How might this article influence your teaching? While reading this article, i found myself creating a comparison chart on the literature cirrcles presented by the three teachers. Firstly, Maggie Forst's elective reading course was an incredible idea that I wish more schools offered to students. Not only did a diverse group of kids sign up, but Forst also reached out to teachers and adults in her school who would be interested in volunteering their free time to reading and taking part in literature circles with the students. Between active adult participation and Forst both being an avid participator in any of the literature circles, students felt encouraged to read and reflect on their books both independently and within their groups. Forst showed her students firsthand that it is okay to start reading something, and then deciding that you'd actually prefer something else. What I liked most about Forst's class was the end of the year letter she sent out to all of the teachers who volunteered because she added students' testimonies of how the class encouraged them to want to become lifelong readers. When reading about Nancy Steineke's classroom literature circles, I noticed that her teaching strategy was more rigid, and that she held both class expectation and group norms on a higher level than that of Forst. What I like about Steineke's class is that she makes the students accountable for their reading and note taking with accountability sheets. She also encourages students to get along with people in their groups, and always finds a way for students to give out compliments to one another based on work ethic or participation. One thing I found repetitive and unnecessary was the fact fact that Steineke insisted on a membership grid every meeting. I found this to be redundant and felt that it took away precious time from other group activities. In terms of Sharon Weiner, I think that her best kept secret is doing a read aloud of a selection twice. The first time, the literature circle chooses a reader and everyone just listens to the story or selection. The second reading is when student roles kick in and each student hones in on the reading to answer questions that pertain to their job. After reading this article I came away with new ideas that I can incorporate in my teaching. I feel that giving students the freedom of choosing their own books is crucial when an opportunity arises because it can almost guarantee that they will enjoy the tasks that go along with a reading assignment.
I also found myself comparing and contrasting the various types of literature circles presented in the article. Maggie Fort's elective reading course struck me as exciting and innovative. I, too, wish more schools would adopt this structure of mixed-ability students and adult volunteers reading together. I also thought it was OK for her to show her students that she lost interest in a book. I did not understand why she felt it was a negative action. I feel it showed her students a "real-reader reaction" to a book. I agree that Nancy Steineke had a more rigid approach to her literature circles. I was questioning the motive. Is the goal of a literature circle to use as much time as possible engaging students in the reading process or do we want to use the activity to teach character and teach team building lessons? The oral component of Sharon Weiner's version of literature circles seems like it would provide a lot of benefits to the students. It can help draw readers into the story and set the tone for the literature circle. Overall, I picked up on many of the same aspects that Biancha did while reading the literature circle article. -Amanda Grundel
Like Amanda and Biancha, I was intrigued by the part of the passage (pg. 173) where Weiner suggested reading aloud something a second time with the students. I love doing that. Sometimes I make excuses that we are doing so to help those who may not have been there. But lately I have been using Close Reading with my struggling readers and have a little bookmark that guides them with chunking out the passages and looking for challenging words, etc. I read the passage, then re-read it to them. Then, they work in partners and re-read again, starting to mark the passage. They are starting to get the gist of this -- in particular, one student confidently stated that there weren't any words that they didn't know in the passage. Once we went through it by paragraph and he saw that others were clearly indicating that they had words they didn't know, he realized he had simply skipped over the difficult words and tried to make meaning without them. So, the combination of re-reading, discussing, working in partners, and then whole class really seemed to assist this struggling reader. By adding in some lit circle roles to this particular class, I think I may be able to make even more progress with them.
