Literature Circles: The Formula to Create Life-long Readers
by: Kellie Dimmette
Abstract
Through action research I studied my own teaching strategies to determine if literature circles would improve students’ attitudes toward reading. From previous experience I realized that most students in classrooms today are not motivated to read. In this action research project I observed literature circles in a 4th grade classroom. I chose one literature circle group of five students as the focus of my study. Throughout the study I conducted interviews; had students complete: reading interest inventories, literature circle evaluations and journals; and collected work samples. My goal is to determine what strategies incorporated into literature circles make reading enjoyable for students, and encourage them to become life long readers. I found teacher modeling of how to conduct literature circles and specific instructions given to students prior to meeting in literature circle groups is crucial for students to conduct groups successfully. The use of literature circles increases communication skills and oral listening skills. Student choice in the type of books they read and the activities they complete for reading class is appealing to children. Literature circles incorporate differentiated instruction, andstudents enjoy conversing with peers, which exposes them to different points of view and helps them make real world connections.
Introduction:
Imagine…It is 10:40 a.m., the time has finally arrived! This is my favorite part of the day…it is time for literature circles. In science, our class has been studying animals and adaptations, and I chose to read the book Big and Small. Our group is about half way through the book and I am so excited about sharing what I have read. I marked some places that I don’t quite understand so hopefully my group will be able to help me. I also have come up with some questions about these animals that I can discuss in my group. This is my first year in school that my teacher has used literature circles, and I have become enthusiastic and energized about reading. It is fun reading the book and talking in my group, but I always look forward to the activity that we do at the end of our literature circle meetings too. Sometimes we get to choose a project to complete, such as a diorama. The last time our class completed the books, each group got to put together a play and then perform it. This is definitely my favorite part of the day.
This is the type of feedback that the majority of teachers would love to hear from a student. When I began this project I knew immediately that I wanted my topic to be about reading. Throughout my teaching experience I have noticed that most of my students do not get excited about reading. Trying to motivate students to read and really appreciate literature has been a challenge for me, and an area that I would like to improve. Most of my students only read what was required of them, and once they read the book it was pushed aside and never discussed with anyone. The majority of my students never talked to me about a good book they were reading or had read, and they certainly did not discuss literature with their peers.
I first read and became familiar with literature circles during my sophomore year in my undergraduate study at Appalachian State University. My class had the assignment to read the book Educating Esme. This was a story about a teachers first year teaching and some horrible experiences she encountered. Despite her hardships, she came up with wonderful ideas that made her classroom an awesome experience for her students.
In my class, we formed our own literature circle groups and were given a list of jobs that consisted of: discussion director, literary luminary, vocabulary enricher, and illustrator. Our task was for our group to decide how much we were going to read for the next class, and each person had to complete one of the jobs to present to the group at our next class meeting. We were told when the book had to be completed, but other than that we were on our own to pace and move ourselves through the book. At the beginning of each class we got into literature circle groups and shared our jobs. This was a unique experience for me, and a time that I always looked forward to. During each meeting group members brought up ideas and issues that I had never considered. It was also interesting how we shared our own personal experiences during our elementary school days and things we had seen in classrooms. Once the book was finished and each person had an opportunity to have each job, each individual was responsible for putting together their work into a portfolio to turn in for a grade. This gave the teacher an opportunity to evaluate what we had learned.
Literature circles can be conducted in many different forms depending on the age level of the students, and the instruction on which the teacher wants to focus the students’ attention. More research has been conducted since I had my literature circle experience in college. The most important criteria for literature circles to be successful is for students to have choices (Daniels, 1994). Students should get to choose the books they want to read after the teacher gives a brief booktalk about the selection the students get to choose from. Then students decide in their groups how much they need to read and be prepared to discuss in the next literature circle meeting. Literature circles are very much student-led. The teacher’s role is to prepare the materials, observe, offer input, and create engagement activities for the entire class to integrate the material (Samway, 1991).
