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Daniels | What’s the Next Big Thing with Literature Circles?

What’s the Next Big Thingwith Literature Circles?

Harvey Daniels

Back in the early 1980s, a numberof teachers and students aroundthe country simultaneously and

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Harvey “Smokey” Daniels joinedVM in September 2002. When he agreed to beone of VM’s columnists, I knew that one of thegreat voices in secondary literacy education wasjoining the team. In each issue, Smokey has com-bined wit with wisdom to teach us more about stu-dents, about literature, and about how the twointersect. I will forever be grateful that when Imustered enough courage to ask him to write forthe journal, he quickly, joyfully, and decidedly said,“Yes!” In this article, Smokey reminds us all of theimportance of revising our own thinking abouttopics from time to time as he shares with us hisown evolving thinking about literature circles.]

independently invented the idea of litera-ture circles. Pioneers like Becky AbrahamSearle in Chicago and Karen Smith inArizona began organizing their studentsinto small, peer-led book discussion groups.

Soon, a number of teacher-authors, includingKathy Short, Jerome Harste, Carolyn Burke,Ralph Peterson, Maryann Eeds, BonnieCampbell-Hill, Katherine Schlick-Noe, NancyJohnson, and I began talking about this promis-ing new practice, which mainly consisted of bring-ing the established adult literacy structure ofvoluntary reading groups into the public schools.

Twenty-five years later, millions of studentshave experienced some kind of book clubs or lit-

erature circles during their schooling. There arenow dozens of professional books on the subject,offering guidance on starting and refining bookclubs at various grade levels and across the cur-riculum. By most accounts, literature circles havebeen a valuable addition to many kids’ school ex-perience, helping to grow more self-sustaining,lifelong readers. The Web abounds with teacherreports saying that “book clubs are my kids’ fa-vorite time of the day” and “the caliber of the stu-dents’ conversations just blows me away.”

Of course, not all models of book clubs imple-mented around the country resemble the originalversions. I recently observed the operation of oneschool’s literature circles, and when I walked inthe first classroom, students were doing roundrobin reading—they just called it literature circles.Without being a purist (and without debating themerits of pre-1960s reading strategies), it seemsfair to say that literature circles, as originally con-ceived by teachers like Becky and Karen, are notthe same thing as round robin reading.

This is part of the wider problem of “termi-nology drift” in our profession. Someone inventsa new idea or practice for use with kids, introducesit, explains it, and offers it to the teaching profes-sion. Then the drift commences; the currents offad and fashion carrying the idea ever further fromits original anchorage, until it becomes the pre-ferred label for some completely contradictorypractice. I think of Nancie Atwell in this connec-tion. In 1987, she codified a complex and elegantstructure called “reading–writing workshop,”which includes a set of specific practices and ex-cludes others. But today, everyone claims to have areading workshop in their classroom, and manyof them are filled with lecturing, assigned topics,

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grammar worksheets, and spelling quizzes—theantithesis of Atwell’s careful and progressive de-sign.

It’s only fair to admit that sometimes we au-thors, however inadvertently, create implementa-tion problems ourselves. The 1994 first edition ofmy book Literature Circles: Voice and Choice in theStudent–Centered Classroom promoted the use of atool called “role sheets,” which assigned studentsvarious jobs like Questioner, Connector, Illustra-tor, Word Wizard, and Literary Luminary. I rec-ommended these sheets as a way of showing kidshow smart readers think (connecting, visualizing,inferring, and so forth), as well as to help studentscapture their reading responses in writing and tosupply small-group discussions with plenty ofmaterial to talk about. I warned in the book thatthe role sheets were for temporary use only, but Isoon saw them becoming predominant in toomany classrooms. As a result, I wrote articles, de-veloped a Web site, gave speeches, and ultimatelywrote a new edition of the book with much stron-ger cautions about the mechanical discussions thatcan stem from over-dependence on these roles.

