the discussions along so I decided that they needed a bit more guidance with out me being at their group all the time! 
So we made literature circle badges (worked like a charm) The front of the badge said the members role and the back described how to do the job!
It's amazing that something so simple really kept the students focused and responsible!






















  Here are some other materials I use to help literature circles run smoothly:


Literature Circle Worksheets from super teacher

    Mini-Lessons for Literature Circles
 trade book from-amazon.com



from writing with chalk.com


                                         
organizer from- reallygoodstuff.com





web site for these book marks-www. literaturecircle6weebly.com / 




9 comments:

Miss Sara said...

I love litterature circles! I've started them a few weeks ago :)
love how you made the kids do the badges!
Miss Elementary

Nicole Heinlein said...

Thanks for sharing all these wonderful resources!
✿Nicole
Teaching With Style

Miss Mason said...

Do you have a link so I can print those bookmarks? They would be wonderful for my kids.

teaching fashionista said...

Hi Miss Mason I found these bookmarks via pinterest here is the original site:
web site for these book marks-www. literaturecircle6weebly.com /

Unknown said...

Is sixth grade too old for this? I'm a new teacher who will be teaching sixth grade in an elementary building.

Unknown said...

Thank you for all your great ideas for lit circles. I will be doing them for the first time with my 5th grade class this year. I am so excited! I was wondering if with the implementation of common core, would you change anything in the questioning or the jobs, or do you think that they align as is? Thanks.

Unknown said...

Would you change anything to align with common core?

teaching fashionista said...

Hi Angela, I think the questioning may need some tweaking.

Meg said...

Are your students using interactive notebooks?