Working with Partners

Last week I talked about literature circles, it turns out no one in my class got a good score on their literature circle, so to make us work harder the teachers had us work with partners. Each person would do exactly half the work, as marked by different colour fonts, though if your partner messed up, your grade went down as well. This was meant as an incentive to get our partners to work harder and turn out better work. I welcomed the fact that I would do less work but I did not like the idea that if my partner messed up I went down to, as I had got a pretty good grade on the previous literature circle.

Pros

Work Together

I guess there were a few pros. The first of which I have mentioned already: I had to do less work, and this meant I could concentrate more on the parts that I was doing more than I usually could. Another is - though I didn't get to do much of this - was that we got to comment on each other’s work and improve it. Apparently the teacher had chosen our groups based on our strengths in different areas of the literature circle. This meant there were specific areas in which we helped each other. I, for example, was relatively good at forming questions, while my partner was good at descriptive language, which was rather useful in this project. We also gained new perspectives on the novel, which helped with our thinking and therefore our writing. 

Obstacles

We encountered a few obstacles which, when we worked together, were easy to overcome. Obstacles such as this: on the first day I forgot my book so I needed my partner to give me ideas on which I could elaborate. She did this, but I found that doing a literature circle on a book I have never read is something very hard to do. Another thing was that the question I posed was a simple question, but I had posed it in a rather complicated manner. My partner helped me simplify the language of my question and thereby got us a better grade.

A new understanding?

Did I gain a new view of this novel?

Yes, I think I did. My partner’s reading skills picked up on intricacies in the novel that I had not noticed. Many of these things told you a lot about the book, and things which explained the way the main character acted. These details also covered many things which the author may have implied. Next time I do a literature circle I will try to read the book in a way in which I can pick up details like my partner did.

This is

AlexK

Signing out