Why Do Literature Circles Work?Despite the mini-controversy about role sheets,and assorted goof-ups by authors andimplementers alike, literature circles have turnedout to be an incredibly durable and sustainableclassroom activity. Over and over, teachers in allcorners of the world (most recent reports fromQuebec, Finland, and Australia) have adopted,adapted, modified, and personalized the basicmodel. The consistent outcome is that kids arefalling in love with books they have chosen andtalked about with their friends. Why is this simplelittle activity so powerful and durable?

I categorize the answer with four words: en-gagement, choice, responsibility, and research.

EngagementIn a peer-led group of four or five, each studentgets much more “airtime” and feels less risk thanin a whole-class discussion. There is more “posi-tive peer pressure” to join in when the group is

small and run cooperatively by kids, not theteacher. Kids usually simplify this, saying that bookclubs are (can we use the F-word in Voices from theMiddle?) more fun than other classroom activities.

ChoiceWhen, with artful teacher guidance, kids get topick their own books for reading and friends toread with, they can experience success, not frus-tration. Compare this to the typical teacher-cho-sen whole-class book, which is by definition toohard or too boring or too easy. In book clubs, ev-erybody has a shot at getting a readable, interest-ing, just-right book for them, right now. Thatdoesn’t mean we don’t also study some well-cho-sen whole-class books, but we alternate them withtitles of choice.

ResponsibilityAs some sage once said, “School is a place whereyoung people go to watch older people work.”Indeed, when 3 p.m. rolls around, you are prob-ably a puddle beneath your desk, but the kids aredashing out of the classroom, bursting with en-ergy and ready to play sports, scamper around themall, and fall in and out of love a few times. What’swrong with this picture? In book clubs, we ask kidsto do everything that real adult readers do: choosea book, assemble members, create a reading andmeeting schedule, establish ground rules, use writ-ing to harvest responses as they read, sustain pro-ductive on-task conversations, perform variousself-assessments, and keep their own records.

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ResearchIn today’s data-driven school world (some peopleactually use that phrase with a positive connota-tion), every activity used with students must bebacked by “scientific proof,” some numerical in-dication of higher achievement on a standardizedtest. So it is a good thing that we do have suchevidence regarding the small, peer-led book dis-cussions called literature circles or book clubs. Yes,when kids are engaged in well-structured bookclubs, their comprehension and their attitude to-ward reading both improve. This seems to be truefor students of many ages, and for those with dis-abilities as well as typical students, when the right

accommodations are offered. For a quick look atthese studies, see Tanya Auger’s 2003 review ofliterature circles or read Chapter 1 of my bookLiterature Circles: Voice and Choice in Book Clubs andReading Groups (2002, pp. 7–9).

But this large body of positive research on lit-erature circles doesn’t necessarily settle the “sci-entific proof” question. Right now, by order of thecurrent administration, the Institute of EducationSciences is investigating the efficacy of a numberof popular reading strategies, including literaturecircles. Whether the structure is eventually vali-dated will depend on what and how the research-ers measure. Will they look at well-designedliterature circles set up by veteran teachers usingthem as part of a balanced reading program? Orwill they quickly train “neutral” or uninterestedteachers (a common experimental practice) to usethe strategy in classrooms with no established cli-mate of collaboration? Will they measure the out-comes of literature circles with multiple-choicerecall questions? Or will they use sensitive mea-sures of understanding, recall, and application?These choices will determine whether the US De-partment of Education ultimately says that “lit-erature circles work.”

What’s New with Book Clubs?After doing workshops and visiting schools in morethan half the states, I have seen what smart teach-ers are doing to make book clubs even more valu-able for kids. Nancy Steineke and I discuss theserefinements in Minilessons for Literature Circles(Heinemann, 2003), which identifies 45 ways thatteachers and kids are polishing and updating theirbook clubs. Here are some of the highlights.

