Collaborative Literature Circle

In humanities, the class worked with a partner to do their 3rd literature circle. My partner was ZIFAN, and the book we were discussing about is Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. In my previous blog post, I have talked about the novel, Hatchet. In the third literature circle, me and Zifan had some challenges, etc.

1.The benefits of working with a classmate.


The benefits with working with a classmate is the amount of work you have to do, and the feedback the partner gives to you. The reason why I chose the amount of work is because the amount of work is decreased since you are working with a partner. For example, I had to do one each for the passage, question, response, connection, and the vocabulary. Since there is a collaborative literature circle, the amount of time you spend on the computer can be decreased. I work on my literature circle around 2 hours on my computer. After all, the collaborative literature has decreased my time to 1 hour and 15 minutes! The final benefit is the feedback. It's good to give feedback to each other because we all don't want to have bad grades, and you can use the feedback from your partner for your literature circle. For example, Zifan has given me feedback for my connection. So here benefits that you can have if you are doing a collaborative literature circle.


2. Challenges / obstacles which you overcame (tried to overcome).


Although there are benefits for the collaborative literature circle, there are also challenges that you have to overcome. The challenges in a collaborative literature circle is that the person might not do their work such as "dying ducks in a thunderstorm", and the support the partner gives you.  I chose "dying ducks in a thunderstorm" because if person is left out or hasn't done their work, he/she will ruin the other person's grades. Recently, I have heard that Mrs. N has received e-mails from people saying that their partner isn't doing anything. I've experienced that before in my practice literature circle that was collaborative. My group members were Radhika, Jake, and Harry. My group members all worked hard and made their best effort except for Harry. Harry had only done a paragraph for the entire practice literature circle! The next challenge is the support your partner gives you. The reason why I chose this challenge is because if the person doesn't give you feedback or the help you need, you will eventually get bad grades. I think that the expectation for the literature circles should be from B+ to A+. For example, I was stuck on my connection and my questions so I asked my partner, Zifan for help on chat. Unfortunately, he didn't help me but only gave me the feedback for my question! Later, it took around 30 minutes to make my connection even better. So here are my reason why I have chosen these challenges.


3. New understandings that you gained about the novel.


The new understandings that I gained in the novel is that the secret Brian had. The reason why I chose the secret that Brian had was that this relates to how Brian's mother divorced with his father. I also think that this topic is suitable for a passage, question, and maybe a connection. For example, for my question, I put that relates to the "Secret" in my third literature circle. There are other new understandings that I had such as the fire, the food supply, and the porcupine. So here are the understandings that I gained in the novel.

Below, here's Hatchet, the book!
http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hatchet_1937.jpg