And don't forget to enter the BIG giveaway at the end of this post! It's the last of my 12 Days of Teaching with Rachel! And you can win $50 in TpT product!
This is part two of introducing literature circles. You can read about
part 1 here.
On my first post I talked about how I told the kids about literature circles, picked our books and decided how we would read.
The next step in getting our literature circles rolling along was learning about each job! I am using resources from all over the place and I will change my jobs as the year goes on - but, for now here are our jobs and the resources. (the names are from Amanda Nickerson's Lit. Circle Unit).
So, in all - we have a total of 5 jobs since we have a total of 5 students in most groups.
I introduced one job a day, in this order:
1. Doodle Technician
2. Bridge Builder (Text Connections)
3. Summarizer
4. Discussion Leader
5. Word Whiz
I did not just tell the kids WHAT the jobs was and said, "okay - good luck!" We did the job together.
This is how my little lessons went: I introduced the job - read a chapter and then passed out the job sheets to all students. We completed the job together. It was the perfect way for my to set the expectation for the job and for students to ask questions.
Each time I introduced a job, the students and I added information to a poster that they could use to help them complete their job to the best of their ability.
The posters aren't anything fancy since I am always in a crunch this year, but they work. The posters are the students words exactly with a little guidance.
The pretty posters are from Amanda's store. I taped the white posters under her posters just to give a little more guidance of what I expect of them.
Also, by the bridge builder you'll see I added onto it. At this job students need to make 3 types of connections. Once, they do so I am asking them to tell me what happened in the text to make them make that connection. We are really working on providing evidence to everything we do!
Here is student work samples. I can't tell how helpful it was to take this process slow and bit by bit. I introduced one job a day - then, all students worked on the same job on the same book (my read-aloud). We came back and then had discussions on how to make it even better!
Each day that we worked on a job, we also worked on reading with our groups.
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Now, where do I keep this stuff? I'll be the first to say... I can't organize anything, ever to save my life. Like... it's a real problem. I am that person that would lose their head if it weren't attached! (scatterbrain!) Now-that I've said that... I am pretty proud of myself right now... it's organize and it 'ain't movin'!!
I put the job title on the outside of my drawers. I got these at Big Lots this summer for a whopping $25!! Yes, they're labeled with sticky notes and it'll probably stay that way this year. At the end of each week, I check the copies in the drawer - if I'm running low, I put more in there. I keep about 35 in each drawer at a time.
That is all for today - I could keep going, but you know... this post is long enough.
Please, let me know if you have any questions about this portion. I'd be happy to answer them!
