Literature Circles in Spanish Class

image from clipart-library.com

Have you tried Literature Circles in your upper level Spanish classes yet? I am almost finished this week-long activity in my Spanish 4 and AP classes, and I really like the way they're turning out! This is my second year trying them -- my colleague Jean Copeland, who teaches French 4 and AP French, introduced me to the idea last year (thanks Jean!). We both use them in our classes to talk about the summer reading. My Spanish 4 classes read  Lazarillo de Tormes and my AP Spanish class read El Señor Presidente (both published by Santillana Press as readers before Santillana was acquired by Vista last year - I have to find new books for next year!!). On first read, they tend to get what happens in each story but not the deeper meaning. By the end of the Literature Circles, they have engaged with the stories on a much deeper level! (I'm sure this could be done with a short story as well, with all groups talking about the same story, so no summer reading needed at all)

Here's how it works -- once your students have read a book you assign them to groups of 4 (with perhaps a group of 4 or a group of 5 as needed), assign that group a certain portion of the book read (i.e. Chapters 1-2, pp. 3-11), and then hand them the Literature Circle Packet for them to peruse. They can speak (in English, briefly) about who is best for each role: 1) the discussion leader  2) the vocabulary specialist 3) the literary critic and 4) the plot mapper (all roles described in detail in the packet). For groups of 3, I usually let them do away with the literary critic role. Since my classes did this for their summer reading, I gave them a reading check quiz (true/false) last Friday, marked them over the weekend, and them got them into their circles on Monday. I let them work all week in class preparing for their roles and making their posters and they were very much on task. I was able to walk around and question/clarify their work. I emphasized that all should have their books with them (I had a few extra copies/photocopies in class  as well) and be actively going back through the text in order to prepare. Friday (after four days of in-class work) they had their small group discussions. They did great! It truly made my heart happy to walk around and see all of the discussions in Spanish with meaningful questions about the book they were reading (I did guide discussion leaders during the week to help them come up with more meaningful, deeper questions rather than just quiz-like questions with a right and wrong answer i.e. What would have happened had the blind man shared his food with Lazarillo in the beginning? How would Lazarillo/the book be different? vs. Did the blind man share his food with Lazarillo?). There was a group or two in each class who said they had "finished" with about 10 minutes still to go. For them, I was prepared with some questions of my own. In the case of Lazarillo, I projected a list of characters and asked them to put them in order from "good/least bad" to "worst" (see HERE). They got very involved in this! Most agreed that Zaide, Lazarillo's step-father of African descent who steals in order to feed his family, and who was taken away and put in jail, was the character of highest moral standing. There was then lots of disagreement about the rest. One girl thought Lazarillo's mother was one of the worst characters for the fact that she let her son go. That led to a discussion about what desperation might lead a person to do. All that to say that students were really engaging with the literature. I loved it! I have also used Socratic Seminars with my students, and I think they're a good tool as well, but this seemed to have more students engaged (talking!), and on a more meaningful level. Tomorrow (Monday) my students will present their posters in order so that we see what happens in the book one more time. I'll collect the packets and we'll then move on (in my AP Spanish class we'll continue our Guatemala unit for a bit, watching the documentary Finding Oscar to connect to the themes of El Señor Presidente).

Lake Atitlán in Guatemala. June, 2019.

I may try Literature Circles again in the spring with a short story, since I was so happy with how they worked out! What are you doing in your classes to talk about literature? I'd love to hear!

For more resources for teaching Spanish 1 through AP, click HERE!