Katie's Korner
Oct. 16th, 2024

Prompt: Reflect on your experiences with the literature circle. Discuss what strategies were effective, what challenges you faced, and how you navigated your roles.
I enjoyed the activity of the literature circles, especially as the book our group chose differed from any other group as it was a collection of short stories. The short stories were diverse and varied from one to the next in terms of themes, points of view, tone, and other literary techniques.
The roles of the lit circles were helpful; I took on Media-Integrator & Thought Provoker and found them useful as summative expressions of the collection of short stories. I took to AI for the Media-Integrator role to explore how AI interprets the generalized summary of the collective works. Similarly, my good friend Google was helpful in the Thought-Provoker role as it provided a meme that connected with the overall message of the collection, that colouring outside of the lines doesn't ruin the picture; it just expands it to be more inclusive.
However, I think if I were to use a collection of short stories in a literary circle in my classroom, I would adjust the roles/expectations to be around a select few of the short stories that are more explicitly connected rather than have it be more generalized to the entire work. The current descriptions would work for a singular narrative/novel/literary work, but because of the short story form of our book, I found it hard to connect all of the stories under one heading/role.
Overall, literature circles are a great classroom activity and help students explore perspectives outside their own when reading literary works.