Collaborative Literature Circles

Why is it good to work with a partner on our literature circles? I have partnered up with Sunskruthi, we are reading "The True Confessions Of Charlotte Doyle" and we have to write literature circles to it. Here are a few reasons why I think it was good to work with a partner, challenges/obstacles that I overcame  and new understandings that I gained about the novel.


1. It is good to work with a partner on our literature circles because, lately I have been struggling on my literature circles and since I had Sunskruthi as a partner I could use her as a role model since she has not been struggling with her literature circles. I have now learnt a lot of new strategies and structures to layout my literature circle.  Working with Sunskruthi really improved my skill and my questions. When I did my first literature circle my questions and important passages did not have a lot of examples and evidence. Now having Sunskruthi as a partner she has taught me how to give evidence and that I should put, what page number the evidence was and which book it was. Overall it was a pleasure to work with Sunskruthi and I have learnt a lot from her.


2. I have overcome a lot challenges and obstacles. I usually had no idea what to write when it came up to the question and the answer, so I asked Sunskruthi if she could help me get a idea so we went on moodle and we found a sheet that was titled "Question Stems" , so we clicked on it and a bunch of ideas for questions came up and so we collaborated together and we each helped each other find a question. One of my obstacles that really stood out was that my important passages did not have enough information and they were just some information that was not organized. Also my content was  not strong enough. I have overcome a lot of obstacles and challenges from Sunskruthi and improving my habits.


3. I have new understandings that I gained from the novel. One of them is that I learnt how to find clues in simple text. Working with Sunskruthi really helped me focus on the true meaning and the hindsight of the book. On my other literature circles I would never really look at the true meaning of the book and the clues. This is really important because now I can have much more richer context and organized context. I truly believe that this is the key to a better literature circle. I have really improved on my literature circle because of this one skill. But trust me it was not easy to learn.


I think overall my literature circle has really improved and I could not have done it without Sunskruthi.

Literature Circle Blogpost #1- The True Confessions Of Charlotte Doyle

My groups discussion has helped me a lot by making sure that I stay focused on the book and share my feelings about the book. For example I do not understand some parts of the book since English is my second language. Also I have some difficulties with understanding  grammer so if I talk to my group about it and then they can explain it. Sometimes in my literature circles I like to ask questions that foreshadow the story. Group discussions help me understand the book because I get to share my feelings and my inner comments about the book. I sometimes have millions of ideas coming to my mind and I know that I can tell my group and they will not think it is weird or crazy.


In my group we have some connections and we don't. Sometimes what happens is that someone says a comment or asks a question and then everyone agrees with them. For example in our discussion a few days ago I had a few questions on the first few chapters of the book and then everyone agreed with me and they also had the same questions. The important passages are usually the same in our group since they are most noticed to everyone and everyone can tell that those are the most important passages. Vocabulary has a wide range in it so most of the time nobody has the same vocabulary words. All in all my group and I have a lot of connections.


There are a lot of things that I predict for the next chapters.  One of them is that I think that Captain Jaggery is evil and he wants to do something to or with Charlotte. I thought that Zachariah was weird or bad since he gave Charlotte the knife but actually he is good and he gave her the knife to protect herself from Captain Jaggery and other bad people on the boat since he has worked on the boat for a long time. Another event I predict to happen in the future is that Captain Jaggery gets defeated by the crew and Charlotte(since they work to get revenge on Captain Jaggery) and that because he got defeated he will accuse Charlotte to have murdered someone. Those are a few predictions I have for the future of "The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle".