Tina Buott and Audrey Davison
Welcome to our website on Creating Performance out of Literature Circles.
We started developing this idea because we were looking for something to 'jump start' literary discussion in our classrooms. We were finding that our grade 7, 8, and 9 students were tired of the traditional model of literature circles, which have a meaningful place in teaching students how to talk about books, but were no longer effectively challenging our confident readers. In order to engage students' interest, we had to start thinking outside the box.
This website outlines two ways to include performance as part of the literature circle. The first is the creation of a Reader's Theatre script based on the reading material, composed, rehearsed, and presented entirely by students. The second focuses the literature circle on autobiographical or biographical sources and culminates with an independent student monologue delivered in character as the famous person.
As with all invested educators, our thinking about learning, our methods of teaching, and our means of assessment are constantly under construction. The same is true of these units and this website! We encourage you to take ownership of any and all parts of what you will find here, warping and changing our ideas to best suit the needs of your students, just as we have done with other teachers' work to get to this point.
Finally, a sincere thank you for all you do as an educator. We don't hear those words nearly enough.