The target audience for this workshop is: Upper Elementary and Middle School (Grades 5 - 9)
Literature circles are one of the hottest trends in language arts education, and not without reason. Not only do they encourage student engagement and interactions, they also provide teachers with the invaluable opportunity to step back and observe real student involvement, and comprehension of the class materials. Christina Shala is leading the way in bringing Literature Circles to ESL and modern foreign language programs around the world. Literature circles will introduce a fun, dynamic environment into any classroom, allowing students to practice all four of the aspects of their second language education; reading, writing, auditory and oral. Students are broken into small groups and assigned individual roles, providing them the opportunity to lead their own discussions and take ownership over their learning experience. Where typical second language classrooms tend to focus individually on one language skill or another, Literature Circles engage all of a student’s language skills together in a comfortable and natural way, and help students make direct connections to their second language through immersive use, as opposed to theoretical study.
In this workshop participants will learn:
- The benefits of incorporating Literature Circles into ESL and modern foreign language classrooms.
- How to implement Literature Circles into a lesson plan.
- How to use Literature Circles as a student assessment tool.
This workshop aims to provide second language educators around the world, with the tools they need to efficiently implement a Literature Circle program into their pre-existing lesson plans. Our goal is to increase the impact Second Language programs have on students, and ensure they are leaving their programs with a firm, real-world understanding of the languages they are pursuing.