JCMS students participate in literary circles

Seventh grade teacher Dinah Cobb listens to her students read. From left, are Whitney King, Phillip Larisey, Ms. Cobb, JaQuania Emory, Irene Dieteman and Jamaine Torrence. (Photo contributed)

Dinah Cobb's Jenkins County Middle School (JCMS) seventh grade reading classes have been participating in literary circles as they read the novel, Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen. The students take turns reading aloud and participate in group discussions in which students are demonstrating higher order and critical thinking skills. The students are continuing to broaden their reading experiences through the study and analysis of compelling literature. These activities are representative of the JCMS standards based classrooms and Georgia Performance Standards (GPS).

Two of the GPS covered in these activities include ELA7R3: The student reads aloud, accurately (in the range of 95 percent), familiar material in a variety of genres, in a way that makes meaning clear to listeners, and ELA7RC1: The student reads a minimum of 25 grade-level appropriate books or book equivalents (approximately 1,000,000 words) per year from a variety of subject disciplines. The student reads both informational and fictional texts in a variety of genres and modes of discourse, including technical texts related to various subject areas.