Day 137: Literature Circles
I've always wanted to try Literature Circles in my English classes, and this year I finally got to test them out. I used this resource I found online as my guide, although I think I will tweak for next year.
I strongly believe that the best way to encourage kids to enjoy reading is by giving them more control over what they read. I attended a really great professional development session last fall where a few of our middle school teachers discussed YA literature and the greatest difficulty for secondary English teachers - appealing to the boys. So much of YA literature is geared towards girls, since they read at higher rates. I wanted to find enough choices for literature circles to encourage my more reluctant readers to get excited. I am hampered in my quest, however, by the availability of books in our English department book room. Since I was also sharing books with the other junior English teacher, we had to find enough books to offer a variety to our nearly 200 students, as well as make sure we chose books that we were already familiar with (students are unimpressed when I assign them something I haven't also read). I gave each class the options and let them list their preferences, then assigned them novels and groups based on that. Most students got their first choice. The following is the list of books I selected and my rationale for choosing them, as well as the reception of the students.
Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley
This dystopian text is a fascinating read, as it involves the scientific-minded British Huxley's vision for a world some 500 years in the future...it contrasts nicely with Orwell's 1984 or even Lois Lowry's The Giver (most of my students have read at least one of these). Where Big Brother in1984 ran a government based on keeping the populace afraid, the government of Brave New World keeps conflict at bay by keeping people happy. A drug keeps away bad emotions, sexual promiscuity is encouraged to avoid the pain of long-term monogamy, and humans are grown and cloned in labs and raised to a predestined role with Pavlovian classical conditioning. This is by far the most popular choice; I usually have them at "everyone has sex with everyone else" and "drugs." It is not explicit, however, and the social issues it raises lead to fascinating high-level discussion among my AP and grade-level students alike.
Fist Stick Knife Gun (1995) by Geoffrey CanadaI first heard about this memoir at my AP English Language and Composition institute in July 2013. The instructor said this was the book to get reluctant readers to engage, and she was right. Geoffrey Canada details his childhood growing up in the South Bronx in the 1960s, and describes how violence was part of his childhood survival. He escaped poverty through education (one student compared it to Sherman Alexie's perspective in his"Superman and Me" essay that we read earlier this year), and contrasts his own experiences with the social changes of America through the 1970s to the present with the advent of crack cocaine, the Rockefeller drug laws, and the ubiquity of the handgun on the streets. This text has plenty of profanity and graphic fighting, but also some excellent analysis of society from the perspective of a man with a clear agenda.
As an added benefit, my few students who think of themselves as "gangster" get insight into what it really means to live the life of a black urban drug dealer...and discover it's not so fun after all.
Thank You For Smoking (1994) by Christopher BuckleyThis satirical text is a favorite of my husband who encouraged me to use my budget money to purchase a class set. It was a good choice. This novel follows Nick Naylor, a spokesman for the tobacco lobby in D.C. in the early 1990s, right when everyone started realizing cigarettes kill and starting calling out for their politicians to do something about it. Naylor is forced to argue against popular opinion, and his methods of persuasion lead to excellent discussion in an English class devoted to learning how to express oneself. The weird sex scene and kidnap are also especially intriguing to my high school students. They enjoy the moral issues brought up and contrasting it with government oversight and whose job it is to keep the public safe and informed. This is a higher-level text as not all my students succeed with satire, but everyone who has chosen this loved it.
The Glass Castle (2005) by Jeannette WallsThis one tends to be more popular with my girls. A non-fiction piece, Walls retells her early life with her loving but incredibly neglectful parents, with plenty of horrifying vignettes and emotion included. She tells a powerful story and generates plenty of discussion about the plight of children in poverty, and the responsibility of schools and government to act on it. There are many moral choices in the book worth discussing, as well as psychological issues regarding Walls' parents, siblings, and her self.
Death of a Salesman (1949) by Arthur MillerMy students read The Crucible by Miller first semester, and many of them enjoy plays. Since they are dialogue-based, they read quickly for my struggling readers. The visual aspects are explained in the play direction, which helps those who don't visualize particularly well on their own. The downside of Salesman is that it has no scenes; entirely in two acts, it is tricky to assign different reading sections. However, the students who selected this one seem to be intrigued by Willy Lohman's eccentricities. I've never taught this one before, but it holds promise.
All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) by Erich RemarqueI confess I've never read this one; I am reading it now, trying to stay a day ahead of my students who selected it. I sold it as the book by a German in the German army during WWI, which promptly got banned and burned in Hitler's Germany because it did not promote the patriotism of Germany. Besides being a classic, it links up well with their history classes (they just finished WWI when we started literature circles). Many of my grade-level students were intrigued by the first chapter - they were horrified at the callousness of the young soldiers trying to finagle the expensive boots of a schoolmate they expected to die from his battle wounds.
Bless Me, Ultima (1972) by Rudolfo AnayaI am not familiar with this novel at all, but we had about 200 copies in the book room so I tried to push it to my students. Not having grown up in the south, I was first introduced to Chicano literature at a conference I attended this past summer hosted by Humanities Texas. This text follows a little boy named Antonio and how he tries to mesh the nomadic upbringing of his vaquero father, the orthodox Catholicism of his mother, and the mysticism of Ultima, la Grande of his village who serves as midwife, healer, and prophetess. There is a lot of Spanish in this text, which appealed greatly to my Spanish-speaking students who felt like they knew something their peers did not (not a feeling my ELL kids get much).
One of my SPED students started this book when he was in ISS. I eavesdropped on a conversation between him and another SPED student today who had been complaining that she couldn't get into it. My first young man said, "I like it." When she asked incredulously if he had even read it, he proudly replied, "Yeah, I'm on chapter two!" I can't get this student to engage in ANYTHING, so this was an incredible dialogue to witness.
The Red Badge of Courage (1894) by Stephen CraneI remember my high school American Lit teacher telling us how Crane "wrote like a poet," putting lots of thought into each word and describing a scene for each of the five senses. I passed this along to my students, thinking that this text also fits with their U.S. History Civil War studies. It's also fairly short, so some of the more hesitant readers who still choose books based on length might be interested. I have a student who has decided he will be the first white rapper to come out of Texas...ever. He isn't much of a reader, but thankfully recognizes the importance of literacy to writing successful lyrics. He decided that this book was the one he wanted to read; he didn't even put any other preferences, just listed "The Civil War one" three times on his preference list. I hope he falls in love with it. It's such a neat text and I look forward to his views.
I strongly believe that the best way to encourage kids to enjoy reading is by giving them more control over what they read. I attended a really great professional development session last fall where a few of our middle school teachers discussed YA literature and the greatest difficulty for secondary English teachers - appealing to the boys. So much of YA literature is geared towards girls, since they read at higher rates. I wanted to find enough choices for literature circles to encourage my more reluctant readers to get excited. I am hampered in my quest, however, by the availability of books in our English department book room. Since I was also sharing books with the other junior English teacher, we had to find enough books to offer a variety to our nearly 200 students, as well as make sure we chose books that we were already familiar with (students are unimpressed when I assign them something I haven't also read). I gave each class the options and let them list their preferences, then assigned them novels and groups based on that. Most students got their first choice. The following is the list of books I selected and my rationale for choosing them, as well as the reception of the students.
AP English Selections
Brave New World (1932) by Aldous HuxleyThis dystopian text is a fascinating read, as it involves the scientific-minded British Huxley's vision for a world some 500 years in the future...it contrasts nicely with Orwell's 1984 or even Lois Lowry's The Giver (most of my students have read at least one of these). Where Big Brother in1984 ran a government based on keeping the populace afraid, the government of Brave New World keeps conflict at bay by keeping people happy. A drug keeps away bad emotions, sexual promiscuity is encouraged to avoid the pain of long-term monogamy, and humans are grown and cloned in labs and raised to a predestined role with Pavlovian classical conditioning. This is by far the most popular choice; I usually have them at "everyone has sex with everyone else" and "drugs." It is not explicit, however, and the social issues it raises lead to fascinating high-level discussion among my AP and grade-level students alike.
Fist Stick Knife Gun (1995) by Geoffrey CanadaI first heard about this memoir at my AP English Language and Composition institute in July 2013. The instructor said this was the book to get reluctant readers to engage, and she was right. Geoffrey Canada details his childhood growing up in the South Bronx in the 1960s, and describes how violence was part of his childhood survival. He escaped poverty through education (one student compared it to Sherman Alexie's perspective in his"Superman and Me" essay that we read earlier this year), and contrasts his own experiences with the social changes of America through the 1970s to the present with the advent of crack cocaine, the Rockefeller drug laws, and the ubiquity of the handgun on the streets. This text has plenty of profanity and graphic fighting, but also some excellent analysis of society from the perspective of a man with a clear agenda. As an added benefit, my few students who think of themselves as "gangster" get insight into what it really means to live the life of a black urban drug dealer...and discover it's not so fun after all.