7. What would you ask this author over a cup of coffee?
I would really like to talk to Margaret Forst and ask her about her entire educational background. Her approach to literature circles is one of the most interesting things I have ever read about education and lesson planning, and I would like to learn more from her bag of tricks. Forst has set up a classroom where students are essentially teaching teachers (all members of literature circles are equals, and no adult is required to come in with any sort of pedagogical agenda whatsoever). She invites volunteers from the faculty and community at large to participate in classroom discussions. The students come from very diverse learning backgrounds, and yet regardless of ability, they take ownership over their learning and explore topics with freedom (that comes with certain responsibilities). They peruse the newspapers and create lists on a weekly basis of books they would like to read, and this tells me that they will even have books to read when they are on summer vacation and school breaks. Forst has set up her classroom as a microcosm, a functioning society, and that is what the very best teachers strive to do. I would love to be the kind of teacher who does this, but it takes great planning, practice and discipline. I would love to bend her ear and hear how she came to be this way, and what growing pains she experienced on her journey to becoming such an excellent educator. Forst knows what it takes to spark interest in students who seem to have given up. She knows what it means to create independent, self-motivated students who take their curiosity outside of the classroom and become lifelong learners. She is the real deal.
6. How might this article influence your teaching?
I mentioned in class that the only experience I previously had with Literature Circles was quite negative. I am hopeful that after having read this article, in particular the experiences noted by Sharon Weiner, I will be able to grasp how Lit, Circles can enhance the understanding of various genre with my students. Most of what I had experienced was rather militaristic in its formation and I tend to shy away from such formality. However, I liked the way Weiner said she eased into the roles by having each group work on the same task together at first. This made sense to me. That way, each student learns the role at the same time and they can all feel confident. By having each member take a different role on the second day, it is clear that they become more comfortable and more willing to take chances with how they personally define their roles.
We have so much non-fiction that we teach the students that we rarely have time to truly work on any "literature," it's its true sense. However, we are starting a unit using the book Number the Stars and I am hoping that I can change things up a bit from the traditional "answer these questions after reading" type of format.
Lisa, I have seen how frustrating it is for the ELA, Science, and SS teachers at my school with all of the non-fiction text that they are reading. They are making these texts as engaging as possible by utilizing other strategies. A common one is posting questions around the room, and having the scholars walk around in groups to identify evidence for the claim or question on the paper. This works really well when the article has subtopics in it for the students to comment on, but isn't always the case.
Certainly this article made the concept of Literature Circles sound engaging and effective at helping students develop a love of reading! I especially liked the idea of having adult volunteers join in the group to be on the same level as the students. I am wondering if Literature Circles can be used for other reading material or if this strategy is restricted to using fiction books in an English class. Also, do students continue their enthusiasm for Literature Circles if they are continued throughout the year? Finally, how does this concept fit together with the focus on integrated units? I guess there's always more to learn!
Linda, I also liked reading about adult volunteers joining in the group. Anytime you can get other teachers in the school involved I think that the students really benefit from that sense of team and family. I know that a few of the ELA teachers at my school have had students invite a teacher to hear their writing pieces, and the scholars have been very excited and proud to show off their work to other teachers in the school. It also created a great sense of community and shows the students that all of their teachers are proud and invested in the students' reading and writing growth.
10. Discuss this article with someone. Describe the conversation.
With ten years experience as an English teacher and over 25 years of experience as a reading specialist, I decided to share the Harvey Daniels article on literature circles with my mother and then discuss it with her. My mother, who retired in 2005, was familiar with Harvey Daniels’ work; however, she had not read this particular article before.
My mother had participated in team teaching with the English teachers at Shea High School and she had often facilitated literature circles among secondary level students. She confirmed that her experience was similar to my own, and supported one of Daniels’ claims that middle and high school teachers often have to “adapt key literature circle procedures to those required books so that kids can enjoy peer led discussions even when the literature is preselected.” She went on to explain that the only true opportunity for students to chose their own text for reading was during the daily Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) which occurred for the first fifteen minutes of every class, a practice that Nancy Steineke refers to the second section of the Daniels article.
In the first section of the article, we hear of high school teacher, Margaret “Maggie” Forst’s experience of being an actual participant in the literature circles with her students, along with another dozen adult volunteers from the school community. Although my mother never experienced adults participating in the literature circles at her former school, she agreed that it could be a powerful experience for all involved.
