Call them what you may: literature circles, book clubs, literature study, etc., getting students in a small group of their peers to discuss a book that they’re all reading is one of the most enjoyable and rewarding instructional contexts for teachers and students. In middle school, where friends reign supreme and getting the opportunity to chat with your classmates is something most students would give anything for, literature circles are that tricky thing teachers put into the curriculum where students don’t feel like they’re doing much work, but they’re doing a ton of learning.
In a past blog post I’ve written about how to set up and implement literature circles. You can find that blog post here. I also have a product in my Teachers Pay Teachers store that will give you every lesson, graphic organizer, and more that you need to set up literature circles in your classroom. You can find this product by clicking here.
What I haven’t blogged about or addressed in the past though in regards to literature circles is what books to use with your middle school students when doing literature circles. Below you will find how I go about giving choice to students when rolling out a new literature circle, and some text sets around common threads that I would recommend.
Step One: Pick a common thread. The text set that you select should contain 5-6 books. All of the books should have something in common so that regardless of which book each student is reading, you will still be able to continue with whole class reading minilessons that would apply to any of the books. This common thread could be a specific genre, author, time period, topic, or theme.
Step Two: Expose students to the books I like to expose students to 6 book choices and then select the 5 most popular books to ultimately use for the literature circles. Sometimes I give book talks on each of the books, other times I show book trailers. Another option is to put students into small groups of 6, give each group one copy of each of the book choices, and set the timer for 2-3 minutes for students to read, page through, and explore each of the book choices.
Step Three: Have students label their top choice with a 1 and their last choice with a 6. From there, you will be able to sift through to see what the five most popular book choices were and put students into small groups. I like having 5 small groups of literature circles so that I can meet with each group for their literature circle discussion one day each week.
Step Four: Distribute books and have students set up a reading plan with their small groups.
Step Five: Give students 2-3 days to begin reading their books, and then begin your weekly meetings with each literature circles group.
Below I have prepared five different sets of books that could potentially be used for middle school literature circles.
Set One: Books Turned Into Movies
This set of books all contains a book that has been turned into a movie. After your class finishes reading their literature circle books, you can have students watch the movie version of their book and write a book to movie compare and contrast paper.
