We wrapped up our work with Lit Circles today.  Here’s how it happened:

Mindful Breathing

Lit Circle Redux

We continued working with Lit Circles today.  Here’s the handout supplied in class.  It contains:

• A quick and dirty summary of the LC process
• The Story Behind Invictus worksheet
• The Story Behind the Poem recipe
• Examples of response journals and comprehension activities
• The Performance Standard Quick Scale for Reading Literature
• Infomation on the assessment and evaluation of LCs
• A LC & teaching-of-reading-related resource list
• An Anticipation Guide worksheet & a recipe for using AGs in your classroom

The handout: 2010 Lit Circle & Ant Guide Resources Handout

Literature Circles-Related Questions

I asked each TC to write a LC-related question that I would answer at some point during today’s lesson.

Advanced LC Introduction Strategy – “The Story Behind the Poem Invictus“

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 (a slightly different one than the version presented in the LLED group presentation) 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.

Here’s the trailer for the movie Invictus.   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=E9Ovkye6lac[/youtube]

Here’s a scene from the film.  In this clip, Mandela (Freeman) explains how he found inspiration in a poem during his time in prison before narrating Invictus:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVi4k44A1Yo[/youtube]

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 included a link to the webcast and it’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 a handout from the first edition of the Student Diversity text.  It has details on some of the tasks discussed in the webcast:

Lit Circle Comprehension Strategies

Assessment of Literature Circles

Brownlie covers the topic in one segment of the webcast and I’ve included a reading on the topic in the handout.

Answering Some LC-Related Questions

Feedback On & Collection of the LC Novels

In order to inform my book choices for next year, I asked you to give me the following information on the book(s) you read:

• Title
• Stay or G0 (for next year’s kit)
• Reasoning

After looking over the information gathered, I can report that there is nearly unanimous interest in seeing all the books return again next year.  Thanks for your feedback.

Many books were returned to me at this point in the class.  If you have yet to return your novel, please do some in the next class.  Thanks.

Final Double Entry Journal Entry

After brainstorming LC topics touched on in class (“What happened”), I asked you to choose 2 items to respond to in writing (“My Thinking”) in a Double Entry Journal.

For this journal, each entry includes your thinking on 2 items covered in class.  You are doing 3 entries and typing them up.  Your final journal is due to me via email on or before Tuesday, 16 March 2010.

Reading in Content Areas

We didn’t have much time left in class but I did want to touch on how you could work with subject specific reading in such classes as Science, Math, or Socials.  After discussing some of the challenges and successes you’ve had or seen with respect to content area reading, we played with a pre-reading strategy called an Anticipation Guide.  This strategy is a very good one because it gives the students a chance to get their head around the vocabulary and key ideas in a passage selection before reading it for themselves.

You can find the AG, the recipe, and the article the AG is based on in the handout posted at the start of this entry.

To get really meta, here’s an article to check out from the NMSA journal, Voices From the Middle, that relates to using expository texts in Lit Circles:

Expository Text in Lit Circles

That’s all folks.  See you Tuesday.

– Lawrence