Читать книгу Academic Moves for College and Career Readiness, Grades 6-12 - Jim Burke - Страница 49

Peter, an eleventh grade student, read Gilman’s Herland in a literature circle with four or five fellow students. A key component of the literature circle was the element of choice:

1 Students ranked books that interested them from a short list provided by the teacher. The teacher gave a book talk about each of the books before students made their rankings.

2 Based on their rankings, the teacher placed the students in groups of four or five and assigned them to a book.

3 Groups worked together to compose a reading schedule (within a specified time frame) and a contract that outlined expectations for the group members.

4 On specified class days, the group met, discussed the book so far, generated questions, and took notes (which they also turned in to their teacher).

5 At three unannounced times during the reading unit, the teacher had group members fill out anonymous evaluations of group members and self-evaluations, which were used as part of the assessment for the reading project.

6 Toward the end of their reading, each student presented a possible essay topic to the group. The group discussed the topics; then, each person in the group chose one of the topics to respond to.The topic Peter chose was not the one he invented, nor one others in his group chose to address, but he liked the idea: Compare and contrast the male and female characters in the novel. Peter decided he could structure a strong essay with two layers of comparison and contrast, making connections not just between the two genders but between the characters within each gender, as well.

Here is an excerpt from Peter’s paper: