Assign Roles

• One way to make sure all students participate in the literature circle is to assign a role to each student. For example, you can assign one student as the discussion director, or the person who selects questions that the group will discuss. Another student can select the passages that the group reads and discusses. A third student can select words from the book that are difficult to understand or may be used in an unusual way. A connector is someone who identifies connections between the current book and previous books. A travel tracer can track the movement of the character in the book, and an investigator can look up information related to the book's background. This will help involve all the students and enrich the discussions and understanding of the books. You can also change their positions after each book.
  
  

Journaling

• Provide time during the circle for students to record their reactions to a piece of literature in a journal. Journals help students construct meaning about what they've read and enable them to process the literature. It can contain their thoughts and feelings and may even draw on their own personal experiences. The point of the journal exercise is that not only do students read critically, but this enables them to learn the skills to apply those critical thinking skills to writing. You can select topics or ideas to help students with their journals. For example, you can ask students to write about what it would be like if the main character was a friend of theirs, or what they would do in similar situations. You can also ask them to summarize the chapters they've read or identify setting or story characters and compare to personal experiences.
  
  

Creativity

• Pick a scene from a book and ask students to recreate it in their head and draw or paint it on paper. This will stimulate the creativity in the students. Because many students today are caught up in TV and video games, there are few opportunities for today's kids to use their own imagination. In turn, kids who cannot envision a scene as they are reading it may not comprehend or enjoy reading. But a kid who learns to visualize and create a scene will help him see the book from a sensory standpoint. In addition, you can ask students to draw a picture of what they think the character looks like. You can even assign students to draw different scenes and then show them to the class and ask students which scene of the book it represents. This lesson is about stimulating creativity and combining it with enjoyable activities.
  
  

Language

• Select a passage that is rife with vivid language and read it aloud to the class. This lesson is to get the students to focus on the use of language in the passage and to help them process the significance in language in producing smart and intelligent passages, as well as how they shape our imagination and development of the story and characters. Ask students to look for a passage that focuses on the use of language and to read it aloud. Ask them what makes the language special, beautiful or powerful and listen to what each student has to say.