Artifact 9

The Literature Circles Unit on medieval times was developed during my Language and Literature in Elementary Schools and Reading Instruction for Classroom Teachers classes at Appalachian State University during the semester prior to my student teaching.

Impact

This unit integrates language arts, social studies, and reading into these lessons.

Alignment

Students will perform different jobs during the course of the Literature Circles Unit (i.e., Discussion Director, Passage Picker, Word Wizard, etc.), which will allow exploration and experience with the content of the material (INTASC 1). Each of these jobs have different tasks required to complete them; and children must be competent in these jobs in order to communicate their information to their group (Tech Comp 12.1). They may be asked to draw a picture, locate a passage, or define a word, thus creating a diverse learning experience as the jobs change by section (INTASC 7). These jobs are modeled at the beginning of the unit, and restated on examples displayed (INTASC 6). Students are organized into groups by previously determined reading levels. Interpersonal skills and work habits are also taken into account when grouping the students (Tech Comp 12.5). This unit permits differences in learning ability and promotes adaptation and flexibility through the tasks involved with each section (Tech Comp 13.1, INTASC 3). The work completed in the Literature Circle may then be displayed in the classroom on a bulletin board for the story, or entered into a database on the subject for future classroom reference (Tech Comp 12.7).