Literature Circles

This paper analyzed three middle grade novels and a short story from two cultures using the journey motif as the vehicle for the analysis. The three novels are Bud Not Buddy and The Watsons Go to Birmingham both by Paul Curtis (1995, 1999) and Journey to Jo'burg by Naidoo (1985). The short story is My Two Dads by Lee (2000). The three novels and a short story were chosen because these novels are on the reading list for students in many school districts in the USA at the middle grade level. The analysis showed that for the three novels and a short story in the study, each text adhered to some elements/ parts of the journey motif. The paper then suggested 10 literacy strategies that can be used by English Language Arts teachers to engage learners, make the instructional process more interesting and hopefully improve achievement for all learners.

This article discusses the qualitative portion of a larger mixed method intervention study that examined the effects of literature circles (peer-led small group discussion of an assigned reading) on the reading achievement of college students in developmental courses. An experimental design was used to measure the effectiveness of the researcher-developed intervention, and grounded theory was employed to analyze reading attitude, reading motivation, response to participation in a literature circle, and textual engagement. Thirty-seven college students in required reading courses participated in the five-week study. Quantitative analysis revealed that literature circle participants outperformed their control group counterparts on all measures of comprehension, and qualitative analysis revealed that literature circles increased depth of textual engagement and provided opportunities for discourse, collaboration, and social interaction. These findings, supported by a strong theoretical base, suggest that literature circles would be an effective addition to a post-secondary developmental reading curriculum. " With book reports, I just think too much about it. I can't think of what to say, but when we talk about it [in literature circles] and hear other people's stories, it helps me bring out mine. "

The objectives of this research were: (1) to know the role of Literature Circles in the composition process by looking at the transparencies of the synopsis as the final product; and (2) to find out the participants’ perspectives upon LCs. The instruments were role worksheets and a semi-structured interview. Thirty fourth-semester students majoring English were selected purposively with the rationale that they are considered as voluntary participants. Six meetings of discussion and composition process were done in one month accomplished by five reading circles consisting of six members and six different role worksheets each. Three major findings were obtained. The students found LCs is intriguing to formulate and organize the synopsis. Not only are new vocabularies acquired, but also self-mastery on how to get the writing becomes cohesive and coherent with appropriate word selection could possibly be achieved. One striking insight is the argument that LCs could promote composition process from role-based discussion and joint construction in each meeting. Also, the sense of satisfaction upon the writing seems triggered from a regular and detailed preparation before a discussion is initiated.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of literature circles on the reading achievement of college reading students using a mixed method approach. A literature
circle is defined in this study as students who form a group, read a novel, and meet on a regular basis to discuss what they have read. The researcher-developed intervention included three activities: collaborative oral re-tell, short written response to a prompt, and open discussion. The study employed an experimental design in order to examine the effectiveness of the intervention (literature circles); in addition, the sociocultural context of the college reading classes (and students) is described in detail. Grounded theory was employed to analyze reading attitude, reading motivation, response to participation in a literature circle, and textual engagement. Thirty-eight college students in required reading
courses participated in the five-week study. Students were randomly assigned to either the treatment (participation in literature circle) or control (independent reading) condition. Students were able to choose from four pre-selected high-interest young adult novels. At the conclusion of the series of literature circle meetings (or upon completion of reading the novel independently, for control group participants), comprehension was measured using three measures: an oral re-tell of the novel, a twenty question researcher developed
open-ended book-specific assessment, and a twenty question assessment on a two-part high school level passage from the Qualitative Reading Inventory (Leslie & Caldwell, 2011). Textual engagement was measured by coding and counting responses to a semi-structured interview. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed a significant main effect for group assignment, meaning that—when all four measures were combined into a linear function—the students assigned to literature circles outperformed the control group students. Given the significance of the overall test, the univariate main
effects were examined. Significant univariate main effects were obtained for the researcher developed test and textual engagement. Qualitative analysis revealed that literature circles improve reading comprehension, depth of textual engagement, and provides an opportunity for discourse, collaboration, and social interaction for its participants. These findings suggest that literature circles lead to both improved
comprehension and deeper textual engagement for college reading students.