Out with Role Sheets!Though a few teachers around the country seemto use role sheets effectively on a continuing ba-sis, the great majority report the kind of problemsnoted above. In our own Chicago schools, teach-ers rarely use role sheets, but instead have kidscapture their responses in reading response logs,on sticky notes (the favorite tool by far), on home-

CRITICAL POINTS ABOUT LITERATURE CIRCLES

. . . about how literature circles help to develop thoughtful,competent, and critical readers:Brabham, E. G., & Villaume, S. K. 2000. Questions and Answers:Continuing Conversations about Literature Circles. The ReadingTeacher, 54, 278–280. See also http://www.homeedsa.com/Articles/Literature%20Circles.asp.

. . . about how literature circles improve student reading levelsand attitudes:Davis, B. H., Resta, V., Davis, L. L., & Camacho, A. 2001. NoviceTeachers Learn about Literature Circles through CollaborativeAction Research. Journal of Reading Education, 26, 1–6.

. . . about how book clubs can advance gender equity in theclassroom:Evans, K. S., Alvermann, D., & Anders, P. L. 1998. LiteratureDiscussion Groups: An Examination of Gender Roles. ReadingResearch and Instruction, 37(2), 107–122.

. . . about how peer discussion increases content comprehen-sion:Klinger, J., Vaughn, R., and Schumm, J. 1998. CollaborativeStrategic Reading during Social Studies in Heterogeneous Fourth-Grade Classrooms. Elementary School Journal, 99(1), 3–22.

. . . about how book discussions benefit English languagelearners:Martinez-Roldan, C., and Lopez-Robertson, J. 2000. InitiatingLiterature Circles in a First-Grade Bilingual Classroom. The ReadingTeacher, 53, 270–281.

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made bookmarks (great for nonfiction), by usingtext coding, in drawn and graphic responses or inwritten conversations (more on that later).

More Explicit Reading Strategy TrainingWhen Literature Circles were first being devel-oped, the reading comprehension research ofDavid Pearson and his colleagues was just enter-ing the field, The Mosaic of Thought (Keene, 1997)was years away, and Stephanie Harvey and AnnGoudvis’s Strategies That Work (Stenhouse, 2000)was just a glimmer in their eyes. Most teacherswere not aware of, much less teaching their stu-dents, the proficient-reader strategies that are nowstaples of our everyday teaching: questioning, con-necting, inferring, visualizing, determining impor-tance, and the rest. Today we name and teach thosecognitive operations using instructional modelslike think-alouds, in which the teacher opens upher head and shows kids how smart readers think.In fact, we are now beginning to receive studentsin our middle schools who have learned these strat-egies already in the elementary grades. This givesus a huge head start in book clubs, as well as therest of our balanced reading programs.

More Explicit Social Skills InstructionIn the early days, Literature Circles were pro-moted (by me as much as anyone) as a kind of if-you-build-it-they-will-come proposition. If youtrained the groups properly, kids would do thereading, write brilliant notes, and join in vigor-ous, cerebral interactions about challenging bookswhile the teacher beamed in the background. Wenow realize that peer-led reading groups needmuch more than a good launching; they requireconstant coaching and training by a very activeteacher who uses minilessons and debriefings tohelp kids hone skills like active listening, askingfollow-up questions, disagreeing agreeably, deal-ing with “slackers,” and more.

It was Nancy Steineke who taught me mostabout this in her vital and underappreciated book,Reading and Writing Together: Collaborative Literacyin Action (Heinemann, 2002). If you want to havean effective, productive, high-morale climate in

your language arts classroom throughout thewhole school year, you better get your hands onNancy’s book. It explains something that, for somemysterious reason, most teachers are reluctant tohear about: the step-by-step moves you must taketo guide the group dynamics in your classroom.Most of us teachers seem to want to believe that ifwe have “a golden gut” and “a heart for the kids,”that they will collaborate skillfully (and magically)with each other in small groups. Oh, so wrong.

