Daniels, H. (1994). Literature Circles: Voice and Choice in the Student-Centered Classroom. Markham: Pembroke Publishers Ltd. Ask student volunteers to lead the class in discussion, serving in the role that they have prepared for.

After the chapter has been read, have students re-read the questions on the Discussion Director role sheet and make any revisions. I decided to include The Hate U Give, Dear Martin, and All American Boys. Together they offered a variety of protagonists, story lengths, and Lexile levels. Hébert, H. (2009). Cercles littéraires et journal de lecture comme éléments d’intervention en didactique de la littérature : étude de cas d’un élève de 8 e année en difficulté. Revue du Nouvel-Ontario, 34, 83-117.

How successfully are children and young people, teachers and parents/carers provided with appropriate information to support their understanding of effective strategies and support for literacy difficulties?

Keegan, S. & Shrake, K. (1991). Literature study groups: An alternative to ability grouping. Reading Teacher (April). Literature circles combine some of the most effective teaching strategies we know of for language development: independent reading, collaborative discussion, and student-centered learning. Lit Circles Encourage Choice

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He will be our plenary speaker for the online BELTA Day 2021 on 20 March 2021 but in the meantime here's an interview with him, which first appeared in the BELTA Bulletin, issue 10, Spring 2017. Students struggle to stay on-task in small groups or give one-word answers to discussion questions. Maybe some students aren’t as involved in the conversation as others. During the five months of working on academic texts with a group of teachers in my MA and monitoring several sets of ARCs in one of my Young Adult IELTS courses, this book has been an incredibly inspirational manual. With precision and attention to every significant detail, Academic Reading Circles manages to not only present a structured and solid approach to reading challenging texts, but also to cultivate and sustain high levels of motivation.

If you’re planning a unit that will take a whole quarter (nine weeks of instruction time), aim for about five weeks of reading. This will give you one week to introduce the literature circles and for students to choose their novels and two weeks to wrap up the unit and complete final assessments. Ensure that all students are able to access their texts in a manner that suits their learning needs, whether it is using a hard copy of a book, using a screen reader, or listening to the audiobook (whether this is created by the teacher themselves or is commercially available). Harste, J., Short, K. and Burke, C. (1988). Creating Classrooms for Authors: The Reading-Writing Connection. Portsmouth: Heinemann. Demonstrating the Literary Luminary Role, pause during the reading, as appropriate, to add details to the Literary Luminary role sheet; or complete the Literary Luminary role sheet after the reading is complete. Included within the Route Map for Dyslexia and Inclusive Practice, these resources will support practitioners develop a deeper learning and understanding of the acquisition of reading and writing skills.give students choice in how they will demonstrate their learning by providing them with a list of acceptable assessment activities (p. 26-27) Demonstrating the Vocabulary Enricher Role, pause during the reading, as appropriate, to add details to the Vocabulary Enricher role sheet; or complete the Vocabulary Enricher role sheet after the reading is complete. Discussion director, whose job was to keep the group on task, help the group understand the reading, ask good detail questions as well as general questions, listen intently to the group members and respond to ideas, and make sure everyone participates. Another productive skills possibility could include preparing a presentation about the ARC text and/or leading a discussion about it with the class. If we simply focus on using the text itself beyond the scope of ARC, I often incorporate it into other language lessons, like examining the author’s use of grammatical structures, chunks of language by frequency as shown in corpora, or techniques such as hedging. These lessons are what I refer to as existing inside a syllabus where ARC supplements. P: And what are the results of using ARC? How is it beneficial to the students? What improvements have you noticed? T: I know of several research projects in different universities currently being conducted on the various affordances resulting from ARC use in academic programs, not the least of which is one I am organising on my own groups for next year. In each, I’ve heard mostly about the positive qualitative data from both instructors and students on their experiences so far. I’m excited to learn more about all their findings in the coming months and years. So how can educators encourage natural discussion and enthusiasm for books in the classroom while also ensuring students understand what they’re reading and continue to grow as readers? Why Literature Circles?