High School Literature Circles: 7 Lessons After Almost 20 Years

The first group of students I used literature circles with was the class of 2005. They were tenth graders at the time. (And don’t tell my current classes, but this group of students is one of my favorites of all time.) Back then, Harvey Daniels’s notion of literature circles was pretty new. I followed all the “rules.” We used the standard roles in literature circles, students kept logs of their work and we had regular meetings. But the truth is, those roles for literature circles are not necessarily appropriate for our upper level students. So I want to share what I have learned after close to 20 years of experience using literature circles in high school English.

High School Literature Circles: 7 Lessons Learned after almost 20 years of book clubs in High School English. (Hint: the first one is that roles in literature circles are unnecessary in high school!)

7 Things I’ve Learned after Nearly 20 Years Using Literature Circles in High School

One: Roles in Literature Circles Don’t Make Sense for Upper Level High School

I love the concept of giving everyone a role, but the original roles like word finder and illustrator just don’t make sense for juniors and seniors in high school. At this point in their reading careers, they should all be doing the hard stuff. I like to give my students a little more discretion. Sometimes I ask everyone to do portions of a role, like have everyone bring 2-3 quotes that stood out or have them consider something about the protagonist. But for the most part, I don’t bother.

The truth is that upper level high school student who have selected a book they are interested in reading can navigate a really good discussion without our interference and micro-managing.

Two: Set a Consistent Schedule

When my students are working on a book club unit in high school English, I like to let them know the schedule ahead of time. We generally have a specific day that is for book club meetings (Friday) along with designated days for reading (Monday) and full class lessons (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday).

Three: Literature Circle Mini Lessons are Integral

The only way to make literature circles truly relevant in high school English is to use literature circle mini lessons. My favorite way to do this in AP® Literature is with How to Read Literature Like a Professor. We read specific chapters that I want to highlight and then practice with short stories or poetry. Then students apply it to their independent novels. We call it Reading Like a Professor.

You could do the same thing with literary criticism lenses. Do a mini lesson on a literary lens like Reader Response or Ethical Criticism. Practice as a class with a short story and then have them apply it to their book club books. You could even use task cards to give the student focus in their meetings.

Four: Ground Literature Circles in the Essential Skills

Since high school English is a skills based course, decide which skills that you want students to be able to show you and then establish your activities based around those skills.

If you want students to practice close reading, have them pick their own close reading passages. Then give them guidelines for the reading of those passages. Or, better yet, let them establish their own guidelines based on what you have use earlier in the year.

Five: Make Choice Integral

Choice makes our students want to engage, so go beyond just the choice of the books. Let them choose how to run their book club meetings and give them opportunities to pick how they will demonstrate their understandings. Using Reader Response prompts or task cards is a great way to do this.

Six: Use Quick Assessments Throughout the Unit

It’s easy to check to see who is reading and who is not with quick assignments throughout the unit. I like to use a combination of choice boards, 3 2 1 Assignments (for how to use this strategy, click here) and hexagonal thinking to see what the students are getting from their books.

Choice boards are perfect to check the individual, but you can use the 3 2 1 strategy as discussion prep, discussion notes or tickets out. This makes 3 2 1 strategy ideal throughout the unit. I recently used the 3 2 1 both to check students’ individual understanding of characterization and then used them again later in the week to have student record their book club meetings. For 15 ready to use 3 2 1 Strategy Sheets to use with any text, click here.

Hexagonal thinking is a perfect way to get the groups talking and thinking about connections in the text together. We used this in my classes the day before the essay. It gave students an opportunity to talk about the ends of their books while also making the big connections to theme, characterization and more. (And it also made it pretty clear who was behind in their reading.)

Seven: Finish with an Essay

No matter what you do throughout the literature circle unit, in the upper levels of high school, you need to finish up with an essay (or an alternative to the essay). This gives you the opportunity to fully assess the individual student’s understand (or lack there of) of the novel they read.

I still love to offer choice even in the essay at the end of the unit. I usually provide three or four prompts for an AP® style literary argument, but you could also give the students a prose style prompt that practice the skills you have been working on throughout the unit (that way students who didn’t finish are not called out). You could also have student use stable prompt language to write their own prompts and then answer them.

Unpopular Opinions about Literature Circles in High School English

I would love to know what you think about using literature circle in high school. Do you use the old school, Harvey Daniels roles in literature circles or have you branched out as well? Let me know in the comments.

And if you haven’t used literature circles in a while because those roles for literature circles seemed a little too, well, elementary, then I hope that you will consider giving your more mature students some freedoms.