READING

CIRCLES as
literacy practice
and language
pedagogy
Sam Duncan, June 2012
Today’s aims:
 To
explore some history, research and
characteristics of reading circles

 Tosee what we can learn from one case

study

 To
identify and discuss how we could each
use reading circles in our classrooms
WHAT IS A READING CIRCLE?
For each card, please discuss:

❖ Is this a reading circle? Why or why not?

❖ What do you think the members of the

circle gained (in terms of language or
other learning)?
READING CIRCLES:
 Are centred around a written text
 Involve reading
 Are non-hierarchical
 Involve turn-taking
 Are collaborative
 Involve peer teaching and learning
 Involve discussion
LITERATURE ABOUT READING CIRCLES:
 Educational research on reading circles in
school (native-speaker) English classes
 Educational research on reading circles in
English as a Foreign Language Teaching
 Historical research
 Research/writing on the reading circles
adults form themselves for a range of
reasons
A CASE STUDY
A group of adult literacy learners, with these aims:
 Try out reading different things, including longer books
 Increase confidence reading

 Talk as a group

 Write different types of texts

 Practice reading longer or unfamiliar words

 Learn new words, what they mean

 Read stories and novels

 Read aloud for my work

 Improve reading and spelling

 Use more words in my writing

SETTING UP THE READING CIRCLE
 Building on the group request to read a novel or
longer narrative text
 Discussed the idea of reading circles/book clubs

 Group discussion to establish what everyone

wanted to get out of it and how they wanted it to
work
 Brought in books, discussed and and voted

 Ordered the books, ordered notebooks

 Got started!

 Individual and group conversations about consent

for research
WHAT WE DID, WEEK BY
WEEK…
 chairperson
 note-taker

 talking about what we read at home

 reading aloud

 helping each other decode

 talking about meanings of words

 building the story and the characters

 deciding how much to read over the week

 reading at home

 used individual notebooks

OVERALL, HOW DID THEY DEVELOP
THEIR LANGUAGE/LITERACY?
That’s the notebook that I took the
notes down in, and that’s me
imagining what’s going on, about
Roma and things, and then that’s me
looking up new words in the
dictionary, to learn new words. These
were the main things that I was
doing.
 Journey to
reading books.

And makes my
job enjoyable.
Right, ‘the journey to reading books’ it means
that now I can pick up a novel or a book,
knowing that I can read it and I will understand.
And ‘to make my job enjoyable’ because I
understand if something is written down I can
read it, because they do a lot of writing and if
the nurse is not there I just have to pick it up
and read what they have done, without them –
the care plan I can do that. And actually I’m
looking forward to a new life of reading for
myself.
It’s a cake […] Everybody liked it. We all took part in it. And
it was complementary. Everybody was complementing,
trying to understand, trying to understand each other’s
points…. Everybody had the physical cake, the book.
Everybody could pick it up and eat it whenever they felt
like it... I don’t think there’s any boundaries…everybody
took part; we had a spokesperson to keep us in order,
but there wasn’t any boundaries, everybody explored,
everybody was free, explored their own…wasn’t afraid
to explore.
That’s the brain, and the heart, and this is, like,
when I start to read and I am happy and I like it,
I am happy it goes up and then it goes down
because I feel sad about it and then up more
and then down more […] most of them
[emotions] come from my brain. No, my heart-
no both of them- it’s your heart and brain.
When she [the reader] is reading something
happy she is happy and when things are not
right in the story and she feels sad; it changes as
she reads.
 It’sa brother and a sister, with arms
joined, a brother and a sister. They could
have been like that but they’re not […]. I
was imagining this, how it would have
been if she’d been born naturally, how
she’s his sister, how he would have had
some support if she’d been born naturally
[…] I think it’s about compassion, all about
compassion. His compassion for her and
her compassion for him.
OTHER GAINS REPORTED:
 Vocabulary
 Discussion skills/confidence

 Decoding words

 Feeling like I can read and understand a book

 Pronunciation

 Spelling

 Building words into sentences and sentences into

paragraphs and chapters..
 Writing- notes and sentences

 Punctuation

 Confidence working in a group, negotiating etc

VARIATIONS

 Reading aloud or not?

 Reading in the session or not?

 Their choice of texts or yours?

 Length? One longer text or shorter ones?

 Fiction or not?

 ‘Authentic’ texts or not?

 Writing about the reading?

 Questions or follow up activities?

 Do you help define words or do they?

 Formalising vocabulary or spelling?

 Where should you be?

FINAL THOUGHTS

 Reading circles as both a real literacy practice and an

ideal pedagogy
 Most of us like to talk about what we’ve read

 Reading is a communal as well as an individual activity

 We can form interpretations or understandings in

conversation with others
 We remember stories and stories can help us remember
other things
 Books- of various types- can offer real interest to our
learners
Boyarin, J. (ed). (1993). The Ethnography of Reading. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
Cumming-Potvin, W. (2007). Scaffolding, multiliteracies, and reading
circles. Canadian Journal of Education, 30(2), 483-507.
Duncan, S. (2012). Reading Circles, Novels and Adult Reading
Development. London: Continuum.
Harvey, S., & Daniels, H. (2009). Inquiry Circles in Action:
Comprehension & Collaboration. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Houston, R. A. (2002). Literacy in Early Modern Europe. London:
Longman
Long, E. (2003). Book Clubs: Women and the Uses of Reading in
Everyday Life. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Shelton-Strong, S. (2012). Literature Circles in ELT. ELT Journal, 66(2),
214-223)