How to use nonfiction text in the classroom

Literature circles or not?

For years, I incorporated literature circles into my classroom as a part of my reading instruction. I thought they were GREAT and they worked beautifully for what I knew and understood as a teacher, at the time. I divided my students, by level, into groups of six. I usually had between four and five literature circles reading at a time. Each student would read the same chapter, do their assigned job and complete for sharing of their job the following day. The following jobs were:

·         Travel Tracer

·         Illustrator

·         Tour Guide/Discussion Director

·         Summarizer

·         Investigator

·         Connector

My current reading outlines something very similar and gives many suggestions for ensuring Literature Circles are effective to support students in reading expository text. The suggestions were many of the ideas that I have used and or tried. 

I took a Children’s Literature course and read Beyond Leveled Books and my world changed completely. Leading up to that reading, I was beginning to sense and feel they were not as effective, for my second graders, as I once thought. No matter what I tried, my students were not engaged in discussing the literature they had read. It appeared, as I learned more, they were just going through the motions of doing their jobs and reading their chapters. There was no deep or meaningful discussions; period. The conversations were surface level at best.  I still believe Literature Circles can be effective and meaningful. I would LOVE to figure out how to possibly do a whole class literature circle group and everyone read the same book. I felt by dividing my kids up by levels was doing more harm than good to their reading growth.

Afterreading the above book, coupled with an article the following semester (that I mentioned in my second blog) I changed my reading instruction completely.  As to not recap completely, I touched on this in my second blog post. I would like to feature some of the mini lessons suggested in my reading that I find helpful when doing my interest/inquiry reading groups. I have found working in smaller groups, capitalizing on those teachable moments to teach skills that foster discussion and problem solving while reading nonfiction text has worked the best for all levels. I use a reading response journal that my students use during their interest/inquiry time to write down any and all things they encounter, question, find out, don’t understand, want to learn more about, etc.  This could be used to incorporate and document the mini lessons and to check for continued understanding and application in future lessons. (the students could use this as a reference)

I particularly liked idea of the procedural mini-lessons:

·         Conduct effective discussion

·         Choosing books or other nonfiction materials

·         Ways to respond to nonfiction

·         Setting up and using reading journal or reading logs

·         Developing effective conversational skills

·         What to do if help is needed with a passage that is confusing

But there was no “how to” do these, so I really need to use the frame that Penny discussed and that is having students think like a scientist or historian when responding. But we must first help students decide what that looks like. So maybe you could have small or whole group discussions accordingly to establish the Discourse of each discipline and teach the students how to respond and engage with expository text.

Do any of you use Literature Circles and have better luck with them? If so, would you mind sharing your experiences? Next blog, I will share some experiences about the interest/inquiry reading groups that would enhance the reading of how to use nonfiction in the classroom.