Literature Circles Introduction
Description:
Literature circles are awesome. They are awesome because doing them will make you a better reader and a
deeper thinker. You will become a better reader and a deeper thinker by discussing interesting books with your
peers in a focused way.
A literature circle is a group of students who read the same book, analyze that book, and discuss what they have
read. Each group will also be expected to create a project based on the book.
Expectations:
As I mentioned above, literature circles are awesome. However, with the privilege of doing group work comes
the responsibility that all students are 100% engaged with academic content material 100% of the time.
Positive consequences connected to 100% engagement with academic content material 100% of the time:
 You will become a much better reader because you will closely analyze a text.
 You will become a more college and career ready student because you will be engaging in high-level
discussions with your fellow students.
 You will become a deeper thinker because you will be expected to dive deep into the meaning, the
language, and the themes of the book that you are reading. Deep thinkers understand the world better,
but they also understand themselves better; they have better lives as a result of more self-knowledge.
Negative consequences connected to engagement with content material that is less than 100% or that happens
less than 100% of the time:
 Your grade will go down. Participation matters very much in literature circles.
 You will lose the privilege of talking productively with your peers.
 If your group is off task two times in one day, not only will you lose the privilege of talking with your
group for two days, but the amount of homework that your group will have to do will double. This will
occur to ensure that you are still learning as much as you possibly can even though you will not be
talking.
Literature Circles Overview
During literature circles, you and a group of students will read the same book, analyze that book, and discuss
what you have read.
The members of our group will be the following (include first and last names & phone numbers):
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____________________________________________________________________________________________
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____________________________________________________________________________________________
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We will be reading Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. The book has 179 pages.
Predict: Based on what you know about the book so far, what do you think it is going to be
about?______________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Group prediction: Write down the prediction of another one of your group members:________________________
________________________ predicts that that the book is going to be about _________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Pick: What projects interest your group? What are some of your top choices from the Literature Circles Project
Options document?
1. __________________________________________________________________________________________________
2. __________________________________________________________________________________________________
3. __________________________________________________________________________________________________
Literature Circle Project Options
 Prepare and tape an interview with one of the main characters and question him or her to reveal characteristics of his
or her personality.
 Design the locker or bulletin board of one of the characters on a poster board. Take pictures and artfully arrange them
to represent what the character is like and what he or she values. Explain your photographs and clippings.
 Write a rap or R&B song telling the story. Find an instrumental track to play with it as you perform or record it on top
of to play to the class.
 Prepare a TV or radio broadcast of the story as if it were a developing segment on the evening news. Think back to the
beginning of the modern version of Romeo and Juliet for this.
 Rewrite the story for younger children. Create illustrations and put it into picture book form using PowerPoint.
 Make a book jacket (A cover, summary, about the author, excerpt on the back, etc.) Then, prepare a ‘Book Talk’ with the
author where s/he discusses why s/he wrote the book and the importance of certain events in the book.
 Create an online blog for a character in the book. Include at least 10 entries that are at least 5 lines each. Use at least 5
visuals.
 Pretend to be a Hollywood advertising executive and create a video trailer for the book. The video should be at least
two minutes long, should make references to many parts of the text, and should make the viewer want to read the
book.
 Create a playlist on iTunes that would either be on the main character’s iPod OR that would be the soundtrack to the
movie version of your novel. You must include an explanation of why you selected each song and what it reveals about
the character OR what it represents in the movie version of your novel. Be prepared to play at least 3 of your selections
and give your explanations.
 Make a comic book telling the story of the book.
Reading Plan
Directions: As you make your reading plan with your group, remember these rules:
 You always need a Discussion Director.
 The group members need to rotate roles each time the group meets
Each time your group meets, you will fill out this information (on a separate piece of paper) and return it with
your completed worksheet packet.
The chapters we will be reading for: (date): ______________: pages ______ through ______
 Discussion Director: ________________________________
 Literary Luminary__________________________________
 Super Summarizer: ________________________________
 Cool Connector: ____________________________________
 Word Wizard: ______________________________________
Literature Circle Roles
Discussion Director: Your job is to write a list of on-the-surface and under-the-surface questions to ask your
group members. You also need to write the answers to these questions with the specific page numbers on which
group members can find the answers. Finally, your job is to make sure each of the other members do their jobs
at the appropriate time.
Literary Luminary: Your job is to choose paragraphs or sentences from the book to discuss with your group. The
paragraphs or sentences that you pick should be the parts of the text that are the most interesting, powerful,
funny, puzzling, or important. Write down the page number and paragraph and include your reasons for picking
the paragraph or sections you chose. You also need to write down the thoughts that your group members have
about the passages that you choose.
Super Summarizer: Your job is to prepare a written and visual summary of the part of the text that you have
just read. You should write down a short statement about what happened in the book, note a few of the most
important events, and create a picture from one part of the reading.
Cool Connector: Your job is to find connections between the book and your life or the outside world. This means
connecting what you read to events in your past, to what happens at school or in the community, to similar
events at other times and places, or to other people or problems. In other words, you need to create text-to-self
connections, text-to-world connections, or text-to-text connections.
Word Wizard: Your job is to look for difficult and important words in your reading. As you are reading, mark
down words that you see that you do not understand. Later, look them up in a dictionary and write down their
definitions. You may also find words in the reading that are important to the story. Mark these words too, and
be ready to point them out to the group. When your group meets, help members find and discuss the words.
Literature Circle Procedures
The following is the order of the discussion in literature circles. The discussion director is in charge of moving
this process along, and everyone else is responsible for being engaged and ready to participate.
1. All and discussion director: All students are seated in groups and have their book and role sheet on their
desk. The discussion director also has this piece of paper (Literature Circle Procedures) on her or his desk.
2. Summarizer: The summarizer shares out his or her general summary of the text as well as his or her key
events.
3. Summarizer: The summarizer shows the group the visual that he or she has drawn. Each member of the
group guesses what the summarizer has depicted. The summarizer then explains the depiction.
4. Literary luminary: The literary luminary directs the group to find the first passage from the reading that he
or she picked. One person in the group reads it out loud. Then, the literary luminary says why he or she
thought the passage was important.
5. Literary luminary: The literary luminary then asks for other students’ reactions to the passage that was
read. Other students discuss what they think about the meaning and importance of the passage. The
literary luminary writes notes based on the reactions of other students.
6. Literary luminary: This same process is then repeated for the second passage.
7. Cool connector: The cool connector directs the group to find one of his or her connections. He or she then
explains why he or she connected to that part of the text.
8. Cool connector: The cool connector asks other students what they connected to in the reading from the night
before. The cool connector writes down at least one connection made by another student.
[Steps 9 and 1 are only necessary if a group actually has a word wizard that day.]
9. Word wizard: The word wizard shares at least four of the interesting or unfamiliar words that he or she
found in the text as well as the definitions for those words.
10. Word wizard: The word wizard asks other students if they were confused by any other important words and
the group looks them up as necessary.
11. Discussion director: The discussion director asks the group his or her two on-the-surface questions. The
discussion director does not give away the answer, but waits for the group to either say or find the answer.
12. Discussion director: The discussion director asks all three under-the-surface questions with the group one at
a time. After asking the question, each member of the group has a chance to respond. After each member
responds, the discussion director provides his or her answer. The group discusses more if they wish to
respond.
Name: _______________________________ Date: _________ Period: ___ Pages: _____ to _____
Role Sheet: Discussion Director
Discussion Director: Your job is to write a list of questions that your group might
want to discuss about this part of the book. The best questions will come from your
own thoughts, feelings, and ideas about this section of the book. You also need to
write your own answers to these questions.
Questions:
1.______________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2.______________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3.______________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
On-the-surface questions – These are questions that can be answered by pointing to the
answer in the book. For example, “Who did the main character meet at the train station?” or
“What did the young man do after his friend gave him the money?”
1. _________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________
The answer to this question can be found on page ________
2. _________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________
The answer to this question can be found on page ________
Example Questions:
What was going through your mind when you read this?
How did you feel when…?
Can someone summarize this section?
Did anything surprise you about this section of the book?
Predict something about the next section of the book.
Name: _______________________________ Date: _________ Period: ___ Pages: _____ to _____
Role Sheet: Literary Luminary
The literary luminary picks passages from the text that are interesting, powerful, funny,
puzzling, or important. The literary luminary then gives two reasons why they thought that
the passage was interesting, powerful, funny, puzzling, or important.
1. The first passage that I chose starts on page ____________. It starts with the words
_____________________________ and ends with the words _________________________________
I chose this passage because ___________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
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What do your group members think about this quote? Do they agree with you? Why or why
not?
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
1. The second passage that I chose starts on page ____________. It starts with the words
_____________________________ and ends with the words _________________________________
I chose this passage because ___________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
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_______________________________________________________________________________________
What do your group members think about this quote? Do they agree with you? Why or why
not?
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
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Name: _______________________________ Date: _________ Period: ___ Pages: _____ to _____
Role Sheet: Super Summarizer
General summary of the reading
_______________________________________________________________________________________
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_______________________________________________________________________________________
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Key events from the reading (in order)
1. ____________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________
2. ____________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________
3. ____________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________
Visualization of one part of the reading:
Name: _______________________________ Date: _________ Period: ___ Pages: _____ to _____
Role Sheet: Cool Connector
The cool connector finds two connections between the book and his or her life or the outside
world. You can connect the reading to some of these things:
 Your own life. This means events in your past, your feelings, your dreams, etc.
 Things that have happened at school, in your community, or in the larger world.
 To other books you have read
 To movies that you have seen or to the lyrics of songs that you have heard.
Connection 1 – page number for connection text_______
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Connection 2 – page number for connection text_______
____________________________________________________________________________________
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Ask members of your group for at least one connection that they made to the reading for
today and record it here (include his or her name in your answer): ________________
____________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________
Name: _______________________________ Date: _________ Period: ___ Pages: _____ to _____
Role Sheet: Word Wizard
Every day, the word wizard looks for 6 words in the story that are:
 Unfamiliar
 Interesting
 Kind of familiar but important
 Kind of familiar but used in an unfamiliar way
Word from text (and
page number)
What I think it means
based on context clues
Dictionary Definition