Mount Vesuvius and the lost city of Pompeii are the focus of an interactive reading practice designed to increase comprehension skills. Scholars read an informational text, then answer 10 questions.

Reinforce language and reading comprehension skills with a worksheet focused on context clues. Scholars carefully read twelve sentences, use prior knowledge and sentence clues to define an unknown word.   

Scholars boost their knowledge of the Civil Rights Movement with a lesson that challenges writers, readers, and historians to analyze primary sources and caption their observations. By way of reading, writing, discussion, independently,...

What better way to examine a text than to ask your own questions? Use Bloom's taxonomy to guide kids through Carl Hiaasen's Hoot by asking questions based on knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

Imagine a tool that magically engages readers in the classroom. A handbook for Indiana educators doesn't guarantee success, but it does offer a variety of strategies for teachers to try. The handbook opens with research-based theory...

Understanding the vocabulary in a text, especially a text like Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science that includes quite a few technical terms, can be the key to understanding the text as a whole. Learners focus on...

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...

Prior to reading Victor Martinez's Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida, class members are presented with a problematic situation and to rate their responses as well as predict the responses of a character from the novel.

It's helpful to encourage kids to make predictions when beginning a reading unit. Before reading Hoot by Carl Hiaasen, have kids read Susan Barlow Broggi's Am I Grown Up When I'm Not Afraid of Spiders in My Shoes? to make...

Blundering, audacious, obscurest. Class members develop strategies for teaching each other vocabulary words drawn from The Hobbit.

Good readers use what they know and clues found in a story to make inferences about what a writer wants readers to consider. Here's a graphic that supports this comprehension strategy and asks kids to record what they know, the clues...

Beginning with anticipation guide strategies is a powerful method for improving reading comprehension. First, list initial ideas for a topic the class will be reading about. These ideas are formulated into statements, some of which are...

Here's a strategy that can be used with any narrative, whether read by the instructor or as independent reading. At the end of each chapter, learners predict, using prior knowledge as clues, what will happen in the next chapter. Readers...

Individuals use words or illustrate what they experience during a reading of a passage from chapter eight of Gary Paulsen's Canyons. Complete directions for the guided imagery exercise, and a suggested passage, are included with the...

As you're reading Gary Paulsen's tale of self discovery and adventure, Canyons, bring this questioning strategy into your classroom. The QAR questioning strategy is meant to encourage a deeper analysis of the text, as some questions are...

Readers of The House of the Scorpion try to stump their teacher in a QAR questioning game. Pairs craft Right There, Think and Search, On Your Own, and the Author and You questions and the class members then take turns responding to...

Have you ever thrown a surprise party? Use this question to engage your intermediate English language learners. After a brief discussion, read the passage "Guermo's Surprise," and have learners answer the 10 multiple-choice questions...

Explore the theme of release and death in Lois Lowry's The Giver with a K-W-H-L chart. After noting what they already know, kids come up with a list of questions about topics that they would like to know about, as well as how they...

Learners read an informational text about sharks, then test their knowledge by answering 10 questions. 

Ten multiple-choice questions follow a short informative reading about Abigail Adams. Feedback appears instantly and ends with a detailed report.

Ten questions follow an informational reading about galaxies. Feedback is instant, and a progress report appears at the end.

Penguins are the topic of an informational text that scholars read or listen to, then answer 10 multiple-choice questions.

Fridays can be a challenge with learners already dreaming about their weekends. Here's a routine that will bring their minds back to the classroom. Read aloud the beginning of a story, sure to engage your listeners.