Literature circles, also known as book clubs, are a fantastic way to teach elementary readers. Why do literature circles in the elementary classroom? They teach students to work collaboratively, time management, and to look deeper at the words in a book. When I taught fourth grade I didn’t start off the school year with literature circles. I wanted to set and establish routines and expectations for my students. We began with our basal reader and throughout the year would go back and forth between the two.
Once my students understood the classroom expectations and got the hang of the basal I would begin literature circles. We would read the entire novel as a class and complete the meetings as a whole class in the beginning. Once they mastered this I would meet with groups of students during our reading time. It was a process to get students to do literature circles in my classroom because I wanted to ensure that the students understood the responsibility and expectations.
How do I get literature circle books?
This was challenging my first year teaching, especially when buying a whole class set! I didn’t want to spend a ton of money on a set of nearly 30 books, but knew that this was something worthwhile for my students. I scoured eBay and Amazon for cheap books, searched yard sales, and library sales. However, I got most of my literature circle books from the Scholastic Book Clubs dollar deals. They have great books and the price of $1 can’t be beat! These books were reused year after year in my classroom.
How do you store all those books?
I was fortunate enough to have a storage closet outside my classroom that the fourth grade team shared. I bought small baskets at the dollar store and organized each set of books within the baskets. It was easy when I grabbed books for literature circle; I could grab a few baskets without a problem. I like to be organized, so I created a spreadsheet with all the titles and number of each book we had and created labels for each basket. The spreadsheet went on the inside of the closet door. I also used small stickers to number each book so that students were able to easily identify theirs.
What does a literature circle meeting look like?
My literature circle groups meet two times a week. I would meet with certain groups Monday/Wednesday and the remaining groups Tuesday/Thursday. Before we began literature circles the students would record their top three choices on book ballots. This is how I placed the students into groups. Once the groups were ready we would fill out the pacing chart. This allows the students to see each assignment for the book. My Literature circles had six jobs to complete while reading the book.
Jobs:
- Summarizer
- Word Wizard
- Illustrator
- Connector
- Question Conductor
- Passage Master
If you’d like to purchase my literature circle roles click the picture below to be taken to this product.
Each meeting the students would come prepared with the pages for that meeting read and the job completed. We would discuss what happened in the book and share our jobs. I was so excited with the wonderful conversations about books that took place daily!
Here is a short video of what is contained in my literature circle packets that each student gets.
I also created management cards for the groups that I wasn’t meeting with at the time. These cards helped to keep the students focused. (click the picture to see more about this product)
Want more on literature circles? Check out this blog post! Do you use literature circles in the elementary classroom? If you have any tips to share leave them in the comments!