McLear, Jean. (Fall 2003/Winter 2004). Harvey Daniels and Literature Circles: Advocate
for Small, Peer-Led Reading Discussion Groups. Ohio Journal of English Language Arts,
Volume 44, Number 1, 8-12. Used with permission of Ohio Journal of English Language
Harvey "Smokey" Daniels, a former city and suburban teacher, has inspired many teachers
to implement progressive literacy structures such as literature circles, reading
workshop, and integrated curriculum with his easy-going, personable, storytelling
writing style. While autographing his new book, Literature Circles: Voice and Choice
in Book Clubs and Reading Groups (2002), he asked teachers what grades they
taught. He told middle and high school teachers, "If you only have enough money
for one more book, buy Reading and Writing Together: Collaborative Literacy in Action
by my friend Nancy Steineke (2002). It's great!" Instead of recommending one of
his books, he suggested one he thought would meet those teachers' needs. Isn't that
what good teaching is all about—matching books to readers?
During Harvey Daniels's general session at OCTELA's 2002 Fall Conference, "Joining
the Book Club," he defined literature circles as small, peer-led reading discussion
groups. Ultimately, the purpose of literature circles is to promote high-level thinking
about texts and to develop life-long reading habits. Additionally, literature circles
promote engagement, choice, responsibility, collaboration, meaning making, fluency,
knowledge, and authenticity.
In 1996, Daniels and four colleagues started a new school on the west side of Chicago
called Best Practice High School (BPHS). One of the key best practices was the implementation
of literature circles. Like teachers at BPHS, literacy educators across the nation
are discovering the benefits of literature circles.
Most of the following questions originated from teachers who are learning how to
facilitate these peer-led discussion groups.
Jean McLear: When I asked teachers what they'd like to ask you, several said,
"How do you use literature circles with struggling students?"
Harvey Daniels: I think using literature circles with the low profile students
is more important than it is for any other student. One of the things people forget
sometimes is the idea that literature circles are supposed to be like adult reading
groups. We get the template for them from people in book clubs or reading groups,
and that is the analogy that we draw. If I am trying to figure out what to do with
the struggling readers, I just have to figure out where to start, and that may be
all the way back. With these kids, the first thing is that they have to read really
easy books. They have to read books that they can read. People make this mistake
all the time. Teachers will pick a set of books, and a lot of them are too hard.
So one of the first things you have to do, if you are worried about it, is make
sure you have a wide range of reading levels when you are presenting kids with a
choice of books. When you talk about the books, you have to talk with equal enthusiasm
about the one that is for two years below level and two years above level. Literature
circles are not the problem; they are the answer because you get to be with your
friends, you get to read what you want, you get to talk about what you want to talk
about, you get to have a little autonomy in the classroom, and so they have a lot
of appeal as opposed to a whole class lesson where students read aloud or recite.
Having books students can read is a part of the solution.
JM: Once you select the right books, how do you get the groups to run smoothly?
HD: If you have picked the right books, given [the children] careful training,
such as lessons to show them how to behave in a group, you will be more successful,
but you are going to still have some management problems. You are going to have
kids who do not do their homework, do not do their reading, or they do not pay attention
in the group, and you just have to chip away at that like you do anything else when
you have kids who struggle. We were talking last night with a bunch of teachers
from Lakota about the same thing. Some teachers will kind of encourage or allow
those kids to group themselves together, you know, pick real easy books and then
be together so they are kind of at the same level. The teacher is really subconsciously
planning. The teacher is thinking, "I am going to be spending a lot of time with
that group and that is okay." Then other teachers think it is really important to
mix them up and try to put them in groups where there are some stronger readers
that can pull them along a little bit. I have learned that a lot of these kids'
problems are with basic level skills, not with higher order thinking. If they can
get the story in their heads somehow, they can come to a literature circle and talk
about the ideas in a book as much as anybody else. They have as many experiences,
connections, and ideas, and a lot of time they are different than other people's
experiences. You may have to make them read with a tape or have somebody read it
to them or read to each other or the teacher read to them. You have to make sure
you get the story in their heads so they can go to the group and talk about it.
I am the parent of a learning disabled student, so I learned a lot from my own son.
JM: How do you keep students active and involved in literature circles?
HD: Part of it has to do with how you set up in advance, what you make them
do and what their tasks are.
JM: Part of it is teaching them what you expect.
HD: Yeah, to train them, and it takes a while. I usually go back and do full
class lessons using short pieces of literature and having short meetings with a
small group of kids. There are a million ways to train kids to do this. In the school
that we started in Chicago, we started by asking students, "When you are in a small
group, what are some things that work, that help a group to function and have a
good time?" Students make a list of the social skills: take turns, do not interrupt
each other, be respectful of other people's ideas, or ask questions. "OK, now what
are some things that make groups crash and burn? What are some things you should
not do?" They say, "Yell at people, disrespect, not answer questions." We start
by evoking it from the kids themselves, what makes for an effective and ineffective
group. And we make lists of those things, and they put them on the insides of their
journals. We put posters [of these lists] on the wall, and then we work on those
JM: Are there steps to remember in a literature circle meeting?
