English 8 students began preparing for literature circles they’re going to be conducting over the next week as we begin a new unit in celebration of Black History Month. Students looked at the eight roles in a lit circle:

1. Summarizer: Your job is to prepare a brief summary of today’s reading that includes the key points, main highlights, and general idea of today’s reading assignment.
2. Questioner/discussion leader: Your job is to develop a list of questions that your group might want to discuss about this part of the book.
3. Connector: Your job is to find connections between the book and you, and between the book and the wider world.
4. Illustrator: Draw some kind of picture related to the reading you have just done.
5. Travel tracer: Carefully track where the action takes place during today’s reading. Describe each setting in detail, either in words or with an action map or diagram.
6. Vocabulary: Your job is to be on the lookout for a few words that have special meaning in today’s reading selection
7. Literary Luminary: Your job is to locate a few special sections or quotations that are especially interesting, powerful, funny, puzzling, or important sections in the text for your group to talk over.
8. Researcher: Your job is to dig up some background information on any relevant topic related to your reading.

After a quick overview, we practiced them all as a class:

We will begin tomorrow.

English I students worked more on their Romeo and Juliet project, specifically on connecting the song “Decoration Day” to the play. Yesterday we came up with several possible connections:

Today students worked on creating their first paragraphs based on these ideas.

Homework

• English 8 Studies: none.
• English I Honors: complete a rough draft of your first “Decoration Day” paragraph.