I am currently in the middle of the To Kill a Mockingbird unit in CyberEnglish9. Although nervous in the beginning, I found myself growing more and more excited about creating my first literature unit from start to finish. Now that we have completed approximately half the unit, I would like to reflect upon the successes and failures thus far. The foundation of the unit is centered on literature circles. More specifically, I created roles based on those initially established by Harvey Daniels and Jim Burke.
The Bad: The cyberlab environment has not been the most conducive setup for literature circles. My students have been subjected to squeezing circles into tight rows, but they have been excellent at not complaining. Authentic discussion has also been limited. I have found that my students do a wonderful job of answering their role questions prior to discussion time; however, during the literature circle they just read their answers as quickly as possible. Although I defined literature circles for the students and we discussed what they consisted of, I failed to model a successful one. I think this would have enhanced the overall experience for them.
The Good: In conjunction with the literature circle discussion, each student also has to write a blog post about To Kill a Mockingbird. The students’ blog posts have been outstanding, the best all year by far. Based on my experiences in their literature circles, I think this is directly related to their role responses. Even though these responses have not spawned the discussions I envisioned, they have helped the students better understand the text through peer teaching. Here are a couple of the insightful blog posts my students created thus far:
The Fun: Each week I select two days to dedicate towards a minilesson involving the novel. So far these have included a Socioeconomic Character Chart to help students understand the relationship dynamics of the various characters, a map of the fictional Maycomb, and most recently a minilesson on fate and how it effects the plot. The Fate minilesson was inspired by many blog posts I read in which my students wrote things like Scout saved Atticus and Tom, Scout defends Atticus and scares off Mr. Cunningham. I realized that many of my students didn’t understand that Scout’s innocence unknowingly made Mr. Cunningham feel guilty. During the Fate minilesson I had the students get in groups of two or three. In their groups they defined fate in their own words then wrote it on the board. After we discussed the definition of fate as a class, the students went back to their groups and selected an event in the book they felt was determined by fate. They had to describe how the event changed the course of the plot and changed the characters involved in the event. They then wrote their thoughts on the board in a different color than their fate definitions.
After all of the groups had completed this task, we discussed the various events as a class. We talked about what the actions of the characters revealed about them as humans. We talked about how the events were shaped by the environment and society in which they took place. We talked about how these events were predetermined and that the outcomes were determined by the characters without them even knowing it. In the end, my students had a better understanding of the events that took place within the plot and how the outcomes changed the plot and characters. It was fun and my students were actively engaged in. In fact, in all three of my classes, it became a type of competition. Which group could come up with the most defining moment in the plot? Which group best described how an event changed the plot? Which group came up with the best statement about how the event changed the characters? Hey, a little competition never hurt anyone especially when that competition involved discussing literature!
