Product Swap: Meet Lauren

Today I want to introduce you to Lauren from Life in Middle School. She is a wife,  mom, teacher, and hockey player. In her spare time, she creates wonderful lessons and puts together fantastic resources to help teachers around the world.

I had the privilege of reviewing and testing out Lauren's Literature Circle Start Up Guide. As soon as I received the product, I began thinking of all of the ideas I had for how to use this effectively in my classroom. Teaching English Language Arts provides numerous opportunities to use this resource on a daily basis, but I was even coming up with ways to use it in my social studies classes as well.

To test the Literature Circle Start Up Guide out, I chose one class to use it right before we got out of school for Christmas Break. I arranged my desks into groups of six. I chose the number six because the jobs worked out evenly that way, and it worked well with the number of students I have in that class. However, it would work with students in groups of four to six.

When the students walked into the classroom, I assigned them a number. The number coorelated to a group in the classroom. When everyone was seated I handed out the folders with all of their information in it. (Don't worry! Lauren's instructions are phenomenal! She explains the process, why you should use Literature Circles in your classroom, how to manage the process, and how to create the Literature Circle folders! It is all there in her instructions.)

When the students received their folders, they had the task of choosing their jobs. The jobs include a Discussion Director/Team Leader, Illustrator, Word Finder, Character Captain, Plot Planner, Summarizer, and Setting Superviser. It was fun walking around to each group to hear how they were choosing their jobs. One part about this Literature Circle Start Up Guide that I absolutely LOVE is that ALL students will eventually perform each job!!! I love this because students are able to experience all of the jobs and all of the responsibilities of each job. It is a great learning experience!

For the Literature Circle "trial" in my classroom, I assigned a short reading. I wanted to see the interaction, the thinking, the questioning, and how the students were going to do working together. I was very pleased at their interaction and excitement to use this concept.

The students loved it! They each did a fantastic job following the guidelines and doing each assigned job.

We are beginning a new novel study on Monday, and I cannot wait to use this Literature Circle Start Up Guide for the entire study. The students are excited, and the teacher is excited!

I hope that you will visit Lauren's Life in Middle School Blog. She has numerous ideas to use in your classroom that I know you will find helpful. Also, check out her Teachers Pay Teachers Store to view all of the wonderful products she has available.

But don't stop there! You need to head to Mrs. Stanford's Class Blog to view all of the other fabulous Product Swap reviews! I hope you have a Super Saturday!