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This paper explores how literature circles were introduced in the EFL lessons of a group of 3rd year ESO students.  Literature circles are school book clubs in which the students form small groups in order to discuss a text. They were first used in American Elementary Schools to promote literacy in the 1980s, but soon they began to be introduced in ESL and EFL teaching. In order to analyze the students’ responses to the activity, data was collected from classroom observation, the students’ written tasks, and a questionnaire designed for that purpose. According to the results, on the whole, the students responded positively to the activity. Nevertheless, aspects like the process of selection of reading materials and the students’ overuse of their mother tongue require further revision.

Drawing on and reexamining theories on gender and literacy, derived from research performed between 1974 and 2002, this qualitative study explored tbe gender assumptions and expectations of Language Arts teachers in a graduate level adolescent literature course at a university in tbe Midwestern United States. Tbe tbeoretical framework vi^as structured around a social constructionist lens, including reader response and gender theories. The methodology employed ethnographic methods, as well as critical discourse analysis.

The article proposes a typology of literary associations in the Silver Age, based on three formal (functional) criteria: degree of socialization, degree of formalization and degree of officialization. The result is a tripartite typology of literary associations: salons, circles and societies. Additionally, the article discusses also adjacent forms of literary community describable with the application of the indicated typological criteria: literary banquets (dinners), writers jubilees, death anniversaries, and public funerals of writers.

Critical literature circles (CLCs) have received considerable attention for the development of critical thinking as a form of higher-order thinking (HOTS) skill in EFL classrooms. Previous research reports the importance of small group discussions and role-based assignments different from the common reading groups. However, critical thinking seems elevated mainly by the reading texts about controversial intercultural issues. Thus, this classroom-based research aims to examine the role of CLCs in elevating (and vice versa) 30 (20 males, 10 females) Indonesian college EFL students' critical thinking skills when dealing with daily cultural and non-controversial topics. The CLCs were implemented six times entailing three cyclical stages, i.e. role sheets preparation, role-driven group discussion, and group reflection. The constant comparative analysis of the students' role sheets using the revised Bloom's Taxonomy, classroom observation results, and focused-group reflection demonstrated that the occurrence of HOTS (N=221) in the form of critical thinking outnumbered that of LOTS (N=71). Furthermore, the manifestation of critical thinking exemplified the dominance of analytical and evaluative cognitive processes within four identified roles, i.e. Discussion Director, Connector, Culture Tracer, and Summarizer. Contrastingly, several students still preferred to project LOTS due to teacher's inconsistent critical engagement strategies during the group discussion session. This study concludes with the intertwined support of role sheets, role-driven discussions, and critical classroom reflections in elevating the students' critical thinking. A further call to explore the effects of teacher's critical engagement strategies on the maintenance of the students' critical thinking skills is worth-taking for future research.

Purpose: This paper explores alternative literacy instruction with incarcerated youth, adds to the body of existing literature documenting the literacy of those incarcerated, and investigates the construction of book clubs through a critical lens. Design/methodology/approach: This qualitative case study answered the following research questions: (1) What can a critical book club reveal about the literacy lives of these incarcerated youth? (2) What can we learn from incarcerated youth through a critical book club? Data was collected through participant observation and in-depth interviews and analyzed using a critical literacy framework. Findings: Findings indicate students used text connections to critically reflect on selves and schools. They questioned issues of power, particularly the power of literacy in their own lives as well as the power of schools, teachers, and curriculum. The paper concludes with the authors’ critical reflection on both the findings and process which results in implications for future book clubs in settings with incarcerated youth. Originality/value: The need for expanded literacy instruction in juvenile detention centers has been widely documented and supported; however, conventional methods of teaching literacy are not always successful for youth who may not have had positive experiences with traditional schooling. This study expands and explores literacy instruction with incarcerated youth through book clubs, an alternative literacy structure which challenges traditional curricula, pedagogical practices, and culturally irrelevant texts which often contribute to the alienation and disempowerment of many students. Book clubs can facilitate new understandings through a critical lens.

