ABSTRACT
If adult book clubs are the basic model for literature circles, then assessment presents quite a puzzle. Just imagine a grown-up reading group gathered in someone’s living room, finishing up their monthly discussion. Literature circles leave a very rich trail of evidence of kids’ reading, learning, and thinking—if we know how to recognize, capture, and talk about all this data meaningfully. Many teachers who are just beginning to use innovations like literature circles sometimes worry excessively about evaluation and grades. Piling all the paperwork on teachers is one of those unexamined elements of schooling that, ironically, breeds dependency and helplessness among students. If there are records worth keeping in literature circles, they are worth being kept by kids. Students can keep track of their own role sheets, keep their own folders updated, enter metacognitive reflections in their reading response logs, write self-assessments at the end of each book, bind and save their own projects, and so on.
