A 2 hour session for myPITA examining literature circles without roles or assigned reading, with a focus on Indigenous texts and building background knowledge through specific strategic sequences.

1. Grand Conversations, Thoughtful
Responses with Indigenous Texts
PITA Spring conference
Faye Brownlie
April 27, 2018
Slideshare.net/fayebrownlie.pita.lit
circles

2. There is great success in engaging
students with text and conversation
using literature circles
Literature Circles
STUDENTS
Within these groupings,
choose
their
own
books
are never
assigned
roles
read at
their own
pace
engage in
conversations
keep journals
about readings
and conversations
are taught
comprehension
strategies

3. Day 1: Introduction of book conversations
• Model and practice with poems
or short texts
• Ask the students:
“What comes to mind when you
read this?
SAY SOMETHING.”

6. Telford and Brookes
A.E. Perry Elementary, Kamloops
• Self-assessment rubric

8. Small Group Discussion: Fishbowl
• Model ‘say something’ with the whole class
• Select a diverse group of student volunteers to volunteer to
‘say something’ to another piece of text
• Remaining students observe and record ‘what works’ in the
discussion
• Collect the observaNons
• Group for criteria for a group discussion
• Givens:
– All voices are included
– The conversaNon change, deepens, extends my thinking
• Students reflect: what you should have noNced about my
parNcipaNon today

9. Criteria for an effective group discussion:
•all voices must be included
•everyone must feel included
•everyone’s ideas are respected
•the discussion moves us to new understandings

14. Building Background Knowledge:
see-think-wonder
• Present an image to the class
• See-think-wonder
• In groups, students examine different images and
apply the same strategy: see-think-wonder
• Students can provide a capNon for their image.
• Share images and capNons.
• Students write ‘the story behind the pictures’

15. Building Background Knowledge:
turn and talk
• Present an image or a quote or a few frames from
a graphic novel to the class
• Turn and talk
• In partners, students examine different images or
frames and apply the same strategy: turn and
talk
• Link the images or the frames
• Students write ‘the story behind the pictures’

20. Day 2: Start with the books
• choose 5 or 6 books with
multiple copies
• choose books that cover a wide
range of reader interest and level
of difficulty
• choose books that lead to
further reading (series, author)

21. Day 2: Introduce the books
• read an excerpt
• describe the kind of reader who might
enjoy this
• Describe the font, text features etc.
including “notice that’s”
Start Reading!!!
Students choose 2 texts each.
(One as a back up)

22. Day 3: Meet with the groups
• meet with a group who are reading the
same book, while the other students
continue reading
• students come to the meeting with a brief
passage prepared to read aloud
• After a student has read, others respond
by:
SAYING SOMETHING
about what they thought.

23. Response Writing
• Building background knowledge with picture
books
• WriNng in front of students
• Double-sided journal: Quote and response
• Building criteria
• Start with everyone wriNng at the same Nme and
having mini wriNng conferences while they are
wriNng
• Move to personally choosing when to respond –
perhaps 2 responses /week

24. Teaching Response Writing
• Model the wriNng from a picture book or a previously read class
novel.
• Choose your quote or event.
• Write this and your thinking, talking aloud about the decisions you
are making as a writer and thinker.
• Have the students analyze your wriNng. “What worked well?”
• Create a ‘messy’ list of the criteria (what worked well).
• Students write their response, using the criteria.
• Circulate as the students are wriNng, giving feedback
– What’s working?
– What’s not?
– What’s next?
– Conference with ALL students and use this Nme to acknowledge what
is working and to extend thinking.

27. Aboriginal Leader Project, as
culmination to a literature circle
unit on residential schools
Catherine Feniak and Shelley
Steer, gr. 6/7, Lord Kitchener,
Vancouver

28. • Goals:
– use Indigenous novels to build students’
understanding of the impact of residenNal schools
on Canada’s First People
– Increase student understanding of the history of
First Peoples in BriNsh Columbia
– Build student empathy and understanding of
Vancouver’s First People
– Increase inclusion of all students by introducing
visual journals and small group discussions

29. • Students were taught how to keep visual
journals in response to Shin Shin’s Canoe and
Shi Shi Etco.
• Visual journals were kept as response to class-
read picture books, speakers, field trips, and
the individual novels the students read.

