Below are some examples of successful literature circles that have taken place in real-life classrooms. Examples can better help us understand the content and adjust what has been done in order to make it successful for our own students.
Washington Irving School
Theresa Kubasak--Third Grade Classroom
From the first day of school, Theresa creates a warm classroom community and uses twenty days to train the students to successfully participate in literature circles. Her students do not use the role sheets, but she teaches them the skills that would be needed to complete each role so they can internalize these skills for meeting times. Theresa models each of the different types of roles for several days, practicing them with her students using rich picture books. As students become more familiar with the different skill sets, students are then given reading logs and Post-it notes in order to track their thinking while reading. Fast-forwarding to the middle of the year, her class is in full swing of literature circles. She does not use a formal mini-lesson; students know to get into their groups when it is that time during the day. Theresa observes her students during groups, and uses class discussions for mini-lesson topics such as vocabulary building, book selection, and solving group problems.
Sara Nordlund & Melissa Woodbury--Fourth Grade Classroom
These educators do not start out with literature circles at the beginning of the year. They start out with reader's workshop, where students and teachers dialogue with each other about books the students are reading. After these teachers have taught their students the necessary skills and have created a sense of community in the classroom is when they start literature circles with the students. Their cycles run from two to three weeks, and each session lasts between fifty and sixty minutes. Students meet four or five times a week. Their schedule is split into two parts: meeting and reading. Students first meet about what they read the previous day, and then students break up and read the assigned pages for that day. Each group members have reading logs where they make notes about their reading, and each group has role sheets to refer to, but they do not write on. This just gives them ideas for topics to discuss if the group hits a dead end. When students are in their groups, the teachers are walking around and noting observations about student behavior through use of a rubric (look under the "resources" tab for the specific example).