Action research has provided me with the ability to study my teaching practices to determine if I can motivate students to read. It is my belief that the activities and lessons that the teacher plans have an impact on all students. It is my responsibility to model to my students how to communicate using literature. It is my concern that if students do not enjoy reading at a young age they will not become life-long readers. Reading is such an important aspect that students will use throughout life: socially and in the work place. “Literature circles allow children to apply their natural socializing tendencies in a productive manner, making learning meaningful and hopefully internalized for additional future learning” (Pitman, 1997; Pg. 1). I do not want my students to just be able to read, I want them to connect the ideas and themes they read about to previous subjects, learning, or world events. Students need to learn how to talk about what they have read with a group of people; not only to express their ideas, but also to receive others opinions.
Research Questions:
My goal in this action research project is for students to become life-long readers and have an internal desire to read, but there are many aspects of reading that is significant to decide how this can be accomplished. I believe that the teacher is a critical role-model and facilitator to motivate students to read, and have a positive attitude toward reading. Literature circles provide a structure that I would like to implement to determine how it affects students. With this knowledge, my focus question is as follows.
Focus Question:
How does the use of literature circles improve students’ attitudes toward reading?
In addition I would also like to know how other elements that make up literature circles will affect students’ attitudes and if they make literature circles more valuable. To determine this I have decided to focus on three additional questions.
Sub-Questions:
- What is the teacher’s role in conducting productive literature circles in the classroom?
2. How does the use of reciprocal teaching and engagement strategies increase student responses to literature?
Reciprocal teaching occurs when students learn how to predict, clarify information read, and summarize their reading. Engagement strategies are any activities that are used in conjunction with the books students are reading for literature circles (Samway, 1991; Long & Gove, 2003-2004).
3. How does the use of literature circles allow students, especially ESL students, to be more involved in literature in order in increase their reading skills?
According to the ESL Policy Framework, ESL is defined as students whose primary language(s) of the home is other than English, and who may require additional services in order to develop to his or her fullest potential (2005)..
Theoretical Framework:
Through my teaching experiences I have learned that I need to change my strategies on how I teach reading. I want to find out by studying myself how I can motivate students to read and be life-long readers. Action research gives a teacher the ability to study her problems scientifically in order to come up with decisions on how they will change or modify their actions about their teaching and how their students learn (McNiff, Lomax, & Whitehead, 2003). The researcher must be inside the research to determine if the actions he or she is taking are effective and beneficial for the classroom. As McNiff advises, “Action researchers aim to develop educative relationships to enable all participants to learn and grow” (McNiff et al., 2003; Pg. 19). Not only do I want my students to benefit from this project, it is important that I learn also.
As I outlined my project and began to focus on my goal, I began thinking about how I envision myself as a teacher. In my classroom I feel that students should have voice. I view myself as a “guide on the side,” with students taking responsibility to converse with their peers to learn. I want to have a student-led classroom where I base my lessons around what the students need and how they will learn best. “When compelling issues feel “authentic” to children, we believe they become vital to them” (Long et al., 2003-2004; Pg. 358).
To examine and conduct this research I have chosen the constructivism framework. Constructivism asserts that every person has their own beliefs and each person interprets the world that they are engaging in (Patton, 2002). An important part of my study is the interaction between students in literature circles.
In my classroom, the environment isset for students to understand why they are learning the material being taught, and how they will use their education in the real world and in the future. Students have the opportunity to work in groups and interact with their classmates. This challenges students to listen to others’ opinions, and allows students to learn from their peers. In the literature circle experience students will converse with their peers so they will be exposed to others’ views of the books based on the personal experience and knowledge of each student in the group. Every student in the group will be reading the same book, but their views will be very different, which makes the quality of literature circles rich. As students adjust to literature circles they will learn to accept others’ point of view and learn that everyone sees things differently. “When we do not allow or provide time in class to talk about books and the thoughts and emotions that they generate, we are denying children and adults opportunities to learn about and understand the world better” (Samway, 1991; Pg. 204). Students will also be asked to judge the quality of work that others bring to literature circles. I believe that each child’s point of view expressed in the group is correct. Each child has their own interpretation of what they believe the author is trying to express through words. Authors of books cannot sit down with every person that reads his or her story and explain their thought process, and what they meant on each page. The ability to read, understand, and make conclusions is part of what reading is about. A classroom of children can read the same story, but have many interpretations of the messages they believe the author was trying to construct. Because I think that it is important for each child to have their own views and can express their own opinions I believe I am a constructivist.
