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Literature Circles
Literature circles are an excellent way to provide meaningful lessons to a diverse population of students. This form of emergent literacy instruction encourages students to become information literate, independent learners, and responsible citizens by incorporating grade-level appropriate conversations, individual responsibilities, small-group participation, and theme-related activities. (Blue Book, p. 425) With careful planning, implementation of multiple learning opportunities, and successful collaboration between teacher and media specialist, every student learning style will be reached.

There are a wide range of activities that can be incorporated into literature circles which allow for numerous standards to be met. Two of the most popular writing activities found within literature circles include journaling and vocabulary exercises. These activities provide for student mastery of writing standards. Information literacy standards can also be mastered by requiring students to access, evaluate, and use a variety of information resources.

REACTS Model
In 1988, the REACTS model was developed by Barbara Stripling and Judy Pitts. They developed this model by incorporating ideas from Loertscher's Taxonomy for involvement of the media specialist and Bloom's Taxonomy for learning skills. The REACTS model allows the student researcher to progress through levels of learning by completing cognitive tasks. The phases of the REACTS model include: **R**ecalling, **E**xplaining, **A**nalyzing, **C**hallenging, **T**ransforming, and **S**ynthesizing (Blue Book, p.44). On a personal note, if there was one element to include in this list of phases, I would include a reflection phase at the end. I think this model does an excellent job breaking down each phase in a simplistic way; however, I believe complete inquiries should also allow for reflection at the end of the process.

The following visual representation is from the Library of Congress. This image shows the different phases of inquiry learning, including reflection, and confirms the idea that inquiry-based learning is recursive and reflective. (By clicking on the image, you can read the article from which the image was found. This article provides excellent examples of each phase!)

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 * [[image:stripling.gif link="@http://www.loc.gov/teachers/tps/quarterly/0907/article.html"]]
 * REACTS Model ||