December 1, 2006
Literature Circles Begin
| This week my 7th Grade Reading class began reading the novel Absolutely Normal Chaos by Sharon Creech. |  |
They will be reading the book using Literature Circles. Yesterday they read the first 22 pages of the book and wrote a blog post in their role that I assigned them. The roles are:
Connector
Your job is to find connections between the book you are reading and the outside world. This means connecting what you read with your own life, to what happens at school or in the community, to similar events at other times and places, or to other people or problems. Once you have shared your connection to this section of the book, each member of your group will also relate their own connection to the book, although they may refer to a different passage. Those commenting will share their own connections.
Passage Master
Your job is to choose a paragraph or sentences from the book to discuss with your group. Your purpose is to help other students by spotlighting something interesting, powerful, funny, puzzling, or important from the text. During group time, you can read parts aloud yourself, or ask another group member to read them. Include your reasons for picking the paragraphs or sections you did. Please record the page number and paragraph. Those commenting will agree or disagree with your passage choice and support their reasons with details and examples from the novel.
Summarizer
Your job is to prepare a summary of the reading. Don’t tell the whole story, just focus on the important parts. The other members of your group will be counting on you to give them a quick statement that tells about the story (the summary), and the key points. Those commenting can give their opinion of the section and/or correct any wrong information.
Critical Thinker
Develops questions for critical thinking based on Blooms Taxonomy. You will include six questions using key words from the flip cards. The levels are Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. Those commenting will answer one or more questions.
Learning Reflector (only classes with 5 students in a group have this role)
Use this role to pose your thoughts, ideas, questions or any other connections you make about this learning journey. Those commenting reflect and reply.
On Fridays, they post the information learned while in their role for the week. On Mondays, they post a response to a Friday post of the role they will begin that week.
Each group decides how the roles will rotate each week and what they will do as group each day in class. They were given the number of pages to be read each week, but they can decide how to split the reading up (in-class/homework). They must balance the in-class and home reading so that they can have discussions in class, as well.
I prepared an extensive packet of instructions, forms and rubrics to guide the students in this journey. I’m excited to see how well it works out.
Click on the student names on the right to see their posts. They would love to get comments from other students and teachers! 
