Proponents of literature circles advocate that groupings for literature circles should be mixed ability groups (Daniels, 1994, 2002; Campbell Hill, et. al., 1995; Routman, 1994; Strube, 1996). They view these groupings as opportunities for students to learn from each other and foster collaboration. As a result, group members become valuable resources for each other and realize each other's strengths. The role of the teacher is to provide support by acting as a group facilitator and to model the processes. "...most of the teacher roles in literature circles are supportive, organizational, and managerial. We collect sets of good books, help groups to form, visit and observe meetings, confer with kids or groups who struggle, keep records, make assessment notes, and collect still more books" (Daniels, 2002, p. 24).

Literature circles are a holistic strategy for teaching the complex processes of reading and thinking. The use of role sheets such as Discussion Director, Illustrator, Summarizer, Connector, and Vocabulary Enricher is viewed by Daniels (1994, 2002) as a significant tool which gives a different thinking task to each group member to help students internalize and practice taking multiple cognitive perspectives on the texts they are reading as well as help students activate prior knowledge, make predictions, and set purposes before each reading. For example, Daniels (1994) explains that the various discussion roles promote different cognitive approaches to meaning making such as visualization for the Illustrator role, associative thinking for the Connector role, and analysis for the Discussion Director and Vocabulary Enricher roles. However, he cautions that once students demonstrate they are capable of lively, text-centered, multifaceted discussions the role sheets should be replaced by literature response logs.

Routman (1994) also confirms that literature circles are holistic and promote the development of students as critical readers, writers, and thinkers. She states,

"Students take ownership of the learning process and often go beyond what is expected. Talk moves past prediction, central story, and plot happenings to critical analysis. Reflective questioning and responding...encourage the highest levels of critical thinking and evaluation. Using textual references, prior experiences, and background knowledge, students state their opinion, make inferences, draw conclusions, analyze character motivation, and synthesize ideas in new ways. Students justify their opinions with evidence from the text, and the discussions are often quite lively" (p. 123).