Extending into Nonfiction“Classic” literature circles have used sets of nov-els, and this has certainly been a great way to helpkids find favorite authors and genres of fiction.But since lit circles are essentially well-structuredcollaborative learning applied to reading, themodel is just as powerful and effective for nonfic-tion texts. Indeed, we now recognize that middleschool students should be reading many of thesame trade books that thoughtful, curious mem-bers of the adult community are reading. Thismeans enjoying all or parts of Eric Schlosser’smuckraking exposé Fast Food Nation: The Dark Sideof the All American Meal; Robert Kurson’s grip-ping Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of TwoAmericans Who Risked Everything to Solve One ofthe Last Mysteries of World War II; the scary andhopeful save-the-biosphere book, The Future ofLife by Edward O. Wilson; and even E=MC2: TheHistory of the World’s Most Famous Equation, by sci-ence writer extraordinaire David Bodanis.

QUESTIONS FOR GUIDING MORE RESEARCH

1. What kinds of note-taking best help young readers to preparefor productive peer-led discussions?

2. How can we make book clubs work better for students withdisabilities and those who are learning English?

3. Do book club experiences lay a foundation for other small-group work across the curriculum?

4. Can we show that kids who have experienced book clubs inschool do more voluntary reading into their adulthood?

5. How do book club experiences affect students’ writing?

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New Models of AssessmentBack in the old days, teachers often assigned somesort of project at the end of each book club cycle,which typically involved writing a book review,designing a newer cover for the book, or makinga diorama of a crucial scene. But our conscienceswere prodded by wise elders like Yetta Goodman(What do lifelong adult readers do when they fin-ish a great book, Yetta wondered—make a di-orama?). We still use projects from time to time,but as a special way of celebrating and advertisinggreat books, not because we need something tograde. With that marketing intention in mind, wenow favor performance-oriented projects over themore static types: readers theater, talk shows,tableaux, found poetry, song parodies, and the like.

We now assess students’ work in book clubsall along the way. We track both their literary andtheir discussion skills with a variety of tools, suchas videotaped group meetings; teacher observa-tions; forms that record kids’ preparation, partici-pation, specific comments, and levels of thinking.Instead of giving “comprehension quizzes,” wecollect the notes that kids prepare for each groupmeeting, whether on sticky notes, in journals, oron bookmarks. And when we ultimately have toassign a grade, we design a scoring rubric alongwith students. We ask them to list the traits of ef-fective book club members and then assign pointsto each element (being prepared, building on theideas of others, supporting your points with spe-cific passages in the book, etc.). In this way, webravely grade the activity itself—peer-led smallliterature discussions—rather than some surrogateoutcome like a puppet show or diorama.

The Next Big Thing in Student-Led Discussion: WrittenConversationOne of the strategies we have often used to trainstudents for literature circles is dialogue journals,or, as we call it in Chicago, written conversation. Inthis kind of discussion, students write simultaneousnotes to each other responding to the literaturethey are reading (or whatever subject is being stud-ied in the classroom curriculum). Compare this

kind of active, one-to-one exchange with standard“whole-class discussions” in which two or threekids monopolize the conversation (Me! Me! Me!)while everyone else sleeps with their eyes open.When everyone is “discussing” with a partner inwriting, then potentially everyone is engaged andacting upon the subject matter.

You can have a written conversation while sit-ting side by side in real time, passing notes backand forth, or in letter form, where writers send“mail” for readers to answer when they get time.This may remind you of the literature letters inNancie Atwell’s reading workshop—and it should,since Nancie’s classroom is one inspiration for thiskind of curriculum-based letter writing. Studentscan write in pairs or around a circle of three orfour, called a carousel or write-around. Look onthe Web and you can find teachers using count-less versions of this letter-writing strategy all acrossthe country. Below, the teacher has asked studentsto write back and forth about why Walter DeanMyers chose to write his amazing novel Monsteras a screenplay, rather than a standard narrative.