This article describes a mixed-methods study that examines the effects of literature circles (peer-led small group discussion of an assigned reading) on the reading achievement of college students taking developmental reading courses. The researcher-developed intervention was comprised of three connected activities (collaborative oral re-tell, short written response, and open discussion). Quantitative methods were used to measure the effectiveness of the intervention, and qualitative methods were used to analyze reading attitude/motivation and textual engagement. Thirty-eight college students in required reading courses participated in the five-week study, randomly assigned to either the treatment (participation in literature circle) or control (independent reading) condition. Comprehension was assessed through an oral re-tell of the novel, a researcher-developed book-specific assessment, and a pre-existing assessment on an unfamiliar passage. Quantitative analysis, which is the focus of this article, revealed that the students assigned to literature circles outperformed the control group students (significant main effect). While the qualitative findings are not discussed herein, analysis revealed that literature circles not only improve reading comprehension and depth of textual engagement but also provide an opportunity for discourse, collaboration, and social interaction. These findings suggest that literature circles would be an effective addition to a postsecondary developmental reading curriculum.

KEYWORDS: developmental studies, integrated reading-writing instruction, intervention study, literature circles/book club/literature discussion, mixed method, postsecondary/college/university, reader response, reading comprehension, textual engagement

As a science teacher, I regularly use outside reading assignments (e.g., news articles) to help develop my students’ understanding of topics addressed in my anatomy class. However, I have found that in simply reading texts, students often fail to (1) understand the context of the science discussed, (2) make the connections between ideas represented in the reading and those presented in class, and (3) appreciate the science that is being discussed. To better support my students’ reading, I needed to structure their reading to direct them toward key ideas and prompt them to process the information deeply, to make connections between their readings and the concepts learned in class, and to understand the science content in context. To address these needs, and to help increase my students’ science comprehension and encourage their thinking while reading, I turned to a language arts strategy called Literature Circles. Here, I describe my use of this successful strategy and provide resources to support other teachers who want to employ outside readings and/or Literature Circles in their own teaching.

The “fascination with geometric forms,” Miranda B. Hickman observes, “provided many modern writers with a language through which to imagine and articulate their ideals”. This paper investigates Wallace Stevens’ reworking of W. B. Yeats’s high modernist circle, arguing that both men’s use of the circle as a recurring poetic image should be read together as reflecting their opposing political ideologies. I examine Yeats’s “The Second Coming,” “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen” and A Vision, and Stevens’ “Connoisseur of Chaos,” “The Sail of Ulysses,” “The Man with the Blue Guitar,” and “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction”; the selection of poems has been made on the basis that these contain some of the most famous circle imagery within Yeats’s and Stevens’ work.

Circle-square crop configurations in the Texas Panhandle (images courtesy of Google Earth). Scholars during the Medieval Period believed that there was something "divine" or "perfect" about the circle. The farmers of today in the Texas Panhandle believe in the practicality and efficiency of the circle via the utilization of center pivot irrigation of their crops.

This study aimed to determine the perceptions of teacher candidates and to use the literature circles method to help them to develop a positive attitude towards the profession. Given that the study of literature circles in the national literature is only for a specific area, this study is the first study in which the literature circles are used for a different purpose. The research was carried out with eight teacher candidates who were studying in two different undergraduate programs of a public university in the spring term of the 2018-2019 academic year. Participants were selected by using convenience sampling and purposeful sampling methods. In the study, which was formed by selecting the case study from qualitative research designs, data were analyzed by the content analysis method. Findings from the books and sessions performed within the literature circles show that the process has a positive effect on the teacher candidates' perspectives.

