Reading Circles

"In EFL classes around the world, critical thinking is becoming more of a central theme and it is a goal of many language programs. This is especially true in the popular field of global issues. A quick survey of any major publisher’s catalogue will show a number of titles dedicated to developing English skills while learning about global issues. These books promote the idea of becoming a critical thinker, which is seen as both a goal and a necessary element of global issues courses. This paper examines the use of literature circles to help students develop
critical thinking abilities by bringing literature into the global issues curriculum. Using literature in content based instruction classes can personalize remote issues and help make students more aware of their own attitudes. The process of analysis used in literature circles helps develop the analytical skills and self-evaluative stance needed to develop critical thinking."

Literature circles have many advantages for acquiring a foreign language, particularly due to their collaborative nature. Students work together, and increase cultural awareness, critical thinking skills, reading comprehension abilities, and inference skills. Additionally, they search for meaning, examine text, and increase their vocabulary and idiom awareness by seeing those respective items in context. Their collaborative nature can bring a classroom of students together with the teacher as facilitator. For the structure of literature circles to work, each student is assigned a role. These may include Discussion Leader, Real-Life Connector, Passage Person, Summarizer, Graphic Organizer, The If Person, Character Creator, among others. Each of these roles will be addressed, and what is expected of each literature circle member. With each role, they challenge the group members to discuss and examine the text more fully, and therefore collaboratively learn together strongly connected to Vygotsky’s Zone or Proximal Development (ZPD) model.

Histories of Early Modern religion in Europe typically contrast the activities of ordained theologians with those of laity. The thought and writings of the former usually constitute " theology " and those of the latter " piety. " The result has long been a divided history. Confessional church historians have written histories that were essentially genealogies of (male) officer holders, while scholars of folklore, culture or literature analyzed the contributions of laity. Since the so-called cultural turn, the contributions of laity as organizers, transmitters and patrons of Early Modern religious movements are being recognized. What has been less studied are the intellectual achievements of laity, many of whom possessed deep knowledge of theology, history, and ancient languages and played important roles in Early Modern religious history. This article provides an overview of the main issues and the development of lay theology in the period and argues for increased study of the phenomenon.

This study aims to describe the role and importance of reading in Italian teaching, also in relation to literary and linguistic education.
The research starts from a widen meaning of «readable space» (De Certeau) and aims to describe the real conditions affecting reading activity in secondary school. The first chapter examines the secondary school programmes (I and II grade) from "Rifoma Gentile" (1923) to the latest Indicazioni Nazionali and Linee-Guida (2011-2012).
The notion of «interpretative community» (from Stanley Fish and Romano Luperini) and its suitability to describe the activity of a school class during common reading are discussed in the second chapter. This notion is then integrated with the one of «community of practice» (Etienne Wenger). The «circle of reading» (Aidan Chambers) is individuated as an useful and effective method to transform the classroom into a real «community of interpretative practice».
Third chapter tries first to define what a schoolbook is. Then, it analyzes two types of schoolbooks used for reading activities, «libri di narrativa» and literary anthologies, aiming to describe what kind of readable space is offered by their paratextual apparatus. The possibilities given by new technologies (ebook) are also examinated.
Fourth chapter suggest a widen approach to reading skills and reading literacy.
Work ends with a possible list of reading skills and good reading practices.

Resumo Esta narrativa de ensino relata experiências vivenciadas ao longo da execução de projeto de ensino, denominado Conversas Literárias, voltado principalmente para alunos de ensino médio, cujo principal objetivo é a leitura compartilhada de textos literários, com vistas à fruição, apreciação estética e debate. Com base na metodologia dos círculos literários (COSSON, 2014; YUNES, 2014), esse projeto está em curso desde 2018 e apresenta resultados bastante satisfatórios: aumento gradativo de participantes; engajamento/participação efetiva, que vai desde sugestões de textos, autores, temáticas à constância nos encontros, ao convite/mobilização de novos membros da comunidade leitora; depoimentos positivos acerca da melhora na compreensão leitora, do vínculo estabelecido com os demais participantes, do movimento de constituir-se como leitores literários. O projeto seguiu em novas edições em 2019 e 2020. Neste ano, passou por uma reformulação, transformando-se em Projeto de Extensão vinculado ao Programa de Línguas e Literaturas no Campus (PRELLIC), para que possa atender a mais uma demanda, que é participação de público externo ao IFRS Campus Bento. Palavras-chave: Projeto de ensino. Leitura literária. Círculos de leitura. Abstract This narrative reports experiences during the implementation and development of the teaching project Conversas Literárias (in English, "Literary Talks"), directed mainly to high school students. Its main objective is to read literature together, in order to appreciate the text aesthetically and debate it orally. Based on the methodology of literary circles (COSSON, 2014; YUNES, 2014), this project started in 2018 and presents satisfactory results: gradual increase in the number of participants; effective engagement/participation-raging from the suggestion of texts, authors and themes to the constancy of presence, invitation and mobilization of the community of readers; positive reports in relation to the development of reading comprehension skills, the relationship developed with participants and the individual transformation into literature readers. There was a second edition in 2019 and in 2020 the project has been turned into an Extension project linked to Programa de Línguas e Literaturas no Câmpus (PRELLIC-Languages and Literatures on Campus Program), in order to widen its public, by integrating people outside the institution, which was also a demand.

Este artigo discute a leitura colaborativa como possível fomento ao letramento literário em círculos de leitura, a partir da análise de um recorte da produção científica sobre esse tema. O estudo parte do princípio de que leitura realizada nesses contextos proporciona trocas e diálogos únicos acerca da palavra, do texto, de modo que não pode ter seus impactos ignorados na constituição leitora do sujeito e no desenvolvimento do seu letramento. Investigar os efeitos dessas experiências sobre os sujeitos participantes mostrou-se uma oportunidade para se investigar, também, os mais diversos modos com que os leitores se relacionam com o texto e, assim, constituem-se como sujeitos. A investigação realizada neste estudo adotou as perspectivas de autores como Cosson (2009, 2018), Compagnon (2009) e Goulemot (1996) sobre a questão do letramento literário, a literatura e a leitura, respectivamente. A análise dos artigos selecionados demonstrou que, nas mais diferentes experiências com círculos de leitura, o compartilhamento das impressões de leitura e outros recursos metodológicos auxiliares podem modificar a recepção e a compreensão do texto, oportunizando novas formas de ler.

In EFL classes around the world, critical thinking is becoming more of a central theme and it is a goal of many language programs. This is especially true in the popular field of global issues. A quick survey of any major publisher’s catalogue will show a number of titles dedicated to developing English skills while learning about global issues. These books promote the idea of becoming a critical thinker, which is seen as both a goal and a necessary element of global issues courses. This paper examines the use of literature circles to help students develop
critical thinking abilities by bringing literature into the global issues curriculum. Using literature in content based instruction classes can personalize remote issues and help make students more aware of their own attitudes. The process of analysis used in literature circles helps develop the analytical skills and self-evaluative stance needed to develop critical thinking