30. • Shi-shi-etko – Nicola Campbell, illustrator –
Kim LaFave – read and wonder
• Recorded individually and as a group, with
words or pictures
• Repeated with Sin-chi’s Canoe – Nicola
Campbell, Illustrator – Kim LaFave

31. Building Background Knowledge:
visual images and writing in role
• Read a poem to the students
• Invite them to sketch as you read
• Ager reading aloud twice, give each student a
copy of the poem to reread personally
• Gallery walk the images
• Students write in role in response to the poem
or its connecNon to the theme or big idea of
your unit

32. TESTIMONY Going to the Dorm –
Shirley M Flowers
My mother sits by the window crying
Her heart is breaking
It’s the same memory every fall
The plane has taken her children away
They are gone for all winter
It’s <me for them to go to school
School is ninety miles away
We will not see them again for ten months
In the spring my brothers and sisters return
The plane flies overhead
My mother is running and crying
She’s crippled but she can run today

33. I hide behind my mother’s dress
I’m shy
My brothers and sisters
are strangers
Soon it will be my turn to go
When I turn twelve or thirteen
I have to leave too
I’m scared and excited at the same <me
I’m venturing out into a new world
I’m living in a room full of strangers
Some are kind, some are cruel
I’m constantly homesick and I cry all the <me
My heart is breaking
I want to be home

34. I see someone who might help me
I walk up to his car and say
“Can you send me home please
I’m lonesome and it’s making me sick”
That person doesn’t answer
He just looks at me and drives away
leaving me crying, standing in a cloud of dust
Next thing I know I’m being told I’m a trouble maker
The principal of our school
Has been advised that I want to go home
I’m told that what I’m saying and feeling
is upseHng others
And causing problems for the people
who run the place
And there’s no way I can go home
All hope is lost
I just have to make it through this year

35. My God, how can people do this?
How can they own my life?
I feel like I must be in a prison
I can’t get away
I can’t see my parents
My heart is breaking
I hate it here
Some<mes we have to fight for food
We have to work hard to look aMer the place
I can’t wait to get out of here
Spring comes, I can go home soon
I will never come back
I do though, one more <me
This <me I run away
No one can make me stay here
Now when I look at my teenage daughter
I realize some of what I lost
How do I be a mother to her
I wasn’t with my mother when I was her age
My heart breaks
But this <me all is not lost
No one owns my life
I am free
And this freedom I will share with her.

38. • Lehers wrihen in the voice of a child in
residenNal school ager listening to, reading
and visual journaling around the poem
‘TesNmony – Going to the Dorm’ by Shirley M.
Flowers

42. • Red Wolf – Jennifer Dance
• My Name Is Seepeetza – S hirley SNrling
• The Heart of a Chief – Joseph Bruchac
• Fahy Legs – Christy Jordan Fenton & Margaret
Pokiak Fenton
• Stranger at Home – Fenton & Pokiak Fenton
• When I Was Eight – Fenton & Pokiak Fenton

43. • Book Talk
• Assigned kids who needed support to Fa#y
Legs
• Groups decided how much to read and could
read to the end
• Read many books – individuals could change
groups

44. hhp://weweresofaraway.ca/survivor-stories/
shirley-flowers/

46. Additional Reading
• It’s All about Thinking – in English, Social Studies,
and HumaniNes (Brownlie & Schnellert)
– Ch 9 Lit Circles, Gr 6/7, EssenNal QuesNon: What is
Ancient China’s greatest legacy?
– Ch 10 Lit Circles, Gr 5/6 FI and En collaboraNon
– Ch 12 On-line Lit Circles
• Student Diversity, 3rd ed – Brownlie, Feniak,
Schnellert
– Ch 7, Gr 5/6, Slavery

47. • Grand ConversaNons, Thoughpul Responses
(Brownlie)
- A short text on lit circles with no roles, no limits on reading,
student choice within a text set
• It’s All about Thinking – Middle Years (Schnellert,
Watson, Widdess)
– Ch 6 Inquiry Text Set for PersecuNon and CommunicaNon,
Literature Circle QuesNongram
– Ch 8 Self-regulaNon, Building Criteria, strategies
– Ch 9 Theme is displacement, First NaNons Community-
Generated Texts, Graphic Novels, Cyberbullying unit

48. ! Webcast:
! Literature Circles in the Middle Years
! www.bced.gov.bc.ca/literacy
! Webcast, part 2

49. Picture Books
•When We Were Alone – David A Robertson
•Pisim Finds Her Miskanow – William Dumas
•Secret of the Dance – Andrea Spalding
•Northwest NaNve Arts, Basic Forms –
•I Am Not a Number – Jenny Dupuis
•Shi-Shi-Etko – Nicola Campbell
•Shin-Chi’s Canoe – Nicola Campbell
•When I Was Eight – Christy Jordan-Fenton
•Not My Girl – Christy Jordan-Fenton
•Kookum’s Red Shoes – Peter Eyvindson
•Stolen Words – Melanie Florence

50. Books - Primary
• The Seven Teachings Stories Series
• Strong Readers – MéNs Series
• Strong Readers – Northern Series

51. Books - Intermediate
• He Who Dreams – Melanie Florence
• Abnormal (Billy Buckhorn trilogy) – Gary Robinson
• Diamond Willow – Helen Frost (not AB author)
• Red Wolf – Jennifer Dance (not AB author)
• The Girl with a Baby – Sylvia Olsen
• Dogsong – Gary Paulson
• Sweetgrass – Jan Hudson
• Honour the Sun – Ruby Supperjack
• Wenjack – Joseph Boyden
• The Secret Path – Gord Downie (and video)
• Tales from Big Spirit – 8 graphic novels