English educators at all levels have endeavored to understand difference in their classrooms both in terms of the content that they teach and in terms of the social and cultural identities of students in their classrooms. However, although educators have come a long way in understanding identity as it is constituted by race and gender, much work is needed for social class identity to be understood with nuance and complexity. This article explores the salience of class identity as it affects one aspect of learning in the English classroom-literary interpretation. Specifically, this article draws on data from a six-week literature circle unit in which four white, socioeconomically diverse students discussed Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina. By examining and uncovering the students' social class identity performances as they influenced both their participation and interpretations in the literature circle, this article sheds light on the significance of social class identity in the English classroom and makes a case for the importance of a more thorough consideration of social class in teaching and research in English education.

This research focuses on teaching for thinking and educating for critical consciousness in third level students through the medium of modern literature. The objective of this research is education as the practice of freedom; a means by which students deal critically with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world, thus becoming what bell hooks refers to as enlightened witnesses (hooks 2000). This research takes a critical constructive action research approach which allowed me to refine my methods and gain further knowledge about my practice whilst enabling students to become more effective critical thinkers and more critically conscious citizens. Action research acknowledges the social character of knowledge and a key conclusion is that modern literature can provide a gateway to a shared understanding, through which students can learn to think critically and become more critically aware. Greene (1988) views literature as a culture’s secular scriptur...

The emphasis on the reading-writing connection in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom is in accordance with the praxis of Cooperative Learning (CL) (Haiyan & Rilong, 2016), which stresses the role of learner-centered reading discussions as a means to promote constructive writing activities. However, literature in the EFL context also highlights that individual participation and accountability are not equally promoted due to the unclear division of learners‟roles in accomplishing the group‟s writing tasks. Such an atmosphere might generate attention exclusiveness on the high-achievers and trigger more anxiety within their counterparts. Therefore, literature circles were employed to mediate the implementation of cooperative writing for learners with writing anxiety. This case study, part of a more extensive study, set out to explore learners‟ perspectives on literature-circles-based cooperative writing. Thirty second-year undergraduate learners at an Indonesia university...

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of literature circles on the reading achievement of college reading students using a mixed method approach. A literature circle is defined in this study as students who form a group, read a novel, and meet on a regular basis to discuss what they have read. The researcher-developed intervention included three activities: collaborative oral re-tell, short written response to a prompt, and open discussion. The study employed an experimental design in order to examine the effectiveness of the intervention (literature circles); in addition, the sociocultural context of the college reading classes (and students) is described in detail. Grounded theory was employed to analyze reading attitude, reading motivation, response to participation in a literature circle, and textual engagement. Thirty-eight college students in required reading courses participated in the five-week study. Students were randomly assigned to either the treatment (participation in literature circle) or control (independent reading) condition. Students were able to choose from four pre-selected high-interest young adult novels. At the conclusion of the series of literature circle meetings (or upon completion of reading the novel independently, for control group participants), comprehension was measured using three measures: an oral re-tell of the novel, a twenty question researcherdeveloped open-ended book-specific assessment, and a twenty question assessment on a two-part high school level passage from the Qualitative Reading Inventory (Leslie & Caldwell, 2011). Textual engagement was measured by coding and counting responses to a semi-structured interview. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed a significant main effect for group assignment, meaning that-when all four measures were v combined into a linear function-the students assigned to literature circles outperformed the control group students. Given the significance of the overall test, the univariate main effects were examined. Significant univariate main effects were obtained for the researcher developed test and textual engagement. Qualitative analysis revealed that literature circles improve reading comprehension, depth of textual engagement, and provides an opportunity for discourse, collaboration, and social interaction for its participants. These findings suggest that literature circles lead to both improved comprehension and deeper textual engagement for college reading students.

