A New Type of Literature Circle Takes Shape

The idea for Textmasters arose from a needgraders to pilot our still nameless strategy. We
expressed by a group of graduate students that Idecided to set up this pilot as an action research
taught in a summer content area, reading class.study.
We had just finished a round of literature circlesWe began our action research study by following
using historical fiction. While debriefing the activity,one chapter of traditional textbook instruction.
one educator, Mrs. Stelkan (pseudonym), raisedStudents read the assigned reading on their own,
the complaint that while she would love to useanswered questions provided by the textbook,
literature circles in her content area classes, shereviewed the material using a study sheet
did not have the resources to purchase the tradedeveloped by Mrs. Stelkan, and then took a
books necessary for implementation. Herchapter test. Seventy-three students took the
sentiment was echoed by the majority of herchapter test and the average score was 86%.
peers; these practicing educators reported thatThis score provided the baseline for our action
they were assigned a set of textbooks for allresearch study.
content areas and that requests for outsideNext, Mrs. Stelkan brought me in to train her
resources were often turned down. Thinking aloudstudents using the roles that we selected for
in class, I hypothesized, "Wouldn't it be neat if weapplying literature circles to textbook reading. We
developed a kind of Omega Replica literature circleexamined both traditional literature circle roles and
for use with different textbooks?" Eyes lit upnew ones created by practitioners applying the
around the room.strategy to nonfiction Replica IWC and content
Mrs. Stelkan, a fifth-grade teacher, liked the ideaarea reading and selected four: Discussion
of developing literature circle roles for assistingDirector, Summarizer, Vocabulary Enricher, and
students in reading the textbook for severalWebmaster. Two of these roles are traditional
reasons. First, she taught four different classes ofroles: Discussion Director and Summarizer. One
science during the day—reflective of the middlerole, the Vocabulary Enricher, is generally applied
school set-up of the school where sheto nonfiction literature circles. The final role,
taught—but had only one set of scienceWebmaster, was one Mrs. Stelkan created to
textbooks. Any reading that was done had to bereflect the fifth-grade reading standard that asked
in class. Next, Mrs. Stelkan was completing astudents to apply knowledge gained from reading
masters' in reading specialization and knew that into a variety of graphic organizers. For all roles, we
order for her students to be successful acrossrewrote the tasks to reflect textbook structures.
the curriculum, she needed to reinforce goodThese tasks are summarized in Table 1.
literacy practices in her science classroom. Finally,The name Textmasters was developed to reflect
Mrs. Stelkan felt the same need that I did:the nature of the strategy. For a student to be a
textbook reading in the content areas needed a"master" of any text they read, they must be
change. Literature circles are so enjoyable with allcompetent in all of the responsibilities we chose:
types of fiction and nonfiction—why not theask good questions (Discussion Director),
textbook?summarize what they read (Summarizer), learn
During the rest of the content area reading class,about new words (Vocabulary Enricher), and
Mrs. Stelkan would come in and show me herorganize important information into graphic
ideas for using the textbook in literature circles.organizers (Webmaster).
She then volunteered her class of incoming fifth