For me, one of the more interesting things I gleaned from the article was how Sharon Weiner explained how the role of “Researcher” would pull in “background information about an author or topic” and “clearly tie his or her information with details from the reading.” Though I have conducted literature circles before, I have never used the role of researcher and I really enjoyed the example Weiner gave about how “one eighth grade researcher brought in art books by concentration camp victims for a group reading of Elie Weisel’s NIGHT.” This practice ispoke to me as I am currently reading BETWEEN THE SHADES OF GRAY as part of our literature and will be serving as our group’s Connector.
To conclude, both my mother and I agree that literature circles can be an engaging tool to promote reading by readers of all ages; however, like the Daniels article suggests through three teachers relating their experiences of conducting them, it must be a carefully planned practice in order to keep students on task as well as to enable them to have productive discussions.
6. How might this article influence your teaching? First let me start by saying that as a former elementary school teacher I have never done anything with literature circles such as these at all, so all of these concepts are new to me. Depending on my future endeavors, any one of these ideas may work in my classroom. Each one of these teachers has a very different format for conducting their literature circle, and they each seem to have their own redeeming qualities. Having looked at the three different formats, I could easily pick out the one I would be most likely to use myself. Margaret Forst's plan for a literature circle held the most interest for me. I love the idea of students, teachers, staff etc. sitting together and discussing a book they have all read. I especially liked reading about the pairing up of the "unpromising" student with the technology director. This pairing up seemed to be just what this student needed to get back on track in school. It almost felt like the adults participating in the literature circle were there as equals, but almost as mentors too. From my own experience, many students seem to place value on relationships with teachers and other staff in their school, so I could see how this format could make many students happy. As one student said, "they were more like equals" and they all seemed comfortable within their groups. I also like how from outward appearances this literature circle seems "loosely structured" but there is actually constant interaction between the teacher and the students with the weekly notes keeping the teacher informed of what is going on in each student's book. The comments the students provided at the end of the year are exactly the kind of things every teacher wants to hear. This literature circle on paper seems like it works wonderfully. Having never worked in a middle school environment before, I just wonder how easy this would be to pull off? It would be very interesting to see how many staff members would actually be available for something like this.
I agree with Biancha and Colleen that Nancy Steineke's format seems more rigid, and I do think having the membership grid each time may be unnecessary. I do like how she suggests setting up rules, and that these rules are put out on the desk at each meeting. I also liked her idea of using notes and journals, and looking at the notes and date stamping them. I like to think this might motivate the students to keep up if they know you are checking their work frequently.
I liked Sharon Weiner's role assignments, explanations, and practice for these roles. I could envision student's enjoying having roles assigned to them, and hopefully taking them seriously. I am interested in attempting read-alouds with middle school aged students. I was always that student who hated to be read aloud to, and still does, so I will be interested in trying this out in a literature circle as Weiner suggested, to see how it goes over with the class.
I take away many new and exciting ideas after reading this article that I can't wait to institute in my own classroom at some point!
1 What passage did you find most compelling? In this article with multiple perspectives, I found the insight from Nancy Steineke to be the most compelling. It is possible that after working with middle schoolers, actual group regulation seems like a pipe dream to me, but her methods of group collaboration seemed truly extraordinary. I loved her approach to establishing a true group cohesiveness with a membership grid, and then cementing their new group dynamic with group ground rules. The most impressing and inspiring part of the article was where the teacher used accountability sheets to keep the students on task. After telling the students what they should be working on (their grows) students were given a chance to make an action plan to fix it for the next time. It feels to me like a complete parallel to what we go through as teachers, identifying grow areas and then coming up with the action steps to fix it. Imagining my students doing these steps, almost entirely independently, has my brain going a mile a minute to make plans for this to happen in our small math groups.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteHow might this article influence your teaching?
