ABSTRACT
Very few teachers begin literature circles with a huge classroom library already in place. Traditional American schools provide teachers with quite a different assortment of reading resources: typically, book money goes for classroom sets of thick, costly textbooks and anthologies, and single copies of “real” literature are then ordered for the library. Most teachers should be able to assemble this kind of rudimentary library, at least temporarily, through several sources. Special sources of books for elementary teachers are the children’s book clubs—Tab, Trumpet, Scholastic, and others—which sell their wares through monthly newsletters distributed to school kids. Teachers often devise special tools for managing and assessing the work of literature groups. Role sheets are designed to be “book club training wheels,” a temporary; getting-started tool. The different kinds of thinking embodied in the basic set of role sheets are validated by reading comprehension research as keys to successfully interacting with text.
