Abstract

This paper describes the development of Literature Circles in a typical Grade 6 classroom, focussing on student-led discussions of ability-level novels with improved written responses. N.B.: The students created the name Literature Study, instead of Literature Circles, because we were going to read several different genres of literature. I use the terms interchangeably in this paper.

Literature Circles: The Beginning:

In the beginning my professional goal was to make a growth transition from novel studies to literature circles within my classroom. Before implementing this process in my classroom reading a wide variety of professional literature was essential. Basing my challenge in recent educational pedagogy was important for my personal growth. I integrated many ideas from many resources which are included at the end of this paper. As usual, the primary resource was the students. Their involvement, suggestions and patience with a new process was invaluable. There were many sub-skills that emerged and were integrated and, subsequently, evaluated by the time we were finished. As my research met real-life, some ideas were implemented easily while others were reworked and reworked again. This process is the focus of this paper.

From my research several goals emerged:

Goal 1: To integrate and improve the learning skills of Retelling, Relating and Reflecting within written responses. The 3R's relate to Knowledge, Comprehension, Synthesis, Evaluation, Analysis and Application on the Bloom's Taxonomy of thinking skills. Ideally, the students would move beyond knowledge and comprehension skills to the other, higher, thinking skills.

Goal 2: To understand and learn the dynamics of an effective discussion groups.

Goal 3: To build student confidence in their ability to discuss, then write personal responses to literature. Successfully integrating lower abilities and language/speech high needs children into this new process were this researcher/teacher's greatest concern. There were the challenges of being able to "read" the novel so they would be successful in discussion as a contributing member of each group, as well as improving their written responses.

Step 1: Poetry: Retelling : What do they know now?

The Cremation of Sam McGee by Ted Harrison

I began by reading the poem to the class. Question #1 was introduced: Retell this poem.

Then, without discussion, I asked the students to retell what had happened in the poem in their Literature Study notebooks. As expected, responses were brief and/or did not focus on retelling.

Mike wrote:(Sic) "I especially liked the way that he wrote the story as a poem and I liked the pictures. I didn't get it when he was still alive in the fire. The story was good. I noticed that the whole thing was a poem and it rhymes."

Chelsea wrote: (Sic) "I especially like when they saw a boat in the ice. When Sam said: I haven't been warm since I was in Plumtree, Tennessee. Same died in Plumtree. Sam got cremated in a furnace by his partner. His partner decided to look around in the boat and there was Sam sitting in the chair. I noticed that it was a rhyming words. So it is a poem not a story. The is about the creation of Sam McGee, about him dying and his partner cremates him in a furnace on a boat because that was his wish."

Step 2: Poetry: Retelling with discussion

Owl Moon by Jane Yolen

The 3 Rs Framework: Draft Planning Sheet ( Schwartz and Bone) was introduced and a class discussion centred on " What is Retelling?" We brain-stormed a list of Retelling beginnings like... This is about...In this story...It happened...

The poem Owl Moon was read to the class. The students were placed in small groups and provided a copy of the poem. Their culminating task was to retell the poem in their notebooks.. The students were engaged in the discussion and this time Mike wrote: (Sic) There is a boy/girl and a man. They went into the forest. They are going Owling. They walk into the forest with their warm scarves and they walk to the edge of the forest and the trees had snow on them. Pa said: There are some rules for Owling. You have to be quiet and patient and you have to be brave. When they got to the edge of the forest, where the owls are, Pa started to call: Wooooo, woooooo. The owls replied: Wooooo...woooo. The owl came down to where Pas was. They stared at the owl for as long as he stayed. ...I noticed that she used lots of details in her writing. ....like the trees had white snow on them. He used information from the text to complete his answer.

Chelsea's answer was sequenced: (Sic) "This is about a child who is taken by her dad to go owling. They went to the woods and her pa thought he heard an owl so he cuffed his hands around his mouth and shouted...Whooooooo... whooooooo....But nothing happened so they walked on and when they got deeper in the forest he called again with his hands cuffed around his mouth, calling Whooo... whooo... Then the owl called Whooo...whooo. The owl sat on a branch. They looked at it for 1, 3, maybe even 100 minutes. They shone a flashlight on the owl and the owl flew off the branch and flew right over their heads. Then they headed home."

We talked about why the retelling was better written. Students reported that they had a better understanding of Owl Moon compared to The Cremation of Sam McGee because they had talked about it first.

Step 3: Relating: How does the story affect me?

