After sharing some book recommendations – I suggested you check out Kenneth Oppel’s Airborn, the first in the Matt Cruse trilogy:

– I modeled the process of developing journal criteria with students.  Unfortunately, I erased the criteria we developed in class.  I do, however, have the criteria I originally came up with as noted on the task handout (Children’s Literature Double-Entry Journal Task – 2011).  Here they are:

In class today, we took time to write in our journals twice, once at the start of class and once at the end of our session.

In the first write, I asked you to choose two of the following topics to respond to:

• Reading Success Factors
• Whole Class Novel Studies
• Double-entry Journals
• Book Conversation Circles
• De Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats

For the end-of-class write, you were asked to choose two topics from the following list:

• Developing Journal Criteria
• The Story Behind the Poem
• Say Something
• Focus Question for Book Conversation Circles
• Comprehension Strategies From The Video (Containers for Chracters, Setting, & Venn Diagram)

The task is due on Thursday, 3 March 2011.  It should include all 3 writes (this means that you would have responded to a total of 6 items = 3 writes X 2 items per writing session).  Please submit it via email or hand in a hard copy to me in class on Thursday.

Here’s a model of the DE Journal task if you would benefit from seeing the format as you develop your journal.  You’ll notice my inserted comments on the right and a final blurb on the bottom:

• Sample LLED 320 DE Journal

Prepping for Lit Circle Conversations Using The Story Behind the Poem & Say Something

A great way to get students excited about a new box of thematic books is to read and consider a poem on the theme.  I modeled that by using the Story Behind the Poem strategy to analyze the poem Invictus by William Ernest Henley.

Here’s the recipe for the Story Behind the Poem strategy I used:

• Story Behind the Poem Recipe

Here’s the handout for the poem.  It’s set up to accommodate the SBTP sketching:

• The Story Behind Invictus PDF
• The Story Behind Invictus DOC.

Below is the scene from the movie Invictus that features the poem prominently.  According to the movie’s production notes:

“In the film, Mandela calls upon Pienaar (the captain of the South African national rugby team, the Sprinboks, in 1995) to lead his team to greatness, citing a poem that was a source of inspiration and strength to him during his years in prison.  It is later revealed that the poem is “Invictus,” by William Ernest Henley.  The title is translated to mean “unconquered,” which, Eastwood (film director, Clint Eastwood) says, “doesn’t represent any one character element of the story.  It takes on a broader meaning over the course of the film.”

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FozhZHuAcCs[/youtube]

When you’d had time to gather your thoughts on the poem, I asked you (a select few, in reality.  We were short on time) to Say Something – your connections, questions, imrages that emerge – about the poem.  Say Something is an easy, fun, and interesting strategy that should support effective discussions in the book-based discussion groups.

Brownlie suggests reminding students of the criteria for effective group discussions at the start of the Say Something and reviewing the criteria again at the end:

• all voices must be included
• all students must feel included
• all students must have their ideas respected
• the discussion should move us to new understandings

Lit Circle Discussion Group

Last day’s book discussion was guided by the sticky notes each participant had brought to the circle.  In an effort to model another possibility for setting up the book-related talking, I posed a thematic question as a prompt:

“What has the book taught you about life and living?”

After the conversations we discussed the pros, cons, and artful nuances of structuring the conversation in such a way.

Comprehension Activities

Comprehension activities supplement the reading, discussing and journaling during Lit Circle time.  This gives the students not participating in a discussion group one more thing they can be working on.   One of Brownlies’s Literacy in the Middle Years – Part 2 webcasts does a nice job of covering the topic of comprehension activities.  I’ve the webcast’s timecodes below:

Literature Circles (33:49)

Timecodes (all time are approximate):

▪   0:00 – 1:45: How to Do Comp Strats
▪   1:45 – 6:00: Containers for Characters
▪   6:00 – 9:00: Setting Activity
▪   9:00 – 11:30: Venn Diagram
▪   11:30 – 13:00: Character Tree
▪   13:00 – 16:30: Hot Seat
▪   16:30 – 17:50: Comp Strats Create Book Buzz
▪   17:50 – 22:00: Assessment in LCs & Wrapping Up LCs
▪   22:00 – 25:00: End of LC “Advice Letter to the TC”
▪   25:00 – 30:30: Ideogram
▪   30:30 – 32:00: Call Back to 4 Conditions that Support Readers

Here’s the handout that has much of the material Brownlie references in her webcast:

• Lit Circle Resources to Support Brownlie Webcast

Here’s another handout – this one from the first edition of the Student Diversity text – that has more details on some of the tasks discussed in the webcast, namely the Ideogram:

• Literature Circle Comprehension Strategies

We only watched the first 11 minutes of the webcast today so we’ll finish it up next session.

– Lawrence