Literacy across the school is as palpable as ever and has been showcased heavily in our two major ventures within the Independent Reading program – Literature Circles and Textageddon where there is a greater focus on reading, writing and confidence in engaging in open and critical discussions.

How Does Literature Circles Run?

1. Organised into ‘Literature circles’ (or book groups), students are given time to negotiate as a team the amount of pages or chapters they will read consecutively each week over the 6-week period the program will run. They also decide who will be the discussion leader each week and create rules or expectations for everyone in the group to commit to.

Here is an image of one group’s rules and the amount of pages they have agreed to read.

2. Students are given two sessions in class to read the agreed amount of the books and ‘track their thoughts’ in wither their reading journals or via post it notes.

An example of a student’s ‘tracked thoughts’.

3. Students now collect and use their ‘tracked thoughts to guide them in their group discussion sessions. In groups, discussion leaders are expected to summarise the section of the book and stimulate discussion and questions that culminate into a group reflection recorded in their journals.

This program will continue until Week 8 of this term where students will then be tasked with presenting to the class about the book and their experiences over the time reading it.

A happy bunch of year 7s with their books.

Textageddon

We are in full swing with the Textageddon competition. Students have committed to an initial challenge and teachers are encouraging them to earn the coveted certificates along the way. The first of the accolades is the 100 points award and the second, naturally is the 200+ points award. Both are dictated by how many challenges have been completed or attempted. The final iteration of the three certificates is the ‘Home Group Champion’. This will be given to the student/s who have been able to successful garner the most amount of house points within their homegroup. We can’t wait to see these awards circulating!

The certificates