Then "Question 2" was introduced: What did you think about the story? This question introduced the idea of Relating. Student were provided with "starters" such as...

I think...
It makes me feel...
I remember...

All these beginnings are part of the Relating process and, although some written answers were brief, they were more correct than when first asked to retell. I believe that the discussion had engendered personal feelings about the poem.

Step 4: Discussion Groups formed

At this point "jobs" were introduced so that organization of discussion could take place. A primary source for this part was Literature Circles by Harvey Daniels. It was especially helpful. He carefully outlines a step-by-step- approach to creating discussion through the designation of a reading activity to be completed during and after the discussion. It is a type of discussion preparation that, once the discussion begins on a topic selected by a student, can digress into other interesting ideas and application to the novel they are reading. Daniels advocates a rotation of these jobs as the novel is read. Each students comes to the discussion prepared to present their work. I chose the following "jobs" for each group:

Discussion Director
Literary Luminary
Artful Artist
Word Finder

Briefly, the Discussion Direction is responsible for leading the discussion by preparing up to five questions for the group. The Literary Luminary picks up to three passages from the reading which must be defended as important, surprising, funny, confusing, informative, controversial, well written or thought-provoking in that particular section of the novel. Drawing a detailed picture of a setting and/or character and/or event or prediction in this passage is the job of the Artful Artist. (A caption is important but should be included after the discussion.) The Word Finder lists up to five new, different, strange, funny, interesting hard or important words within this part of the novel and is prepared to defend their choice. There are other jobs described in detail by Daniels, but these were the ones which would focus on discussion relevant to Retell, Relate and Reflect. Each student recorded their "job' in their Literature Study notebooks.

Step 5: Poetry: Small Group Discussion: JOBS

The student needed to practise each "job" worked before applying this skill to a longer novel study, so once again poetry was studied. Six different story poems from various sources were used and each child received a copy.

Before we began we discussed Literature Study etiquette and created a chart for everyday use. The list was also copied into notebooks.

1. Listening
2. Contributing
3. Doing your job; group consequences
4. Positive comments
5. Taking turns; using a signal

At this point good discussion came ahead of good notes in importance for assessment purposes. I designed a tracking sheet for this purpose. It included job list, student name space, date and book title as well as a comment space for discussion and anecdotal notes. During the discussion I viewed notebooks for content and jotted down notes about the discussion. In this way I could assess discussion groups, using this organizational tool as authentic assessment for comprehension.

Step 5B: (not really a step, but an adjustment)

A visit from the Early Literacy Teacher helped the students clarify their understanding of their roles in Literature Circles. Her organizational form was much simpler and more user-friendly and accomplished the same tasks as Daniel's more detailed version. The job descriptions from her reporting form were amalgamated into existing jobs and found to be more "do-able", especially for lower ability readers. I used the jobs of "Questioner, Word Wizard, Passage Picker, Illustrator." The "Questioner" was to "ask five questions about the story. Use the 5 W's." The Word Wizard job was similar to Daniel's Word Finder but she asked them to be able to put the words into a sentence that would retell the whole story. Presenting their passage, after rehearsal was the addition for the "Passage Picker" and an additional way to assess Oral Presentation. The "Illustrator" job remained the same. This is not to say that 's tool was not valuable but it was a more difficult way to begin. Next time, I will use his job descriptions later in the process.

Step 6: Short Stories

The process of discussion and "jobs" and responses was repeated with short stories. The added layer here was the time-line, since they required more time to read than the poems. Each group was given two days to complete the tasks for each story - one for reading and one for conferencing. Later, when working on longer Novel Studies, this ability to read independently and be ready for the conference was the most difficult task and group consequences for incomplete work were enforced.

Several short stories were selected from the Collections series because of they were an appropriate length, difficulty, accessibility and theme. The students completed a four story rotation, so that each student could experience each Job.

Responses were improving. Christine's retelling of Dad and the Cat and the Tree was sequential and including quotations from the text: "A cat got stuck up in a tree and dad said: Just leave it to me. So he got a ladder and fell in the garden. The mother was very upset. So then the dad climbed the tree and landed on the cat and the cat was on the ground, safe. But the dad was still in the tree." As Questioner for "Hungry Mungry", Jamie asked: Did something surprise you that you did not expect? Her answer was detailed: "I thought that it really surprised me because I did not expect him to just eat normal food. I didn't expect him to eat everything, including himself! ... He ate normal food at first, but then he starting eating the buildings, cars, people, kitchen table, his folks, bricks, woods, police, tanks, guns, United States, New York." Her answer uses examples from the story to support her opinion!

