Using Literature Circles with Michelle Kindt

After reading Carrie Toth's blog post about what she did with independent novel reading this year, I was interested to see how Michelle makes it work in her French classroom.  First off, you want to make sure that you use this with upper grades who can handle reading on their own.  They need lots of practice reading with you before you let them loose.

The original lit circle idea is that students break into groups of about 4 and every person is given a role.  What Michelle did with this idea was to help us, as teachers, keep track of multiple groups to keep them on task.  She starts with four jobs: vocabulary curator (chooses a short list of vocabulary needed to understand the story or useful in other situations), discussion question generator, summarizer, and culture connector (makes connections to our culture or things they know about other cultures).

Students read together for about 20 minutes a day and switch roles every day.  When there are 5-7 minutes left, allow students to get technology out and record their vocabulary, summary, questions, and culture connection, color-coding who adds what.  While students are reading in groups, Michelle leads a discussion with a group, using their discussion questions and adding her own (thus modeling a good discussion question).

After class, Michelle looks at the google docs and makes comments about which vocabulary they chose, sometimes correcting errors, or making a discussion.

If the students get behind, Michelle might work with that group to help them catch up.  If one group gets done early, she might give them suggestions of ways to spice up their google doc (adding pictures or doing a little research to add background knowledge to the story).  Students were also tasked with faking a Twitter or Instagram feed to re-tell the story from a character's perspective.

The coolest thing is that Michelle used the common thread of the novels she chose (all took place in French-speaking countries with rainforests) to create a unit on the rain forests.  Students read articles, debated, wrote emails, and studied geography and culture.

Good stuff!