The emphasis on the reading-writing connection in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom is in accordance with the praxis of Cooperative Learning (CL) (Haiyan & Rilong, 2016), which stresses the role of learner-centered reading discussions as a means to promote constructive writing activities. However, literature in the EFL context also highlights that individual participation and accountability are not equally promoted due to the unclear division of learners‟roles in accomplishing the group‟s writing tasks. Such an atmosphere might generate attention exclusiveness on the high-achievers and trigger more anxiety within their counterparts. Therefore, literature circles were employed to mediate the implementation of cooperative writing for learners with writing anxiety. This case study, part of a more extensive study, set out to explore learners‟ perspectives on literature-circles-based cooperative writing. Thirty second-year undergraduate learners at an Indonesia university were selected to participate based on questionnaire results about writing anxiety. Of these, half were then selected for in-depth interviews to obtain the learners‟ perceptions about literature-circles-based cooperative writing. The results of inductive thematic analysis, using six elements of cooperative learning as the analysis guideline, revealed that individual accountability and promotive interaction were the most frequently reoccurring elements. The learners also reported on the importance of assigning different roles within the group to the success in their cooperative writing process. Recommendations for future practice related to literature-circles-based cooperative writing are presented.

This was an essay Joshua Caton and I were invited to write for the Ohio Resource Center's magazine Adolescent Literacies in Perspective. In brief, we make an argument based on our teaching experiences for shifting our focus to the social/literacy practices within which technology use is embedded rather than focusing on the transformative affordances of the technology itself. Though this is not a new argument, it is one Josh and I feel we don't read/hear enough in discussions with English teachers about new literacies, digital literacies, and/or 21st century literacies.

As university partners, we collaborated with teachers, administrators, and families at the CFI for five years to gather data about the nature of inquiry-based learning. We found that inquiry was central to the curriculum, but it also pervaded classroom life in ways that were more ...

This study aimed to examine the effect of literature circles on fourth grade primary students’ reading habits and comprehension skills and collected the opinions of students and teachers about the method. In this study, quantitative
(pre-test and post-test designs) and qualitative (case study) methods were employed together. The study was conducted on 72 students in the fourth grade of a private school in Istanbul. The data were collected through focus group interviews conducted with teachers and students using “Semi-structured interview forms” and a “reading comprehension scale”. The reading comprehension scale was administered as pre-test and post-test. A dependent group’s t test was employed for the analysis of the scale scores, and a structured reporting
technique was used for the analysis of interview data. The findings of the study showed that the literature circles method improved the reading comprehension skills of students who had low level reading comprehension.
It was also found out that students liked reading books by performing different tasks, discussing and cooperating
with their friends over a period of time. Students stated that they remembered the book they had read with all the details even two weeks later. The book presentation projects were found beneficial by the students who had prepared them and their audience.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of literature circles on the reading achievement of college reading students using a mixed method approach. A literature circle is defined in this study as students who form a group, read a novel, and meet on a regular basis to discuss what they have read. The researcher-developed intervention included three activities: collaborative oral re-tell, short written response to a prompt, and open discussion. The study employed an experimental design in order to examine the effectiveness of the intervention (literature circles); in addition, the sociocultural context of the college reading classes (and students) is described in detail. Grounded theory was employed to analyze reading attitude, reading motivation, response to participation in a literature circle, and textual engagement. Thirty-eight college students in required reading courses participated in the five-week study. Students were randomly assigned to either the treatment (participation in literature circle) or control (independent reading) condition. Students were able to choose from four pre-selected high-interest young adult novels. At the conclusion of the series of literature circle meetings (or upon completion of reading the novel independently, for control group participants), comprehension was measured using three measures: an oral re-tell of the novel, a twenty question researcher developed open-ended book-specific assessment, and a twenty question assessment on a two-part high school level passage from the Qualitative Reading Inventory (Leslie & Caldwell, 2011). Textual engagement was measured by coding and counting responses to a semi-structured interview. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed a significant main effect for group assignment, meaning that—when all four measures were combined into a linear function—the students assigned to literature circles outperformed the control group students. Given the significance of the overall test, the univariate main effects were examined. Significant univariate main effects were obtained for the researcher developed test and textual engagement. Qualitative analysis revealed that literature circles improve reading comprehension, depth of textual engagement, and provides an opportunity for discourse, collaboration, and social interaction for its participants. These findings suggest that literature circles lead to both improved comprehension and deeper textual engagement for college reading students.