But, if your students are doing literature circles around graphic novels or short stories, you could easily cut down a literature circle to just a few weeks. It all depends on how independently your students will be working.

Once you have the books, the summative assessment, and the lessons and assignments for students along the way, all that’s left to do is plan with a calendar. Samway, K.D., Whang, G., Cade, C., Gamil, M., Lubandina, M., & Phonmmachanh, K. (1991) Reading the skeleton, the heart, and the brain of a book: Students' perspectives on literature study circles. Reading Teacher (November). My colleagues and I found that when we broke a text apart into different components, learners were able to dig more deeply into its concepts and vastly improve comprehension. This, however, is challenging to do alone. So working collaboratively in reading a text alleviates some of that burden, not to mention prepares them for group work that is common in many courses. P: Could you tell us in more detail what ARC stands for and how it works ? T: Academic Reading Circles (ARC) is an approach to intensively reading texts that is designed to guide learners towards a collaborative co-construction of text concepts by initially focusing on different aspects of the text. It breaks apart reading skills into specific techniques—things we all do simultaneously in our L1 reading—that learners focus on individually, then combines the efforts from the individuals in small groups to build a collaborative deep comprehension beyond what can be done alone. Use your best judgment. I always recommend leaving a “buffer week” for any unit planning. If you do this, you should be able to adjust a little as you go. Another productive skills possibility could include preparing a presentation about the ARC text and/or leading a discussion about it with the class. If we simply focus on using the text itself beyond the scope of ARC, I often incorporate it into other language lessons, like examining the author’s use of grammatical structures, chunks of language by frequency as shown in corpora, or techniques such as hedging. These lessons are what I refer to as existing inside a syllabus where ARC supplements. P: And what are the results of using ARC? How is it beneficial to the students? What improvements have you noticed? T: I know of several research projects in different universities currently being conducted on the various affordances resulting from ARC use in academic programs, not the least of which is one I am organising on my own groups for next year. In each, I’ve heard mostly about the positive qualitative data from both instructors and students on their experiences so far. I’m excited to learn more about all their findings in the coming months and years.

Burns, B. (1998). Changing the Classroom Climate with Literature Circles. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 42, 124-129. Usually, book clubs are focused on getting students to engage with and enjoy a text. Alternatively, literature circles are more focused on getting students to analyze a text. When the chapter is finished, have students re-read the questions on their role sheets and make any revisions.

Pause during the reading, as appropriate, to allow student volunteers to add details to the different role sheets that they have; or have students complete the different role sheets after the reading is complete. Encourager: The encourager makes sure that everyone is heard and given opportunities to share. During discussions, the encourager will make a point to specifically ask quiet group members for input or deliberately make sure that everyone has shared an idea before the group moves on. When I got my copy of Tyson Seburn’s Academic Reading Circles and read it cover-to-cover as I usually do with every new book, my keywords were flashing out of the text in every chapter - I had to dig deeper into this approach and did so, both as a learner and as a teacher.

Student Objectives

Anderson, P. & Corbett, L. (2008). Literature Circles for Students with Learning Disabilities. Intervention in School and Clinic, 44(1), 25-33.