My Background and the Book I Chose

How do I want to structure my classroom and my curriculum? This is a question that I am exploring as a new teacher and also as I start teaching in a new environment--the community college. (And yes, it is as strange as that TV show Community )

I am a very new teacher. I have worked with high school students in theatre for several years, but this is my second year teaching full-time by myself. The continuing processes that I am undergoing while planning units, teaching students, and learning from others has been interesting for me and continues to keep me busy. I am still determining what my roles are as an instructor and how I can best include my students in my curriculum, especially now that I am teaching adults. I know I don't want my class to look like this, though the puppets are definitely entertaining:

I'm sure that my graduate courses and the books that I am reading will help me in the process of designing my courses. I am reading Getting Started with Literature Circles by Katherine L. Schlick Noe and Nancy J. Johnson. 

Yes, the little circles do make this book look like it is a sci fi book from outer space. The title should instead be, Getting Started with Aliens. And maybe that is part of the reason I chose the book--because I do like reading science fiction. :)

The real reason I chose this book is because I am now teaching at a community college, and though I currently teach a course called Essay Writing, I plan to teach Reading courses in the future. These courses are part of the School of General and Adult Education at Central New Mexico Community College. 

I hope that I will be able to incorporate the process of literature circles in my future courses, though I am not sure how that will work. I am reading this book for our LLSS 528 course and also to help me with some ideas that I will be able to try in my future teaching.

I have read some material on literature circles/book clubs in the past. This book seems to follow along the lines of that material. For instance, in another graduate course, I read The Book Club Companion by Cindy O’Donnell Allen. 

This book was really interesting and included a lot of ideas about how to create book clubs. I would recommend The Book Club Companion to anyone who wants literature circle ideas. The Book Club Companion is very structured and O’Donnell Allen provides project ideas, role sheets, activities, etc.

I used The Book Club Companion along with other resources to plan out several units that I intended to teach when I was working at a high school, but I ultimately never used them. I think I was a little intimidated and overwhelmed with the ideas. I taught 12th grade English at the time, and I felt like I needed to try to structure my curriculum so that it was similar to the other 12th grade teacher’s curriculum. There didn’t seem to be any room in my curriculum for literature circles. 

As I reflect and look back on that time, I think my students would have really enjoyed literature circles. We had independent reading in my class instead, but I think I could have easily incorporated literature circles in part of the independent reading time. This probably would have helped all of the students because the hesitant readers would have had the opportunity to discuss and share books that the active students could have chosen for our class. I think hesitant readers would have been more likely to read the books that their peers chose, rather than read things that I suggested to them for independent reading time.

I hope that I can provide my adult readers with the opportunity to enjoy reading along with the skills that I will need to teach them for reading in college courses. I think I will need to find a way to incorporate short texts in literature circles (because my students are in remedial classes to help them prepare for college and I have limited time). I wonder if there is research on using short stories in literature circles? I will need to look into this.


In the introduction to Getting Started with Literature Circles, Schlick Noe and Johnson tell the reader that “discussion strengthens students’ ability and motivation to read” (ix). I would really like to strengthen my students’ motivation to read.

For those of you who have used literature circles and/or independent reading time in your classes, I have a question for you: how do you fit it into your curriculum? Do you use books that center around a theme which will connect to other units in your curriculum? Do you allow students to choose any books that they want to use for independent reading/literature circles as reading for enjoyment? Or do you use some combination in between? For those of you who haven’t used literature circles, how do you think you might use circles in your curriculum?