K20 LEARN
OPTIC - A Reading Strategy Recipe: Visual Literacy
A visual literary lesson plan 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...
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
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...
Curated OER
Reading a Comparison-Contrast Essay
Turn your passive readers into active readers with an engaging lesson on reading informational text. Focused on compare and contrast structured essays, the activity prompts elementary learners to jot down questions and think-aloud...
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 and thoughtful...
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...
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
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 questions.
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.
Curated OER
Regarding the Fountain: Questioning Strategy—Cubing
Look deeper into the text with a reading strategy based on asking critical thinking questions. While reading Reading the Fountain by Kate Klise, learners think of questions that help them describe, compare, associate, analyze, apply, and...
Curated OER
Maniac Magee: The Cloze Procedure
Fill in the blanks with a Cloze activity based on Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli. After listening to a passage read out loud, kids complete the worksheet by using their memories and context clues.
Illinois State Board of Education
Common Core Teaching and Learning Strategies
Here's a resource that deserves a place in your curriculum library, whether or not your school has adopted the Common Core. Designed for middle and high school language arts classes, the packet is packed with teaching tips, materials,...
Novelinks
The Giver: Reading Road Map
Sometimes it's helpful to read certain passages in a novel slowly and carefully, and to read other parts more quickly to move the plot along. Learners tread carefully through Chapter 20 of Lois Lowry's The Giver, noting which parts need...
Novelinks
Words By Heart: K-W-H-L Strategy
How can we heal our hearts through forgiveness? The third activity in a series of six prompts readers to answer questions about Words by Heart by Ouida Sebestyen. Not only does it activate background knowledge on the text, but it also...
Novelinks
The Devil’s Arithmetic: QAR Strategy
Asking questions about the text is an important way for kids to become critical readers. Use a QAR activity based on The Devil's Arithmetic to help learners decipher between questions that are right there, between the author and the...
Curated OER
The Lightning Thief: Questioning Strategy
Step into the shoes of the Oracle from the novel, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, with this response to reading activity. After reading chapter nine, scholars answer questions from the Oracle's point...
Curated OER
Bud, Not Buddy: Directed Reading Thinking Activity
Here’s a reading strategy that can be used with any text. Class members examine portions of a novel, and make predictions about the theme or subject matter of the book. Although designed for Christopher Paul Curtis’s Newbery Medal...
Novelinks
The Dark Is Rising: Problematic Situation Strategy
What items would you need to save the world from an evil wizard? Prior to reading Susan Cooper's young adult contemporary fantasy The Dark is Rising, and to generate interest in the tale, class groups must reach consensus on a list of...
Curated OER
Tangerine: Cubing Strategy
Here's an activity that uses a reading comprehension strategy based on Bloom's taxonomy to focus readers' attention on key passages from Edward Bloor's Tangerine. Worthy of a place in your curriculum library.
Curated OER
Wildwood Dancing: K-W-H-L Reading Strategy On Prejudice
As part of a study of Juliet Marillier's Wildwood Dancing, class members create a KWHL chart listing what they know, what the want to know, how they will find information, and what they have learned about prejudice.
Curated OER
Round-Robin Reading Quiz
Small groups of learners read text round-robin style, and then work individually to answer three questions based on the text. Next, they share their questions and responses and add ideas from the group. The reading strategies detailed...