HD: When you have a literature circle meeting, it's usually three steps.
You have a mini-lesson with everybody and say, "Today we are going to work on follow-up
questions. If someone gives you an idea, dig into it and say, 'What makes you think
that' or 'where in the book did you get that idea?'" Continuously teach these skills
and how to operate in a group, always trying to refine it. A lot of the management
has to be self-management because there are going to be five or six groups, and
you cannot be there all the time. You have to send your surrogate teacher/self in
there through the mini-lessons. My friend, Nancy [Steineke], does a mini-lesson
if people are shy in the group and do not talk. She might say, "Well, Jean, what
do you think about that?" "Jean, did you think this would happen?" She has them
make little note cards: What do you think of that
? What did you think when that happened
? How did you feel about that book?
So they have it right in front of them to remind them. But the teacher has a big
role: You monitor, you circulate, and you sit in for a minute or two.
JM: Let's look at the teacher who has labeled herself as an "in charge" teacher,
who wants to do literature circles, but doesn't want to relinquish control because
she is concerned about chaos.
HD: But it is not going to be chaos, like actual chaos. There is going to
be some noise, ...some moving chairs around and stuff like that. Then there will
be some groups that are doing fine and maybe two that need some help, but it is
JM: I do not think it is either, but I think in her mind it is chaos.
HD: Sure, it feels like it. I hear that all the time. But it has to do with
trusting the kids. What are you going to do? Are you going to talk all day? In whole
class discussion, what do you have? You have 29 kids just sitting there silently
while one person talks and everybody else is waiting for a turn that they basically
hope never comes. And it is a very unengaged kind of learning to have 29 kids sitting
there avoiding eye contact with the teacher and trying not to be called on. But
when you put kids in groups of four or five and you have six groups going, then
you have six people talking. Everybody has pressure. There is responsibility in
a small group. You have to say something. So right away it is much more active and
much more engaged. How can you not have kids in groups talking about what they read?
National or professional standards state that we should be having kids talk about
books. Specifically, we should be doing literature circles.
JM: And we should be giving kids more time to talk.
JM: The last teacher question is very specific. If you have a theme, like
immigration, and you have chosen immigration books, do you have any advice on how
to pull a themed unit together at the end?
HD: Well, there are ideas in Literature Circles: Voice and Choice in Book
Clubs and Reading Groups. I am really talking about projects and there is
a whole list of them in the book. I will tell you something you can use. The book
can be ordered from
Here is the thing about projects. What do real life-long readers do when they finish
a book? What do you do when you finish a book?
JM: Well, I tell all my friends about the book if I think they would enjoy
HD: You do not make a diorama, right? Get real! You talk about it. That is
what you do. So it is really important to do things that real readers do. Real readers
do not make a display or want to put on a Puppet Show. You know, here is the dad
and here is the mom and here is the preacher and the snake killing a little girl.
No, no, you don't do that. The reason we do projects for culminating activities
or whatever they call it, is to get a grade because we know how to grade a project.
If you spend time on something like literature circles you feel like you have to
have a grade for it. Teachers do not know how to put a grade on discussion. They
do not know how to evaluate it. You just have to think about it the way you think
about kids who are giving informational speeches in speech class. You make a rubric
of the ingredients of a successful informational speech and you grade it. We have
the kids make the rubric when we do book circles and made sure the points add up
JM: Do literature circles last all year? Do you do them every day? Are literature
circles your reading program or just part of it?
HD: Part of the reading program. I do not know anybody who has ever stated
that book clubs are the whole reading program. That is a very interesting window
into our profession. Why would anybody say that? I was in the elevator at a conference
with a teacher and she saw my nametag. She said, "Oh, Dr. Daniels, we are so excited
in this town. We have adopted your reading program." And I said, "Oh yeah, really?
That is interesting. I don't have a reading program." You know, they thought literature
circles were supposed to be everything. But I think when people hear someone advocate
an idea, whether it is guided reading or reading workshop, they assume that they
need to give their whole life over to it, every minute of the day, every day of
the year, all literature circles all the time. That is cuckoo. It is a part of the
balanced reading program; it is not all of the balanced reading program. It is something
that some people do, like in high school for example, once a week. They meet for
40 minutes one day a week, but they do not do it all year because sometimes they
happen to get into an integrated unit or something and they put literature circles
in mothballs. Once the kids learn the structure, then you can come back and you
can read five, six, or seven books a year in elementary, especially in the early
grades. I mean, I see a lot of book clubs that meet one day a week, read a book
over the weekend at home with their parents, then they come with their post-it notes
and have conversation. But no, it is just a piece of the puzzle.
I was thinking it is a really important piece because the kids really have to read.
And if they do read and they put to work all these wonderful strategies that we
are teaching them, they are never going to be able to say they never got the chance
to practice or apply them if you just keep teaching them strategies all the time.
Student-driven, student-initiated reading and writing should be a big chunk. And
a lot of our schools alternate literature circles, reading workshop, and individual
independent reading. Literature circles are just group independent reading. Kids
read a book as a group and talk about it. They do that for three weeks and then
kids pick a book, read it, and do the dialog journal for the teacher and a buddy.
