Collaberating Constructively

I told all of you people who are reading my blog posts that we got our new lit circle groups and books last week. Well after we read a chapter of the book we have to do a assesment on it. The assesment include 2 passages, 2 questions, 2 responses to the questions, 2 connections and 2 vocabulary words. We do one more of each thing as we move on to other books. Our humanities teacher came up with a brilliant idea. For the first time we had to do our lit circle work sheet with a partner! That means we only do 1 passage, 1 question, 1 response to the question, 1 connection and 1 vocabulary word! Our partner does the other ones.

I think working with partners turned out to be GOOD! We had a lot less stress since we did not have to do two of everything. And we could get a pre-assesment. Our partner could edit our work so that we don't have any errors in out writing. And they could help us explain our ideas better. That will help us get quality work. Also we could edit their work to make it better as well. And your partner could be good with questons (like my partner) and you could be good with passages (like me). Then your partner could help you with your questions and you could help them with their passages. All in all you could improve your questions and your partner could improve their passages! And you could help your partner stay on task. The lit circle assesment is something you have to do at home. So if your partner always waits till last minute then you could force them to start it early. Why should you do this? First of all you are helping your partner! Sencond of all you and your partner will get the same grade so if your partners work is not 'quality work' then you will get a bad grade too! If you always wait to last minute then your partner could help you stay on task. If both of you wait till last minute. You have to work harder! And you have to be more responsible!

My partner forgot to take his book home over the weekend! And our lit circles were due on tuesday. I was so angry with him! But I had to live with it! So I told him that I would help him with the passage, vocab and connections. Other than that he has to do it. I really wanted a good grade in my lit circle so I decided to be nice to him. And since I could not invite him over I had to help him with chat. Which is really hard because I cannot tell him a paragraph on chat. So helping him over chat did not work. SO we had to work on it monday! I let him borrow my book (apparently he had lost his)! I made sure he was not fooling around and told him that he had to finish his question today in class. He finished his questions. I helped him put it in more simple words. Then at home I went online onto our google doc page to make sure he was working. I read everything he wrote. I fixed grammatical errors. Then if there were some big mistakes I would comment on them tell him to FIX IT! In the end our lit circle was not so bad!

My partner and I had very different point of view of the novel we are both reading (Julie of the Wolves). So when I read his work it made me think more critically about the book. Because I am a student who has trouble with making good questions. When I read his work I was like "Oh I never thought of it like that"! I started wondering about things I normally don't think about. In his passage he told us about how traditionalist Julie or Miyax is (Julie and Miyax are the same people and she is the main charactor of the book). I never thought of it like like that. I just thought she was having a temper tantrum (in the book Miyax gets mad at her father because he called her Julie, her English name). I have learned a lot of new things about Julie of the Wolves because I worked with some who thinks very different from me!

Pictures taken from:
http://school.discoveryeducation.com/clipart/images/thinkingcapwhoa.gif
http://childrenschapel.org/biblestories/graphics/kids3.gif
http://partnership.education.manchester.ac.uk/images/clipart/report_with_words_and_pictures_clip_image002_0001.gif

My Discussion

We just got our new literature circle books and groups! This time we got to chose our own book from a selection of books. I chose Julie of The Wolves. Becasue of that my group contains the following people: Vicky, P.J., Alex, Julia and Me. Our group has a lot of fun in our group on our meeting days. We laugh and talk about the book. In our last lit circles the whole class did the same book Call it Courage by Armstrong Sperry. And because of that on out meeting days we got distracted becasue we heard what other people were saying. And we might have disagreed with their opinion so we get involved in their group discussion. But now that we have different books we get less distracted! And that helps us concentrate more!

How did my discussion help me understand the book better? That is the exact same question I thought of when I heard we had to do lit circles again. I had thought that I got rid of those when I left elementary! But as we went through the trimester I began to understand why teachers make us do lit circle. It is so that we can have our own opinion be challenged by someone else's very different opinion about the book. We had to think in many different ways because when we don't discuss the book with other people our opinion might have been right but all we would have been doing is making a opinion and stopping at that. But when we discuss the book we have many different options which makes us think my critically when we are reading the book. And we hear something that some other person wrote in there lit circle that we didn't even notice when we were reading the book. This also helps us understand the book better because the part that we didn't notice might have been a important part!

In my group we kept making connections! Because we had so many experiences that were similar to the things that were in the book. When ever we gave comments on some else's work one of us always had a connection. Some connections were how I always wnated a ride my dog when I was little. But soon he figured it out so whenever I went near him he will sit down! He is too big and heavy to pick up. So it was like when Miyax could not catch Amaroq's eye I couldn't ride on my dog.

We had lots of predictions about what happens at the end of the book. This questions started a huge debate. Becasue half of us thought that Miyax will amke it the San Fransisco at the end adn the other s thought that she would not! Then we started discussing why Daniel was so evil becasue of one of my discussion questions. My prediction was that he was treating Miyax badly.

My lit circle group has helped me be more critical when I am reading. I almost always find myself wondering about things while reading that I didn't even care about before lit circles!

Pictures were taken from:
http://www.mdianeharrison.com/images/literature_circles.gif
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/386286.Julie_of_the_Wolves