Thank You For Smoking (1994) by Christopher BuckleyThis satirical text is a favorite of my husband who encouraged me to use my budget money to purchase a class set. It was a good choice. This novel follows Nick Naylor, a spokesman for the tobacco lobby in D.C. in the early 1990s, right when everyone started realizing cigarettes kill and starting calling out for their politicians to do something about it. Naylor is forced to argue against popular opinion, and his methods of persuasion lead to excellent discussion in an English class devoted to learning how to express oneself. The weird sex scene and kidnap are also especially intriguing to my high school students. They enjoy the moral issues brought up and contrasting it with government oversight and whose job it is to keep the public safe and informed. This is a higher-level text as not all my students succeed with satire, but everyone who has chosen this loved it. The Glass Castle (2005) by Jeannette WallsThis one tends to be more popular with my girls. A non-fiction piece, Walls retells her early life with her loving but incredibly neglectful parents, with plenty of horrifying vignettes and emotion included. She tells a powerful story and generates plenty of discussion about the plight of children in poverty, and the responsibility of schools and government to act on it. There are many moral choices in the book worth discussing, as well as psychological issues regarding Walls' parents, siblings, and her self.
English 3 Selections
My grade-level students tend to be much more varied in their reading abilities; some are voracious readers who should be in AP, and some are at an elementary reading level who wouldn't read outside of class if I threatened their lives. It is therefore difficult to make book choices (again, based on what is in the book room) that I can scaffold for the struggling readers, interest the higher-level, and still provide enough interesting content so students feel like they had a say in their choices.
Death of a Salesman (1949) by Arthur MillerMy students read The Crucible by Miller first semester, and many of them enjoy plays. Since they are dialogue-based, they read quickly for my struggling readers. The visual aspects are explained in the play direction, which helps those who don't visualize particularly well on their own. The downside of Salesman is that it has no scenes; entirely in two acts, it is tricky to assign different reading sections. However, the students who selected this one seem to be intrigued by Willy Lohman's eccentricities. I've never taught this one before, but it holds promise.All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) by Erich RemarqueI confess I've never read this one; I am reading it now, trying to stay a day ahead of my students who selected it. I sold it as the book by a German in the German army during WWI, which promptly got banned and burned in Hitler's Germany because it did not promote the patriotism of Germany. Besides being a classic, it links up well with their history classes (they just finished WWI when we started literature circles). Many of my grade-level students were intrigued by the first chapter - they were horrified at the callousness of the young soldiers trying to finagle the expensive boots of a schoolmate they expected to die from his battle wounds.Bless Me, Ultima (1972) by Rudolfo AnayaI am not familiar with this novel at all, but we had about 200 copies in the book room so I tried to push it to my students. Not having grown up in the south, I was first introduced to Chicano literature at a conference I attended this past summer hosted by Humanities Texas. This text follows a little boy named Antonio and how he tries to mesh the nomadic upbringing of his vaquero father, the orthodox Catholicism of his mother, and the mysticism of Ultima, la Grande of his village who serves as midwife, healer, and prophetess. There is a lot of Spanish in this text, which appealed greatly to my Spanish-speaking students who felt like they knew something their peers did not (not a feeling my ELL kids get much). One of my SPED students started this book when he was in ISS. I eavesdropped on a conversation between him and another SPED student today who had been complaining that she couldn't get into it. My first young man said, "I like it." When she asked incredulously if he had even read it, he proudly replied, "Yeah, I'm on chapter two!" I can't get this student to engage in ANYTHING, so this was an incredible dialogue to witness.
The Red Badge of Courage (1894) by Stephen CraneI remember my high school American Lit teacher telling us how Crane "wrote like a poet," putting lots of thought into each word and describing a scene for each of the five senses. I passed this along to my students, thinking that this text also fits with their U.S. History Civil War studies. It's also fairly short, so some of the more hesitant readers who still choose books based on length might be interested. I have a student who has decided he will be the first white rapper to come out of Texas...ever. He isn't much of a reader, but thankfully recognizes the importance of literacy to writing successful lyrics. He decided that this book was the one he wanted to read; he didn't even put any other preferences, just listed "The Civil War one" three times on his preference list. I hope he falls in love with it. It's such a neat text and I look forward to his views. 
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