Today's guest blogger shares a summary
of an article she read recently.
Batchelor,
K. (2012). The "us" in discuss: Grouping in literature circles. Voices
from the Middle, 20(2),
27-34.
Batchelor’s
article details her own literature circle strategies as a beginning point for
both veteran and pre-service teachers who may lack experience with literature
circle creation and implementation in a classroom. Batchelor, who attempted
literature circles in her first year teaching, understands the struggles that
are caused by broad inexperience and attempts to offer a brief overview of her
own successful implementation. This article reads like a brief instruction
manual, and is therefore salient to several different types of classrooms,
students, and teachers. Batchelor’s final thoughts on the subject praise the
amount of motivation, community, and interest that literature circles create in
a classroom.
I have recently become interested in literature circles
through my practicum experience. The students were placed into groups based on
text choice, a practice that Batchelor also uses. Unfortunately, I think that
my clinical faculty member has missed the mark thus far on what she could gain from
using literature circles in her seventh grade classroom. The primary purpose of
their groupings, it seems, is to monitor each other’s progress and to meet briefly
in order to discuss the answers to literature worksheets. Batchelor’s article
not only provides group formation, discussion, and evaluation strategies, but
also includes anecdotal experiences that showcase the beneficial social nature
of literature circles. A particularly crucial gain of literature circles is
groupings of mixed-ability students and motivation to stretch their thinking
and participate in student-led dialogue about literature. A significant part of
my own teaching philosophy is the formation of a classroom community, and I
feel that literature circles are a worthwhile strategy that pre-service
teachers receive very little instruction on.