I conferenced with three groups over two days and recorded my observation on the tracking sheet. My main focus for assessment was discussion comments.

Step 7: Adding the Culminating Activity

The final step was to add the culminating activity for each short story. The students were provided with a list of fifty follow-up activities for the short story. ( Daniels, Fountas and Pinell)

A rubric was developed with Level 3 requiring the students to present important part(s) of the story in an audible, clear manner, have a neat ( if written ) and/or eye-catching organized presentation which included the title and author's name, completed by the due date. A reporting form for the teacher was based on how the book was "sold" to the audience. In other words, the students had to convey enough understanding of the story to entice the audience to read it, in an appropriate format, that could demonstrate ideas from their conference into an Arts genre. Tyler, Darren, Jake and Dylan wrote their own script for Sir Gawain. Other groups created new endings, posters and Readers Theatre presentations. A very impressive response came from Emily, Kori-Lou, Sam and Steph who wrote, practised and videotaped a newscast. When they showed the video to the class, this presentation was enthusiastically received. I had to ask myself if they would have made such an effort if they had not had a discussion.

Reflections

At this point, the transition to Literature Circles was not too stressful for those students who either found it difficult to read and/or had an aversion to it. I am convinced that the discussion groups facilitated this process. The focus was not on a child's ability to read, as they read in front of the others only to support their role in the group. So as long as they were prepared, their reading ability was not called into question by the others. This was always difficult when organizing Novel Studies, as able readers usually had to take a turn supporting a less-able reader. In Literature Circles those student could read on their own, with a teacher, EA, able reader or parent. In Grade 6 the appearance of ability is very important and is always reflected in self-esteem issues and resulting effort. In addition, a mountain of authentic assessment had been collected in all 3 areas of Language in many areas of literature.

Step 8: Novels

All the learning from the previous steps was incorporated into the study of novels. Jobs were reviewed and a rotation schedule was discussed with students. A discussion occurred over various time-line possibilities; ( ½ day vs. every other day vs. every 2 day conferences.) A variety of time-lines was necessary so that all groups would not conferencing together; this is the teacher's assessment nightmare. The choice of books was reviewed, including a approximate level of difficulty. Students were asked to record their first two choices and the teacher grouped them appropriately. Although Daniels, in his book Literature Circles, allowed the children to choose their own reading group, I felt very strongly that teacher direction was required. Most children did pick novel appropriate to their ability, seeming to know what was too difficult or too easy. Perhaps they knew the teacher would ultimately steer them toward that choice in the end. Each group met and recorded their group's decisions about time-lines and jobs in their Literature Study notebooks. Consequences were decided for lack of preparation, such as "no day" with that time made up during recesses. I continued to support the development of discussion within a group. A tracking sheet similar to that used in short stories and poetry was used to track progress. The responses by the students reflected a better depth of understanding. These are the answers from four different groups.

Question 1: Two topics about which we talked today were:

• we talked about if we were Gilly, if we would steal the money or would I just leave... ( Nate, Kelsey, Rebecca, Lindsey)
• what Nocterna's promise was and did we think it was interesting or not... ( Kori-Lou, Kristen, Lindsey, Brenden)
• How Sam went to McIver's alone at night and how Jennie got stared at by McIver ...(Darren, Sam, Mike, Chris)
• we talked about our cats and dogs, and the cats are in the story and how the journey starts...(Tyler, Jake, Nate, Matt)
• Question 2: As a group, we agreed on one of the most important or interesting passages in this story was about..
• They were trying to figure out what the humans were doing. (Sunwing)
• This is the country over which the three passed and it is in the autumn. They travelled in the days of the Indian summer.(The Incredible Journey)

The discussions were usually on topic. I had dreaded trying to keep the discussions going or at least talking about something related to the story but this rarely happened. These discussions demonstrated who had read the story by the references made to it. You couldn't talk about it if you hadn't read it. As the process became more routine for the students, the focus shifted to the quality of the jobs done which would facilitate the discussion. The depth of the questions was challenged and we moved from simply retelling questions to reflection and relating questions. Jake asked: What would you do if you got your dogs back? (Incredible Journey) Lindsey asked: How would you feel if you had to go live with someone you don't know? (Gilly Hopkins) Christopher asked: How do you think Beth, Sam and Jennie felt about what they saw? (Does Dracula Live in Woodford?)