Student 132I think he chose to write a screenplay because it seems likesomething that would be on TV. And, yes, I have felt likemy life is a movie before many, many times. Mainly when Ihave a good day or a really bad day.

Student 141Totally agreeing with you, many times I’ve thought of mylife like a movie (or TV show, etc) but I think he chose towrite his story as a screenplay because it made it morereal, well, more interesting and how it actually happened.

Student 117I think the reason the author chose a screen play format isthat it will help us to visualize the story more and “get thatmovie in our head” going so we will understand better what itis like to be in certain characters shoes.

It doesn’t seem necessary to point out all the visu-alizing, connecting, inferring, and other reading-as-thinking skills that are manifest in theseexchanges.

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In the schools where I am currently working,we are mining the potential of these written con-versations for much more than literature circlestraining. Some teachers put students in yearlongpartnerships, where two or three kids write to eachother weekly about their independent reading,with the teacher entering these conversations pe-riodically. Others have young students writingFriday letters to their parents, explaining the high-lights of the week in school, with the parents writ-ing a letter back to the kids over the weekend.Across the curriculum, content-area teachers putkids in pairs and then regularly interrupt their lec-tures for some written discussions: “Now, withyour partner, have a quick conversation about whatyou understand and don’t understand about ion-izing radiation.”

Hey Melly,Did Mr. Gridley just say that microwaves give off ionizingradiation? I thought that kind was dangerous and I don’tunderstand why they would let them have something on ourhomes that’s dangerous. Did I just hear him wrong?

Dear Rose,Yes, microwaves do give off ionizing radiation, which isdangerous. But microwaves give off such small amounts sothey’re not dangerous. Mr. Gridley said that we can haveonly under 5,000 mREMs a year. Microwaves give off suchsmall amounts that we won’t come close to reaching 5,000millirems.Melly

Dear Melly,That still kinda creeps me out though. I don’t want to growa third ear just because I wanted to make some oatmeal inmy microwave.Jeez, Rose

After this quick written exchange, the teacher seeksvolunteers to share the different topics of theirdiscussions, and he uses these as cues to review,

explain, or clarify key points. And, of course, hecollects the dialogues as part of his course assess-ment. The playfulness and energy of these quickexchanges keeps students engaged even in highlypresentational courses, helps them remember keyideas, and assures kids that they are part of theclass’s guidance system.

Can you begin to see the potential of this kindof writing? If you’re a teacher who’s using dialoguejournals, written conversations, silent discussions,buddy journals, literature letters, or any other formof kid-to-kid or kid–teacher letter writing, pleasebe in touch. My email is smokeylit@aol.com. I’meager to hear what you’re up to. Maybe togetherwe can start another wave of great reading andwriting experiences for kids. It probably won’t be“writing circles,” but I am certain there is a verybig idea lurking in letters.

ReferencesAtwell, N. (1987). In the middle: Writing, reading, and

learning with adolescents. Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann.

Auger, T. (2003). Student-centered reading: A review ofresearch on literature circles. EPS Update, May2003. Accessed, January 30, 2006, from http://www.epsbooks.com/downloads/articles/Literature_Circles.pdf.

Daniels, H. (1994). Literature circles: Voice and choicein the student–centered classroom. Portland, ME:Stenhouse.

Daniels, H. (2002). Literature circles: Voice and choicein book clubs and reading groups (2nd ed.).Portland, ME: Stenhouse.

Daniels, H., & Steineke, N. (2003). Minilessons forliterature circles. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Harvey, S., & Goudvis, A. (2000). Strategies that work:Teaching comprehension to enhance understanding.Portland, ME: Stenhouse.

Keene, E. (1997). Mosaic of thought. Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann.

Steineke, N. (2002). Reading and writing together:Collaborative literacy in action. Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann.

Harvey “Smokey” Daniels is on the faculty of National-Louis University and can be reached atsmokeylit@aol.com.

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