You do that for a while, and then you start the whole round of literature circles.
When you get this really going, some kids read three books at once—the whole class
book, the lit circle book, and the independent book. This is third graders, and
they do it great!
JM: We all have many books going.
HD: We don't finish them all either.
JM: That is true. How did literature circles become such a passion for you?
HD: Well, I think it was how much fun the kids had. School does not have
to be hell. The National Writing Project asked us to write, so my buddy Steven [Zemelman]
and I have been doing writing projects [Illinois Writing Project] for 24 years.
JM: I am a fellow of the Ohio Writing Project.
HD: Oh really? We understand the value of writing and its connection to reading.
So that is why we started drifting into reading. Because we were doing all these
great things with writing, and we cannot really keep it apart from reading for very
long. There was this wonderful teacher out in the suburbs who was highly trained
in collaborative learning. She had taken the collaborative learning principle and
applied it to reading in small groups where kids were discussing reading instead
of doing worksheets or round robin reading. We just learned it [literature circles]
from a few teachers who were doing this. And you know, the neat thing about it was
that it seemed to work. And the kids loved it because it was so different, and the
kids were in charge. I was not in her classroom—we were just hanging out someplace—and
I just told her about the book clubs that were going on about books.
JM: This was before Oprah's Book Clubs.
HD: Yeah, this was in ancient times; this was in 1988 or something. So then
she called me a couple of months later and said, "Well, I did that thing you told
me." I said, "What thing I told you?" She said, "You know, this literature circle
thing." I said, "You did?" She said, "Yeah, I got it going." And I said, "Well,
how is it?" She said, "It sucks, it is horrible." And I said, "Well, I am sorry.
I did not tell you to do it. You asked me." She said, "Well, I think you had better
come and see it. It is really a big mess. Maybe you can help me figure it out."
So I had a very young fifth grade teacher in Chicago's inner city, 33 or 34 kids
in a teeny room. I walked in there and I looked around and there are these kids
sitting in their groups having these incredibly intense discussions, leaning toward
each other and pointing at things in their books, and I am going, this is unbelievable!
There is this group of boys over by the window, and I thought I would kind of get
a letdown when I got over there, but they were on it too, busy as beavers. I thought,
"This is really cool." She was great, this really amazing teacher. She thought it
was terrible because two things did not work right, but it was spectacular. Nobody
ever asked me this question, but that is where the passion came from. I saw something
that the kids in city schools could do, and they needed it really badly because
there is probably not much recreational reading going on around their houses.
JM: You mentioned your friend Nancy...
JM: I will have to get her book.
HD: Write it down. It is called Reading and Writing Together: Collaborative
Literacy in Action. It is a great book and is brand new.
JM: It has been six years since you started Best Practice High School in
Chicago. How has it changed in the last six years? Is it what you thought it would
HD: We had no idea what would happen. I think it is better than I thought
it would be. The main thing is that it has momentum, a lot of momentum. Teachers
have a lot of ownership, a lot of leadership. We have had a lot of turnover. We
have had a few teachers die. We have had teachers retire. We had a fabulous initial
principal who got us through a school bond issue.
JM: Are you teaching there?
HD: No, only one day a week. I do staff development. Teaching is too hard,
but I realized there are enough of us that do believe in staying in there. There
are teachers who are carrying the culture in their heads. It is wonderful to hear
them when I talk to them about what school is about. So that is really great. The
other thing that is really great is that we have been able to stabilize and build
from a smaller enrollment than we thought we were going to have to. We wanted to
be fewer than 400, and we've been able to stay there even with budget pressures.
The biggest thing is that we always said that there was only one measure in the
end that we cared about, only one test and one outcome, and that was how many of
those kids go to college. With 80 percent poverty rating, hardly anyone has ever
had a family member go to college. And in a system with a 50 percent drop out rate,
we have 80 percent going to college. Our students are randomly selected. They are
not tested in or anything. So that is good.
JM: What is on the horizon for your future? What are you researching?
HD: I am doing a book about reading in middle and high school. My friend,
Steven [Zemelman], and I are working on this, and it will be out next fall. We are
going to do a second edition of this book we did a long time ago called A Community
of Writers (1998). It was about a community of readers and writers, and
then it got to be just readers. The idea of the book is that kids in middle and
high school should be reading some of the same material that members of the adult
community are now reading. We have teachers who are working on doing that. A lot
of it has to do with nonfiction.
Literature circles are certainly one way to implement state and national standards.
The better our students think, the better they test, and the better they do in life.
During his talk, "Joining the Book Club," Smokey (nicknamed by his mother because
he is Harvey Daniels VII) referred to his work on national standards:
Daniels, H. (2002). Literature Circles: Voice and Choice in Book Clubs and Reading
Groups (2nd ed.). York, ME: Stenhouse.
Daniels, H., & Zemelman, S. (1998). A Community of Writers: Teaching Writing
in the Junior and Senior High School. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Steineke, N. (2002). Reading and Writing Together: Collaborative Literacy in Action.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Zemelman, S., Daniels, H., & Hyde, A. (1998). Best Practices: New Standards for
Teaching and Learning in America's Schools (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.