AdLit
Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: The Last of the Sky Pirates
Fifty years after Captain Twig severed the anchor chain securing the floating rock of Sanctaphrax to Undertown, all is not well in the great floating city or the urban sprawl of Undertown. Rook Barkwater is selected as a Librarian Knight...
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: The Winter Knights
As the floating city of Sanctaphrax becomes gripped by a harsh and relentless winter, Quint begins his training in the Knights Academy, the venerable school charged with training the elite band of Knights Academic. As the buoyant rock...
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Vox by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell
Rook Barkwater's skycraft crashes in the deadly area of the Edge known as Screetown. Rook is rescued, only to be captured on the way back to the sewers that house the Great Library. Mindwashed and forced to work for a sinister goblin...
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Godless by Pete Huatman
A simple gag makes faith the centerpiece of Jason Bock's summer: What if the town water tower is God? Jason shares his quirky observation with his friend Shin, and soon finds himself the head of a new religious sect of "Chutengodians"...
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale
When Dashti, a maid, and Lady Saren, her mistress, are shut in a tower for seven years because of Saren's refusal to marry a man she despises, the two prepare for a very long and dark imprisonment.
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Princess Academy by Shannon Hale
High on the side of rocky Mount Eskel, far from the valleys where gardens are green and lush, where lowlanders make laws, Miri's family has lived forever, pounding a living from the stone of the mountain itself. For as long as she can...
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale
She was born with her eyes closed and a word on her tongue, a word she could not taste. Her name was Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, Crown Princess of Kildenree, and she spent the first years of her life listening to her aunt's stories...
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Bloomability by Sharon Creech
Bloomability, by Newbery medalist Sharon Creech, tells the coming-of-age tale of Dinnie, a thirteen-year-old girl uprooted from her parents' nomadic lifestyle to spend a year in Switzerland. Dinnie is used to change, since her whole life...
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: To Dance: A Ballerina's Graphic Novel
To Dance is a graphical memoir of Siena Cherson Siegel, a young girl growing up in Puerto Rico who eventually came to New York to study with the School of American Ballet. It captures the passion of the artist, as well as the discipline...
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Betsy and the Emperor by Staton Rabon
Fourteen-year-old English girl Betsy Balcombe and her family have an unusual houseguest: Napoleon Bonaparte, former emperor of France and the most feared man on earth. Once lord and master to eighty-two million souls, now, in 1815,...
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Teach Students How to Fluently Read Multisyllabic Content Vocabulary
Dysfluent readers are so consumed with word identification that they cannot focus on extracting or constructing meaning from the text. Here are some activities to develop students' fluency skills, so that they may move on to access content.
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Key Literacy Component: Morphology
Morphology describes how words are formed from building blocks called morphemes, the smallest unit of meaning in a word. Students who don't understand this structure have trouble recognizing, understanding, and spelling words. Find out...
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Pairing Texts With Movies to Promote Comprehension and Discussion
Thematic pairings of novels/short stories with movies can help students access difficult texts and can lead to deeper comprehension and lively classroom discussion. This article suggests pairings for some commonly assigned middle and...
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Key Literacy Component: Vocabulary
What's in a word? Mastery of oral and written vocabulary promotes comprehension and communication. Find out how proper instruction can help students who struggle with vocabulary.
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Reading (And Scaffolding) Narrative Texts
Students need to learn the purposes and methods of narration in order to understand the narrative framework and to eliminate frustration when they read. When students know the narrative elements, they can more easily follow the story...
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: A Troubled Peace by l.m. Elliott
A Troubled Peace, the sequel to L. M. Elliott's award-winning Under a War-Torn Sky, chronicles nineteen-year-old U.S. Air Force pilot Henry Forester's adventures in France from March through July 1945. Although Henry safely returned from...
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
Matt is a clone of El Patron, a powerful drug lord of the land of Opium, located between the United States and Mexico. For six years, he has lived in a tiny cottage in the poppy fields with Celia, a kind and deeply religious servant...
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: The Sea of Trolls by Nancy Farmer
In A.D. 793, eleven-year-old Jack leaves his family farm to become an apprentice to the Bard, a druid from Ireland, who is assigned to his Saxon village. At first, he is unsure of his duties, and is puzzled when the Bard experiences a...
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Weedflower by Cynthia Kadohata
Twelve-year-old Sumiko feels her life has been made up of two parts: before Pearl Harbor and after it. The good part and the bad part. Raised on a flower farm in California, Sumiko is used to being the only Japanese girl in her class....
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Create Reading Accountability
Engaged, accountable reading requires students to interpret, and respond, often creatively. This article suggests several personalized ways to hold students accountable for their reading.
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Classroom Strategies: Summarizing
Summarizing teaches students how to take a large selection of text and reduce it to the main points for a more concise understanding. Upon reading a passage, summarizing helps students learn to determine essential ideas and consolidate...
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Use and Teach Content Vocabulary Daily
Copying definitions from the dictionary and memorizing words for tests is not sufficient work for students to master and retain new vocabulary. This article helps teachers choose which words are most important to teach and suggests...
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Classroom Strategies: Prediction Relay
Prediction Relay is an activity that was developed as part of the Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS). PALS is a classwide peer tutoring program in which teachers carefully partner a student with a classmate. The Prediction Relay...
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Classroom Strategies: Reading Guides
Reading Guides help students navigate reading material, especially difficult textbook chapters or technical reading. Students respond to a teacher-created written guide of prompts as they read an assigned text. Reading Guides help...