ReplyDeleteWhile reading this article, i found myself creating a comparison chart on the literature cirrcles presented by the three teachers. Firstly, Maggie Forst's elective reading course was an incredible idea that I wish more schools offered to students. Not only did a diverse group of kids sign up, but Forst also reached out to teachers and adults in her school who would be interested in volunteering their free time to reading and taking part in literature circles with the students. Between active adult participation and Forst both being an avid participator in any of the literature circles, students felt encouraged to read and reflect on their books both independently and within their groups. Forst showed her students firsthand that it is okay to start reading something, and then deciding that you'd actually prefer something else. What I liked most about Forst's class was the end of the year letter she sent out to all of the teachers who volunteered because she added students' testimonies of how the class encouraged them to want to become lifelong readers.
When reading about Nancy Steineke's classroom literature circles, I noticed that her teaching strategy was more rigid, and that she held both class expectation and group norms on a higher level than that of Forst. What I like about Steineke's class is that she makes the students accountable for their reading and note taking with accountability sheets. She also encourages students to get along with people in their groups, and always finds a way for students to give out compliments to one another based on work ethic or participation. One thing I found repetitive and unnecessary was the fact fact that Steineke insisted on a membership grid every meeting. I found this to be redundant and felt that it took away precious time from other group activities.
In terms of Sharon Weiner, I think that her best kept secret is doing a read aloud of a selection twice. The first time, the literature circle chooses a reader and everyone just listens to the story or selection. The second reading is when student roles kick in and each student hones in on the reading to answer questions that pertain to their job.
After reading this article I came away with new ideas that I can incorporate in my teaching. I feel that giving students the freedom of choosing their own books is crucial when an opportunity arises because it can almost guarantee that they will enjoy the tasks that go along with a reading assignment.
I also found myself comparing and contrasting the various types of literature circles presented in the article. Maggie Fort's elective reading course struck me as exciting and innovative. I, too, wish more schools would adopt this structure of mixed-ability students and adult volunteers reading together. I also thought it was OK for her to show her students that she lost interest in a book. I did not understand why she felt it was a negative action. I feel it showed her students a "real-reader reaction" to a book.
DeleteI agree that Nancy Steineke had a more rigid approach to her literature circles. I was questioning the motive. Is the goal of a literature circle to use as much time as possible engaging students in the reading process or do we want to use the activity to teach character and teach team building lessons?
The oral component of Sharon Weiner's version of literature circles seems like it would provide a lot of benefits to the students. It can help draw readers into the story and set the tone for the literature circle.
Overall, I picked up on many of the same aspects that Biancha did while reading the literature circle article.
-Amanda Grundel
Like Amanda and Biancha, I was intrigued by the part of the passage (pg. 173) where Weiner suggested reading aloud something a second time with the students. I love doing that. Sometimes I make excuses that we are doing so to help those who may not have been there. But lately I have been using Close Reading with my struggling readers and have a little bookmark that guides them with chunking out the passages and looking for challenging words, etc. I read the passage, then re-read it to them. Then, they work in partners and re-read again, starting to mark the passage. They are starting to get the gist of this -- in particular, one student confidently stated that there weren't any words that they didn't know in the passage. Once we went through it by paragraph and he saw that others were clearly indicating that they had words they didn't know, he realized he had simply skipped over the difficult words and tried to make meaning without them. So, the combination of re-reading, discussing, working in partners, and then whole class really seemed to assist this struggling reader. By adding in some lit circle roles to this particular class, I think I may be able to make even more progress with them.
Delete7. What would you ask this author over a cup of coffee?