Students must learn that everyone is different and it is the teacher’s role to encourage them to have a basic respect for all people. To achieve this responsibility students must be exposed to controversial issues through teacher-led discussions and debating issues with their peers. In order for students to understand the world they are living in, they must be exposed to world events and develop their own vision for a better world. It is my aim to raise these issues and direct learners to dilemmas that deal with social and world reform. Through literature discussions I belief students will learn from others opinions by being exposed to many points of view from their peers.
It is my goal through action research for me to learn how to expand on the classroom environment I have created to make it more inviting for students to be motivated to read and encourage them to be life-long readers. Through research that others have conducted on reading and literature circles, and through careful observation of students and most importantly myself I believe that I can accomplish this goal.
Literature Review
In looking at the research pertaining to literature circles, I learned some new material about how children are motivated to read. I learned that most children gain an understanding of a story and become more aware of other peers’ viewpoints by engaging in meaningful conversations in small literature groups (Samway, 1991). My goal is to improve students’ reading attitudes because I have observed through teaching experiences that many students do not get excited about reading.
Research has been completed finding that as students move from the primary grades to the intermediate grades their attitudes change about reading (Parker & Paradis, 1986). As students get older reading becomes more difficult and this causes students’ anxiety to rise (Parker et al., 1986; Pitman, 1997). In my project I would like to see this trend change by using literature circles to give students an opportunity to engage socially about literature and to learn from their peers. Students show more enthusiasm and are being taught skills to become life-long readers by experiencing literature circles (Samway, 1991; Pitman, 1997).
In order for students to be successful in literature circles the teacher has a responsibility to train the students on techniques for conducting their groups. The teacher has the task to form and organize the literature circle groups. The teacher must have a balance between the use of fiction and nonfiction books for students to read, and he or she must make the selection carefully. Once the books are chosen, in order to give students a background about the books the teacher must prepare a short booktalk about each selection. Then students are ready to choose books and the teacher can form groups (Samway, 1991). Once this is completed the students are ready to experience literature circles (Samway, 1991; Stien & Beed, 2004; Hill, Johnson, & Schlick Noe, 1995).
Teachers have found that students get the most from a piece of literature if reciprocal teaching is used along with literature circles (Samway, 1991). When students learn how to predict, generate questions, clarify information read, and summarize their reading by teacher modeling they are able to transfer this learning into literature conversations (Hashey & Conneos, 2003; Hill et al., 1995; Daniels, 1994). Literature circles are based around a central theme, so each group may be reading different books, but the books will all be on the same subject-matter. In the literature circles I conduct, I plan to model reciprocal teaching procedures to students, and guide them to use them in their literature circle conversations. This research has found that by incorporating reciprocal teaching into literature circles makes learning more meaningful. I also think it is important because it correlates with the North Carolina objectives for reading instruction. Students must know how to use the reciprocal teaching strategies to answer test questions, therefore having the exposure during literature circles will be beneficial for students in my class.
To help students make connections outside the literature circle experience engagement strategies can be used with the entire class. The teacher must plan the follow up activity based on his or her observations of each group’s dialogue during literature discussions. It was found that students were not involved in meaningful conversations without the teacher modeling and higher order thinking reinforced in large group instruction (Hashey et al., 2003; Long et al., 2003-2004). The use of reciprocal teaching and engagement strategies is also a good way for the teacher to assess what the students are learning or have learned about their reading.
Research demonstrates how ESL students benefit from literature circles. Literature circles are one form of differentiated instruction that varies the amount of teacher support, task difficulty, pacing, and opportunities to offer different learning based on students’ readiness and interest. When ESL students are in literature circles it assists them in their English use in a variety of ways that relate to reciprocal teaching, such as predicting, comparing and contrasting ideas, and making generalizations. Although, for these students to be successful in these areas the teacher must plan, model, and offer support for these students, as well as the rest of the class (Hashey et al., 2003). Since literature circles are made up of groups with students of all levels, a group could consist of two ESL students. This arrangement would allow these students to have bilingual conversations and interactions. This strategy could benefit them and the other students in the groups. ESL students should be encouraged to read the books from literature circles repeatedly. This enhances their fluency skills and helps them to become more familiar with the book; which increases their comprehension skills (Heydon, 2003).