Dracula Literature Circles

What is a Literature Circle?
Think of a literature circle as a book club on steroids. Instead of just chatting aimlessly about the book you've just read, a book circle discussion gives you specific frames with which to view your novel. Book discussion groups have probably existed since there were books, but literature circles are a fairly new concept (1982 is still new to me, although it's probably ancient to you).

While a traditional literature circle allows you to select your own books to discuss in your group, we'll do our first literature circles over Dracula so you can learn the ropes before setting off on your own next trimester.

Literature Circle Roles
There are six roles in our version of the literature circle:
 * Discussion Director
 * Summarizer
 * Literary Luminary
 * Investigator
 * Connector
 * Vocabulary Enricher

Some groups will not have six people. If that's your group, then you will not have a Connector.

Each of these roles has a specific set of tasks that you must perform. To help us meet our required technology standards, you'll also be incorporating technology into your literature circles and preserving those online. I will help you learn how to use the various forms of technology.

A Discussion Director's Responsibilities
As Discussion Director, you must come up with a list of guiding questions for your group to discuss after they each share their various products with the rest of the group.

To help you come up with lists of questions to discuss, you might want to check sources like SparkNotes. Also, consider the "big five" I gave you in our first seminar discussion (themes, motifs, symbols, allusions, and significant quotes). Naturally, I'll help you come up with questions if you don't have any ideas, but do try to think of them on your own.

You will also be responsible for creating the group Weebly page to organize your group's technology contributions. Instructions for doing so are located here --> How to Create a Weebly

A Summarizer's Responsibilities
It is the SUMMARIZER's job to read through the selected passage(s) (in this case, chapters 10-18 of Dracula) and summarize the most important events and details for the group.

Things the summarizer should take note of include important plot points, mentions and actions of characters, and examples of literary devices used in the text, basically as a study sheet for the assigned chapters.

You can do this in any number of formats (whichever works best for you). Some suggestions:
 * type your list and have the discussion director copy/paste it to the Weebly.
 * create a Quizlet study set
 * make a PowerPoint (and then upload it to Slide Rocket so your DD can put it on the Weebly)

A Literary Luminary's Responsibilities


A Literary Luminary is responsible for taking the imagery in the text and making it come to life. Basically, you are required to "illustrate" the event (or events) that you feel is/are the most important in your assigned section of reading.

We will be using Glogster to create your masterpieces. A Glog is a digital poster. You can embed anything you want in your Glogs--you can find music to play in the background, post images you find on the Web (or draw pictures and we can take a photo on the iMac to upload to your Glog). You can even post Youtube clips on a Glog.

An Investigator's Responsibilities
It's the investigator's job to play Sherlock Holmes and put things into perspective for the rest of the group.

An investigator researches the context (historical, geographical, cultural) of the novel. For Dracula, your investigator will want to gather facts on the history of the vampire legend (remember that link I gave you?), Victorian era beliefs, the gothic genre, and the geographics of Wallachia, Transylvania, etc.

You can present this information any way you like, but I suggest either typing out your info and adding it directly to your group Weebly OR creating a PowerPoint or Prezi with your data.

A Connector's Responsibilities


A connector's job involves helping you make connections between the text you've read and other texts and real life.

As the connector, you'll discuss with your group connections that you've identified.

One fun way to help you remember the things you plan to discuss is to create a word cloud like a Wordle (www.wordle.com). Just type the list of words and phrases in the box and it will generate a picture you can share with your class (see me for help uploading it to your Weebly).

You can also create a Glog or a presentation (PowerPoint, Prezi, etc).

A Vocabulary Enricher's Responsibilities


A vocabulary enricher's job is to pick up on words that you or your group members might not know and help them understand them.

The easiest way for you to complete the Vocabulary Enricher's task would be to use Quizlet, the free flashcard generator that I use for your SAT vocabulary.

You'll simply look through your assigned chapters and identify words you think you should include (a minimum of 10 different words per chapter). Quizlet will even help you by suggesting definitions!

Group A

 * Autumn
 * Savannah
 * Halle
 * Morgan
 * Ainsley
 * Lauren

Group B

 * Dallas
 * Josh L
 * Mikaila
 * Elliott
 * Lindsey
 * Haylee

Group C

 * Melinda
 * Brenna
 * Sarah
 * Faith
 * Luke
 * Ben

Group D

 * Kaitlynne
 * Sam
 * Fowler
 * Tylor
 * Daisha

Group E

 * Kaleb
 * Josh S
 * Rebecca
 * Kyle
 * Jacob
 * Keegan

Instruction Sheets
How to Create a Weebly