The oral responses became more complex and the children worked to create even more difficult questions.Wasn't that the purpose of this whole process?

Step 9: Final Analysis (the test)

In addition to day-to-day written responses, but not any more important, comprehension was assessed by using a paper/pencil test. A virtually identical test was administered for the two novel studies completed during third term. In this way the results could be compared. The results were impressive! Ten students improved their evaluation. These students were at every ability level in both reading and writing. When asked to retell the plot in five sentences, Kori-Lou wrote:

Maniac always ran away. That was the plot. He only ran away when something wasn't right. Like when his aunt and uncle got in a fight, he ran away. When Grayson died, he ran away. He even ran away when someone from the East End said: go home; you're not welcomed here! In the end he stopped running.

Kelsey detailed the plot of The Rats of Nimh:

Mrs. Frisby's son, Timothy, got sick. So Mrs. Frisby went on a mission to help him get better and to move their house. So she went out to find Mr. Ages but he told her to go see the owl and the owl told to her to see the rats of NIMH . Before they tried to help her Mrs. Frisby had to put sleeping powder in Dragon's food dish. Then the rats helped her move her house into the lea of the stone.

The written responses had improved. This was my first goal when I began this project. Using Retelling, Relating and Reflecting as the vehicle, all students had built a repertoire of possible responses to help them begin answering questions about their reading. More detailed or logical responses were developing. In addition, as a Grade 6 teacher, who administers the provincial testing in which written responses to reading are crucial to improving test results, Literature Circles seem to be a very good method to help them think and formulate more appropriate answers to text. The target of discussion groups can only be met anecdotally but I saw discussion begin to stretch from 5 min. "jobs" to enthusiastic debates and interesting personal stories. (This could be fodder for integration into the writing process.) Students, when surveyed, overwhelmingly supported Literature Studies as the preferred way to read novel. Some said the discussions made the book easier to understand. They also liked the variety of tasks, although the tracking of this work for evaluation will have to improve! Others liked the independent nature of the reading schedule.

Furthermore, culminating activities were well done: Christine and Cheyanna designed and built a game based on The Cricket in Time Square called "Get Cricket Home" . It was full of details from the story and problems for the players to solve as they moved around the board.

Thomas and Nick appreciated their ideas so much they created "The Great Cricket Train Chase" in which Chester was trying to get home on the train with Tucker. Emily, Kyle, Rebecca and Casey memorized their play about Island of the Blue Dolphins. There were also T.V. Interviews, Game shows and interviews. A very good comprehension of each story was required in every quality presentation.

Conclusions:

Literature Circles were definitely an improvement over Novel Studies for the purposes of my professional goals. As expected, this process was not without its ups and downs. Success in discussion was not always supported by written work in the notebook and some groups quarrelled when a member had not completed their jobs to others' satisfaction. Since this was a learning experience for us all, we would stop and try and figure out solutions and, in this way, we created our own system. Hard data supported Literature Study as a valuable tool that promoted higher level thinking skills and improved understanding Personally, I became more enthusiastic about this process as the students became more excited and involved in their learning. Everyone knew that we were doing better. More importantly, reading could be fun and interesting with Literature Circles. That is the best recommendation I could possibly give.

Step 10: Tomorrow!

This is where the next step has evolved in the on-going learning of the teacher. The new question has become: How do you improve vocabulary, comprehension and the many sub-skills of reading for mid-range and lower-ability readers within the Literature Study framework? Beyond the discussion and retelling, relating and reflecting, there needed to be a "teachable moment" and a more definitive way to access it. So a new goal is set. And the professional reading begins again !

New Reading:

Independent Reading Activites
Susan Finney
ISBN:0-439-90941-7

Literature Circles
Creative Teaching Press
ISBN:1-57471-790-1

Professional Resources:

Guided Comprehension: A Teaching Model for Grades 3 - 8
Maureen McLaughlin & Mary Beth Allen
ISBN: 0-87207-172-3

Retelling, Relating, Reflecting: Beyond the 3RS
Susan Schwartz & Maxine Bone
ISBN: 0-7725-2098-4

Literature Circles: Voice and choice in the Student-centred classroom
Harvey Daniels
ISBN: 1-55138-048-X

Guiding Reader and Writers: Grade 3-6 Teaching Comprehension, genre and content literacy
Irene C. Fountas & Gay Su Pinnell
ISBN: 0-325-00310-6