ReplyDeleteI would really like to talk to Margaret Forst and ask her about her entire educational background. Her approach to literature circles is one of the most interesting things I have ever read about education and lesson planning, and I would like to learn more from her bag of tricks. Forst has set up a classroom where students are essentially teaching teachers (all members of literature circles are equals, and no adult is required to come in with any sort of pedagogical agenda whatsoever). She invites volunteers from the faculty and community at large to participate in classroom discussions. The students come from very diverse learning backgrounds, and yet regardless of ability, they take ownership over their learning and explore topics with freedom (that comes with certain responsibilities). They peruse the newspapers and create lists on a weekly basis of books they would like to read, and this tells me that they will even have books to read when they are on summer vacation and school breaks. Forst has set up her classroom as a microcosm, a functioning society, and that is what the very best teachers strive to do. I would love to be the kind of teacher who does this, but it takes great planning, practice and discipline. I would love to bend her ear and hear how she came to be this way, and what growing pains she experienced on her journey to becoming such an excellent educator. Forst knows what it takes to spark interest in students who seem to have given up. She knows what it means to create independent, self-motivated students who take their curiosity outside of the classroom and become lifelong learners. She is the real deal.
6. How might this article influence your teaching?
ReplyDeleteI mentioned in class that the only experience I previously had with Literature Circles was quite negative. I am hopeful that after having read this article, in particular the experiences noted by Sharon Weiner, I will be able to grasp how Lit, Circles can enhance the understanding of various genre with my students. Most of what I had experienced was rather militaristic in its formation and I tend to shy away from such formality. However, I liked the way Weiner said she eased into the roles by having each group work on the same task together at first. This made sense to me. That way, each student learns the role at the same time and they can all feel confident. By having each member take a different role on the second day, it is clear that they become more comfortable and more willing to take chances with how they personally define their roles.
We have so much non-fiction that we teach the students that we rarely have time to truly work on any "literature," it's its true sense. However, we are starting a unit using the book Number the Stars and I am hoping that I can change things up a bit from the traditional "answer these questions after reading" type of format.
Lisa, I have seen how frustrating it is for the ELA, Science, and SS teachers at my school with all of the non-fiction text that they are reading. They are making these texts as engaging as possible by utilizing other strategies. A common one is posting questions around the room, and having the scholars walk around in groups to identify evidence for the claim or question on the paper. This works really well when the article has subtopics in it for the students to comment on, but isn't always the case.
DeleteCertainly this article made the concept of Literature Circles sound engaging and effective at helping students develop a love of reading! I especially liked the idea of having adult volunteers join in the group to be on the same level as the students. I am wondering if Literature Circles can be used for other reading material or if this strategy is restricted to using fiction books in an English class. Also, do students continue their enthusiasm for Literature Circles if they are continued throughout the year? Finally, how does this concept fit together with the focus on integrated units? I guess there's always more to learn!
ReplyDeleteLinda, I also liked reading about adult volunteers joining in the group. Anytime you can get other teachers in the school involved I think that the students really benefit from that sense of team and family. I know that a few of the ELA teachers at my school have had students invite a teacher to hear their writing pieces, and the scholars have been very excited and proud to show off their work to other teachers in the school. It also created a great sense of community and shows the students that all of their teachers are proud and invested in the students' reading and writing growth.
Delete10. Discuss this article with someone. Describe the conversation.
ReplyDeleteWith ten years experience as an English teacher and over 25 years of experience as a reading specialist, I decided to share the Harvey Daniels article on literature circles with my mother and then discuss it with her. My mother, who retired in 2005, was familiar with Harvey Daniels’ work; however, she had not read this particular article before.
My mother had participated in team teaching with the English teachers at Shea High School and she had often facilitated literature circles among secondary level students. She confirmed that her experience was similar to my own, and supported one of Daniels’ claims that middle and high school teachers often have to “adapt key literature circle procedures to those required books so that kids can enjoy peer led discussions even when the literature is preselected.” She went on to explain that the only true opportunity for students to chose their own text for reading was during the daily Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) which occurred for the first fifteen minutes of every class, a practice that Nancy Steineke refers to the second section of the Daniels article.
In the first section of the article, we hear of high school teacher, Margaret “Maggie” Forst’s experience of being an actual participant in the literature circles with her students, along with another dozen adult volunteers from the school community. Although my mother never experienced adults participating in the literature circles at her former school, she agreed that it could be a powerful experience for all involved.
