Curated OER
Strategies to Build Comprehension Skills
Reading strategies that realy work. Here is an introduction of six active reading strategies to improve reading comprehension. Super helpful for newer teachers.
K20 LEARN
OPTIC - A Reading Strategy Recipe: Visual Literacy
A visual literary lesson provides learners with OPTIC (Observations, Predictions, Themes, Inferences, Conclusions), a reading strategy to help them understand and interpret visual and written texts. Scholars practice the strategy with a...
Novelinks
Touching Spirit Bear: Question Answer Response Strategy
What types of questions help readers learn the most? Sixth, seventh, and eighth graders learn how to ask four types of questions from the Question Answer Response (QAR) reading strategy to help grow their comprehension of Touching Spirit...
Curated OER
The Outsiders: Question Answer Relationships Strategy
Kids learn best when asking questions about what they have read. Encourage active reading with a comprehension activity based on S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders, in which kids read passages from the beginning of the book and identify...
Curated OER
Parrot in the Oven: Pre-Reading Strategy: 4 Corners
A four corners pre-reading activity introduces class members to the major themes in Victor Martinez's award winning novel, Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida.
Novelinks
The Little Prince: Request Strategy
Teach your readers how to engage with a text by using the request strategy. As kids read Antoine de Saint Éxupery's The Little Prince, they choose a passage of text and formulate questions to stump their partners or their...
Nosapo
Reading, Vocabulary, Comprehension
Whether you teach mainstream elementary classes or older English learners, a set of reading comprehension resources is a great addition to your language arts curriculum. Ten activities each include a reading passage and set of...
Novelinks
Zach’s Lie: The K-W-H-L Strategy
The attached resource is no lie! The K-W-H-L activity, which is fourth in a series of seven, serves as a pre- and post-assessment. First, pupils brainstorm what they know about a specific topic, then they list what they want to know, how...
Novelinks
The Lightning Thief: Before Reading Strategy
This pre-reading activity will certainly make your class ponder. With five questions to reflect upon, get insight to the moral dilemma Percy faced in the novel Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan.
Curated OER
Hot Spots
Keep an eye on progress with reading and vocabulary using pink and green sticky notes. This resource describes how to set up the sticky note system so that learners can note difficult passages, and teachers can track ability.
Curated OER
Reading a Comparison-Contrast Essay
Turn your passive readers into active readers with an engaging instructional activity on reading informational text. Focused on compare and contrast structured essays, the activity prompts elementary learners to jot down questions and...
Curated OER
The Lightning Thief: During Reading Strategy
After reading up to page 371 of Percy Jackson and The Olympians: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, get insight into how Percy felt making a major decision through active discussion strategies that enable both academic...
Mr. Nussbaum
Abraham Lincoln Reading Comprehension—The Presidential Years (Part 1)
Hail to the Chief! Your class learns about Abraham Lincoln winning presidency and choosing cabinet advisors through a reading passage and paired multiple choice questions. The resource offers great practice for state tests and...
Curated OER
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck: Before You Read the Book
"List reading strategies you have learned that will help you start (and finish) reading a class novel." "What do you like knowing about a novel before you read it?" Although labeled for Of Mice and Men, the prompts included on this...
Odell Education
Reading Closely for Textual Details: Grade 6
Close reading doesn't mean to literally read text close to your face, but rather to pay attention to particular details in order to develop a deep and purposeful understanding of text. The first part of a five-part resource provides an...
Novelinks
Tuck Everlasting: Directed Reading Thinking Activity
Encourage close reading for young learners with a lesson based on Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting. The first part of the resource guides readers through a Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA), prompting them to make...
Novelinks
Touching Spirit Bear: Directed Reading Thinking Activity
What experiences lead people to change and how do they do it? After reading about Cole's encounter with Touching Spirit Bear, readers complete the second out of a series of five activities to predict future events in the text. The...
Novelinks
Zach’s Lie: Questioning Strategy – Cubing
Your class won't be a bunch of squares from using this well-rounded activity! Instead, they'll be expressing thoughtful questions using the cubing strategy. The class brainstorms questions of increasing rigor about Zach's Lie in the...
Curated OER
Walk Two Moons: Question Answer Relationship Strategy
Middle schoolers develop a strategy as they read excerpts from Walk Two Moons. Using question and answer relationship strategies class members bolster their reading comprehension as they appropriately identify and create...
Novelinks
Nightjohn: List-Group-Label Strategy
Encourage readers of Nightjohn, Gary Paulsen's young adult novel about slavery set shortly before the Civil War, to develop their categorization and organizational skills with a strategy that asks them to list all the words they can...
Curated OER
Reading for Life
Imagine a packet packed with reading resources designed for every grade and reading level. Imagine worksheets, graphic organizers, flash cards, activities, and exercises. This is just such a packet and is well worth...
Curated OER
Helping Homeschoolers: Reading Critically and Analytically
Strategies for creatively monitoring reading to gauge comprehension and stimulate analysis without taking the joy out of reading.
Novelinks
The Graveyard Book: Student Questioning For Learning Strategy
Questioning a text is a very effective way for kids to develop their reading comprehension skills. Designed to engage all class members, a reading activity prompts pairs to develop and share their own questions about the ending of Neil...
Teaching Tolerance
Social Media for Social Action
Engage in activism, not slacktivism! Scholars discuss social media and the Internet as tools for social change. Next, they engage in a close reading strategy called Thinking Notes as they read an article about social media activism.