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Readers Circles - What are they?
Readers' Circles are small temporary literary discussion groups . They encourage students to think actively and critically about their reading and to engage in ongoing dialogue with others to construct meaning from the text.
Group members
- choose to read the same book independently
- record personal responses, insights and queries in a Reading Log
- meet regularly to discuss negotiated sections of the text and share their responses
- may have specified roles within the group discussion eg (Discussion Leader; Word Wizard; Summariser; Illustrator)
- jointly prepare a creative response to share with the remainder of the class
The teacher assumes role of facilitator rather than that of group leader
Readers Circles usually continue for 4 -6 weeks.
Getting Started (Session1)
Gather together 4-5 copies of each of a selection of 6-7 books. The books may represent a broad selection or be based on a common theme eg humour; bullying; fantasy etc
During the first session, the teacher provides a stimulating intro. to each book. Students then make their choices and groups are established.
Students begin to read independently a negotiated section eg Chapters 1-3 before next meeting.
Students are provided with Bookmarks or Post it notes for identifying passages of text of interest and a reading log for recording personal responses
Circle Discussions
(Sessions
3-5)
Discussions are generally scheduled at weekly or twice weekly intervals.
During the discussions students shared both prepared and spontaneous responses to the text.
Initially it may be necessary to scaffold the discussions to maximise participation and to provide models of appropriate discussion topics by providing students with
A set of generic open ended questions and Bookmarks for recording their responses. Between sessions students are obliged to record their personal responses to these questions making reference to specific "bookmarked" sections of the text.
Examples are contained in the following documents in pdf dformat
Reader's Circle Task Sheet and Bookmarks template
OR
Another scaffolding strategy is to by providing students with specific roles such as
- "DIRECTOR" - who brings prepared open ended questions for group discussion
- " WORD WIZARD" - who focusses the discussion on interesting vocabulary and examples of creative language use eg alliteration; visual imagery etc
- "SUMMARISER" - who provides a brief overview of the selection
- " ILLUSTRATOR" - who draws or sketches some graphic representation/ response to sections of the text
Resources
Literature Circles Resource Centre
Discussion Groups and Literature Circles
Programming for Literature Circles (Horrible Histories) ‚ from Trinity Grammar School NSW
A Planning template for Literature Circles