Reflections from Your Feb 1st Literature Circle
Now that you've engaged in a genuine literature circle, take a moment to reflect on the activity and to consider some of the items of interest that came up as you discussed your novels. What points or ideas were shared via the LC format that might not have been explored otherwise?
posted by Bucky C. at 9:02 PM
6 Comments:
I'll get us started. I noticed there was more "noise" in class than the week before. I love constructive noise! I felt that more people were active in the groups than might have been before and that talking was more evenly distributed as well.
Yeah, we used the chapter segments so you would get a feel of how a literature circle really works. You'd be assigned a section (that you hadn't already read), you'd read it, do your role, then discuss it. I can't apologize that you had to do a role in class that you hadn't prepared for, as that is part and parcel of doing the lit circles in the actual classroom. It happens realtime.
As well, sometimes time does run out. If we'd been in a real school setting, I might have told you you'd get the chance finish up tomorrow or the next time we do lit circles. Time management is indeed an issue, from the teacher, the discussion director, and the group members. I'll bet ya'll will do a better job of managing the time next week, especially since I'll give you a specific timeframe to help you gauge your progress, so you'll sort of have to. <-- spoiler warning
I am happy we were able to prepare for the class with our Lit Circle jobs. I would have liked to have presented one of the (3) that I actually prepared for class as I spent more time on it. But for this coming week we have decided to do (3) jobs again and then present those jobs in our circle, in order to get more info from the entire book, not just an excerpt. I felt as though the new structure in this weeks circle helped to include everyone in the discussion instead of just one or two. I do try hard not to hear other groups as I didnt want them to spoil the ending of a book for me :).
Poorly written text in The Chocolate War? Wow. I'm really surprised by that as I've always though the textuality of the book was one of its intellectual strengths. I'm not sure if you all are familiar with the term "free and indirect discourse," but for my money, TCW is an exemplar bar none of that technique. I would have liked to have heard those comments to the contrary too, and am sorry you all didn't get to them.
I'd caution you not to give up on LC's at the high school level, and to learn more on your own, maybe by seeking out www.literacircles.com or the works of Daniels, the LC guru.
And remember, we're using these techniques as different methods to discuss the books, the twist being that we're getting practice via actual pedagogical techniques we can use in our classes. LC's is just one way of doing things. You may find a class that it really works well with, only to find that another class has various needs. Always better to have more tricks in the bag than beating the same ol' horse.
That said, it sounds like some of you might really prefer the Paideia discussion we'll have on Maus.
I was in the group that was reading the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. All of us had prepared our roles from the literature circle packet, but then we came to class, and we didn't even share or discuss the items that we had prepared for. Instead, we all focused on the same passage chosen by the group leader and were assigned roles on the spot for that passage... The discussion was not all that fruitful.
Honestly, I feel like the assigning of roles can turn out to be a bad thing. If a student isn't particulary creative, for example, you might not get much out of the artists role, no matter how hard that student tries, and the student may have been able to contribute more to the discussion through a different role.
I think much of the group agreed with this, so for this next week, we are choosing our own roles and planning ahead of time in the hopes of having a more in-depth and thought-out discussion for next time.
Well, I feel like I am now the one beating a dead horse, but assigning the roles is an integral aspect of the LC process, especially early on. In realtime, your students wouldn't have prepared anything in advance and wouldn't have even read the selection ahead of time, so keep that in mind as you evaluate the whole process. Did your discussion directors not ask anyone if they wanted specific roles? I'll bet they did. As for the roles you prepared for, those were there for you to open up your discussions once the sectinional roles/readings had been explored.
What this is showing me is that I might should have chosen a short story that you all hadn't read at all and had to read in the LC's, so that your roles and your reading experience would have been all the more authentic. That's something I'll keep in mind for future use.
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