7th Grade Literature Circle Overview

2014 Literature Circle 7^th grade

My email is rebecca_poulson@hotmail.com, phone 747-3448

Here is this handout as a pdf.

Tentative schedule: This week (October 10th) get the book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and read chapters 1-16, research something about the background of the book, sticky-note a passage that sticks out to you.

Next week we’ll share the background research and discuss the part of the book we’ve read. The assignment will be to write a paragraph, from the discussion or your own thoughts, and read the middle third of the book.

Week 3 Share our paragraphs, discuss what we read, and assignment will be the same as before, a paragraph and read the rest of the book.

Week 4 Talk about the whole book, and the task will be to write a one-page essay on a topic of your choice, but I’ll suggest taking a particular incident and telling how you believe it fits into the book.

Week 5 We’ll share these, and the task will be to edit and post, and start next book.

We’ll play it by ear, not to overload anybody but make it interesting.

The other books (this can also change):

Boy by Roald Dahl
Call of the Wild (also a Battle book)
Haa Shuka (classic Tlingit oral literature)
Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Jane Eyre
Great Expectations
Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
great short stories, American and English
Frankenstein
Hamlet
Kidnapped

Kidnapped, Hamlet, and Frankenstein we don’t have copies of, but I’m looking at your being able to buy through the bookstore (they are pretty cheap).

So jumping right into 1840s small town Missouri, in the opening chapter of Huckleberry Finn, probably won’t make a lot of sense. There are a lot of books where you just have to move on, keep reading. Especially if this is one of the first books you’ve read from the 1800s, you’ll have to read a few before you get a sense of not only the language but the customs and objects we don’t have any more.

There are some great Modern novels, like Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, which opens from the point of a view of a severely mentally challenged man (who’s also going back and forth in his memory), or James Joyce’s Ulysses, or Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, which don’t make a lot of sense when you first read them – and that’s part of what the book is, opening up space for our participation.

The main thing with literature is that there is no One Right Answer or response. These are all great books because there is so much to encounter, so many levels and ways they can resonate with your life and thoughts. They all have flaws and you don’t have to like them. And, they will be different when you read them as an adult, probably better.

So don’t worry. Jump on in and enjoy.