LITERATURE CIRCLES
Introduction
STUDENT ROLES
Discussion Director
Literary Luminary
Illustrator
Word Wizard
Connector
Summarizer
DISCUSSION DIRECTOR
Your role demands that you identify
important aspects of the text and develop
questions your group will discuss. Focus on
the major themes or “big ideas” in the text
and your reaction to those ideas. What
interests you will most likely interest the
group. You are also responsible for
facilitating your group’s discussion.
LITERARY LUMINARY
Select text that is thought-provoking, humorous, controversial,
poetic, confusing, unusual, important, interesting.
You find passages your group should discuss in depth. These
passages should be memorable, interesting, puzzling, funny or
important. Your notes should include the quotations but also why
you chose them, and what you have to say about them. You can
either read the passage aloud or ask members of your group to
read the roles.
ILLUSTRATOR
Create illustration or graphic organizer related to the text.
Illustrator shows picture and allows group to guess the connection to the story and to
elicit discussion.
Only after group is finished does Illustrator explain the importance of the picture and
its connection to the story.
Your role is to draw what you read. This might mean drawing a scene as a cartoonlike sequence or an important scene so readers can better understand the action. You
can draw maps or organizational trees to show how one person, place, or event
relates to the others. Use the notes to explain how your drawing relates to the text.
Label your drawings so we know who the characters are. Make your drawing on a
separate sheet of paper.
WORD WIZARD
Select unfamiliar, challenging, enriching, unusual, or interesting words.
Look up the definitions and make sure word meanings can be expressed
in your own words.
While reading the assigned section, watch out for words worth
knowing. These words might be interesting, new, important, or used
in unusual ways. This also includes slang or dialect. It is important to
indicate the specific location of the words so the group can discuss
them in context.
CONNECTOR
Your job is to connect what you read with what you study in this or other classes.
You can also connect the story with events in your own life or the world outside
school as depicted in the news or other media. Another valuable source of
connection is books you’ve already read this year. Connections should be
meaningful to you and those in your group.
Make connections between the text (characters, setting, conflicts, etc.) and …
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Happenings at school
Life outside school
Similar events of another time or place.
Other people or problems
Another book
Events in the news
SUMMARIZER
Prepare a brief summary of the day’s
reading. Use the questions to the right to help
you decide what to include. In some cases,
you might ask yourself what details,
characters, or events are so important that
they would be included on a test. If it helps
you to organize the information, consider
making a numbered list or timeline.