Literature Circles II

So our first meeting with the literature circles went well, though there are a few things our group decided to change for next week. We read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, or in some cases, re-read it, and it was very easy to pick up a new thread of conversation when we were together. Before we began, we had not assigned roles, but instead we came up with 8 subjects for discussion, wrote them down, and referred to them throughout our ~45 minute talk. I couldn't believe how fast that 45 minutes went! We began by discussing the relationships Harry had with some of the other characters in the book, and how we defined them in the grand scheme of Harry's life/experience at Hogwart's and outside of it. We explored the villains of the novel, the over-arching themes, the parts we liked best, the connections to other authors in the same genre,our personal thoughts on the writing of J.K. Rowling in general, how this would work in a classroom of adolescents, and also the adolescent issues within the novel. We each took our turn explaining our thoughts in detail, and I know that I had a great time talking with everyone present.

My favorite part of the discussion was definitely the responses from the two people in our group who had never read any of the series. Only having seen the movie, they thought they wouldn't really enjoy reading the stories in this form. HA! Not so much. Jessica is hooked, I think...and if you ask me, it is hard not to be hooked. We actually discussed why it is that J.K. Rowling hooks you in after only a few pages, and decided it was her brilliant use of foreshadowing, and the conversational tone of her writing. The story is easy to read, but uses rich, descriptive language to convey meaning, and there are many sly references to things that will happen in the next book, which compels you to read on. Tricky, that woman, tricky.

We decided that next time we will change only one thing; we are going to come prepared with specific quotes from the text to guide our discussion of Burger Wuss by M.T. Anderson. We will touch on each of the eight questions from this first meeting, but we will bring in specific quotations to backup our points, rather than discussing the events in the novel from memory alone. In this way, I think we will add depth to the discussion and possibly even come up with more stuff to use if we ever decide to use the text in our classrooms.