For me, one of the more interesting things I gleaned from the article was how Sharon Weiner explained how the role of “Researcher” would pull in “background information about an author or topic” and “clearly tie his or her information with details from the reading.” Though I have conducted literature circles before, I have never used the role of researcher and I really enjoyed the example Weiner gave about how “one eighth grade researcher brought in art books by concentration camp victims for a group reading of Elie Weisel’s NIGHT.” This practice ispoke to me as I am currently reading BETWEEN THE SHADES OF GRAY as part of our literature and will be serving as our group’s Connector.
To conclude, both my mother and I agree that literature circles can be an engaging tool to promote reading by readers of all ages; however, like the Daniels article suggests through three teachers relating their experiences of conducting them, it must be a carefully planned practice in order to keep students on task as well as to enable them to have productive discussions.
6. How might this article influence your teaching?
ReplyDeleteFirst let me start by saying that as a former elementary school teacher I have never done anything with literature circles such as these at all, so all of these concepts are new to me. Depending on my future endeavors, any one of these ideas may work in my classroom. Each one of these teachers has a very different format for conducting their literature circle, and they each seem to have their own redeeming qualities. Having looked at the three different formats, I could easily pick out the one I would be most likely to use myself. Margaret Forst's plan for a literature circle held the most interest for me. I love the idea of students, teachers, staff etc. sitting together and discussing a book they have all read. I especially liked reading about the pairing up of the "unpromising" student with the technology director. This pairing up seemed to be just what this student needed to get back on track in school. It almost felt like the adults participating in the literature circle were there as equals, but almost as mentors too. From my own experience, many students seem to place value on relationships with teachers and other staff in their school, so I could see how this format could make many students happy. As one student said, "they were more like equals" and they all seemed comfortable within their groups. I also like how from outward appearances this literature circle seems "loosely structured" but there is actually constant interaction between the teacher and the students with the weekly notes keeping the teacher informed of what is going on in each student's book. The comments the students provided at the end of the year are exactly the kind of things every teacher wants to hear. This literature circle on paper seems like it works wonderfully. Having never worked in a middle school environment before, I just wonder how easy this would be to pull off? It would be very interesting to see how many staff members would actually be available for something like this.
I agree with Biancha and Colleen that Nancy Steineke's format seems more rigid, and I do think having the membership grid each time may be unnecessary. I do like how she suggests setting up rules, and that these rules are put out on the desk at each meeting. I also liked her idea of using notes and journals, and looking at the notes and date stamping them. I like to think this might motivate the students to keep up if they know you are checking their work frequently.
I liked Sharon Weiner's role assignments, explanations, and practice for these roles. I could envision student's enjoying having roles assigned to them, and hopefully taking them seriously. I am interested in attempting read-alouds with middle school aged students. I was always that student who hated to be read aloud to, and still does, so I will be interested in trying this out in a literature circle as Weiner suggested, to see how it goes over with the class.
I take away many new and exciting ideas after reading this article that I can't wait to institute in my own classroom at some point!
1 What passage did you find most compelling?
ReplyDeleteIn this article with multiple perspectives, I found the insight from Nancy Steineke to be the most compelling. It is possible that after working with middle schoolers, actual group regulation seems like a pipe dream to me, but her methods of group collaboration seemed truly extraordinary. I loved her approach to establishing a true group cohesiveness with a membership grid, and then cementing their new group dynamic with group ground rules. The most impressing and inspiring part of the article was where the teacher used accountability sheets to keep the students on task. After telling the students what they should be working on (their grows) students were given a chance to make an action plan to fix it for the next time. It feels to me like a complete parallel to what we go through as teachers, identifying grow areas and then coming up with the action steps to fix it. Imagining my students doing these steps, almost entirely independently, has my brain going a mile a minute to make plans for this to happen in our small math groups.