Competency 10.3: "Access resources for planning instruction available via telecommunications (e.g., experts, lesson plans, authentic data, curriculum materials)."
Competency 12.5: "Organizational and management strategies that support active student involvement, inquiry, and collaboration."
Context
During Block 436 I created a literature circle for my reading classes. I chose to do my Literature Circle unit on Judy Blume’s books. I read Superfudge and Fudgeamania by Judy Blume as the books to make a Literature circle unit. I chose to read these books because Judy Blume is a very good writer full of wonderful figurative language. I first found out the different reading levels, which for these books were about fourth grade. For each book I found different activities the students could research and expand more than what was in the book. The Literature Circles have eight sections and each section has five jobs. There are four jobs that are repeated on all sections. These jobs are, discussion director, passage picker, word wizard, and character sketcher. There are other jobs to make up for the fifth job, which could include, investigator, connector, travel tracer, and artful artist. Individually the children in the group will have a different job for each section and have their turn to share with their classmates.
Impact
The literature circle unit is an exceptional method to for the students to get interested in reading and a fun way to get involved with their classmates. Literature circles have a huge impact on the children because they reading and also exploring different subject area through the many different jobs they are assigned.
Alignment
The Literature circle unit meets competency goal 10.3 because the units are displayed on the web and can be viewed by many different teachers to use as lesson plans to teach their children these books. This Literature circle unit also meets competency goal 12.5 because the Literature circle unit are organized strategies for the students to be involved with each other in discussion and gives the students a chance to expand their learning and knowledge with each other.
The literature circle unit meets INTASC principle 1. The literature circle unit allows the students to be involved in the education process. Through the different jobs of a literature circle, the students can also build on prior learning or learning that is occurring across the curriculum.
The literature circle unit also meets INTASC principle 4. Allowing the students to lead themselves through the discussions of the unit, the teacher can make it possible for different instructional strategies and give the students a chance to develop thinking skills, problem solving, and performance skills.
The literature circle unit meets INTASC principle 6. Using the
various jobs the students will be involved in many in depth discussions
that increase their discussion strategies. The students will begin understand
the concepts of different communication strategies and build on these skills
by discussing and teaching the other students in their group.