Introducing Literature Circles

As students continue to read "Four Perfect Pebbles," they are learning about the roles involved in effective literature circles. Literature circles are like book clubs where students read the same book and get together on a weekly basis to discuss it. Students read the way people in the real world read a book - highlighting interesting or important events, discussing difficulties in the text, and making connections between the text and the world. Students are learning the five main literature circle roles:

- Passage Master
This person is responsible for finding interesting, important, or difficult passages for the group to review.
- Illustrator
This person summarizes the main events of the text in pictures. The illustrator can also bring in maps, graphs, charts, etc. to help the group understand certain aspects of the text.
- Questioner
This person creates questions for the group to discuss. The questions created might have a definitive answer or they might not.
- Connector
This person creates connections between the text and other texts, the text and him or herself as well as the text and the world at large.
- Word Wizard
This person selects words in the text that are particularly important, interesting, and/or difficult. This person helps build their group's vocabulary through words in the text.