Literature Circles
As a result of the relative success of the highly explicit and detailed essay assignment outline, I designed the Great Gatsby/literature circle unit (full curriculum outline here, initial prompt received by students embedded below) with a similar amount of explicitness, then went a step further by spending a significant portion of one class period going over the directions and a significant amount of another period having students practice their roles. There is one significant change evident here. The essay workshop was created in a way that involved heavy teacher guidance and micromanagement throughout the process. The literature circle assignment sought to begin with heavy teacher guidance, then release more and more responsibility to the students in an effort to shift them from solely being extrinsically driven to being more self-regulated.
The need for this increased self-regulation became evident as a result of my conversations with focus students Jessica, Derek, and Phillip, all of whom told me that they do not do any of the assigned readings except those we read together in class. Harriet and Candice also expressed concerns about their abilities to stay on top of and remember their homework assignments. Derek said in an interview that he prefers working in groups because he feels more accountable to his peers than he does to himself or to his teachers.
I designed the literature circle component of the unit with the above feedback and concerns in mind. In addition to the gradual release of responsibility described above and detailed on the curriculum outline, the schedule of assignments for the unit followed a highly predictable pattern, and the assignments were all posted and discussed in class a week in advance. There were suggested due dates for each chapter, but there were only hard deadlines for major assignments. My goal with this was to provide teacher guidance for those students that needed it while also allowing and encouraging students to organize their own reading into a schedule that worked for them. The literature circles had an individually written component as well as a group discussion component for the purpose of addressing the needs of a class widely divided by different learning preferences.
Students like Derek who need to feel accountable to their peers were held accountable by peers on a weekly basis. Students who did not read outside of class were encouraged to do so by their peers so that they would be ready on discussion day. Students (like Phillip) who continued to not read on their own could at the very least be filled in on discussion day in the low-risk environment of small group discussion. Students like Candice and Harriet had an easier time staying on top of readings and homework because for each reading they knew they had a very specific role to focus upon. They also knew that if they didn't quite understand everything in the story, they could rely on their peers to help them better understand.
A little later, we will take a look at sample of the written work done for these literature circles.
The need for this increased self-regulation became evident as a result of my conversations with focus students Jessica, Derek, and Phillip, all of whom told me that they do not do any of the assigned readings except those we read together in class. Harriet and Candice also expressed concerns about their abilities to stay on top of and remember their homework assignments. Derek said in an interview that he prefers working in groups because he feels more accountable to his peers than he does to himself or to his teachers.
I designed the literature circle component of the unit with the above feedback and concerns in mind. In addition to the gradual release of responsibility described above and detailed on the curriculum outline, the schedule of assignments for the unit followed a highly predictable pattern, and the assignments were all posted and discussed in class a week in advance. There were suggested due dates for each chapter, but there were only hard deadlines for major assignments. My goal with this was to provide teacher guidance for those students that needed it while also allowing and encouraging students to organize their own reading into a schedule that worked for them. The literature circles had an individually written component as well as a group discussion component for the purpose of addressing the needs of a class widely divided by different learning preferences.
Students like Derek who need to feel accountable to their peers were held accountable by peers on a weekly basis. Students who did not read outside of class were encouraged to do so by their peers so that they would be ready on discussion day. Students (like Phillip) who continued to not read on their own could at the very least be filled in on discussion day in the low-risk environment of small group discussion. Students like Candice and Harriet had an easier time staying on top of readings and homework because for each reading they knew they had a very specific role to focus upon. They also knew that if they didn't quite understand everything in the story, they could rely on their peers to help them better understand.
A little later, we will take a look at sample of the written work done for these literature circles.