"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union..." These familiar lines begin the Preamble to the Constitution, but do learners know what they mean? A close reading exercise takes a look at the language of the...

Reading is fantastic, especially when it's reading about bullfrogs. Kids get cozy with predator/prey relationships as they hone their information-reading skills. They start out as they read a portion of the text aloud, then they...

It's the classic scene: Tom Sawyer is whitewashing a fence. Expose your learners to Mark Twain's humor while reinforcing reading comprehension. Eighth graders are encouraged to read and reread, achieving as much exposure to the text...

Improve readers' comprehension with a pair of visualization opportunities. First they listen, eyes closed, as you read a description from Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach, and discuss ideas about what they "see." After you read...

Acquaint your class with informational text through a close reading. First, examine a couple of pages together, looking at text features and content. The whole class focuses on marking down a brief summary of each paragraph before...

Introduce young learners to the read-aloud process with a short biographical passage about Ray Charles. After listening to the passage, class members respond to factual, inferential, and evaluative questions, and then create a timeline...

Explore reciprocal questioning with this ReQuest comprehension strategy. After reading a passage, learners first question the teacher, trying to "stump" her. Then it is the teacher's turn to ask the pupils questions. All correct answers...

A guided imagery exercise draws class members into a particularly intense scene in Edward Bloor's Tangerine. After listening to a reading of an excerpt from the text, participants respond to a series of questions and then share their...

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...

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan is an illustrative source of rich prose, deep character development, and strong literary themes. Use two of the book's key chapters, which focus on Waverly's relationship with chess and with her mother, to...

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...

Jacque's soliloquy from Act II, scene ii of As You Like It sets the stage for a close reading exercise that models how to approach difficult, dense text and enables readers to practice reading comprehension and analysis...

Strengthen the bonds of friendship within your class with a reading of E.B. White's award-winning novel, Charlotte's Web. Focusing on the unique characters in the story and the relationships they develop, young readers draw...

In this reading worksheet, 4th graders answer multiple choice questions by reading 1/2 page passages and answering comprehension questions. Students complete 25 questions.

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.

Asking questions about a text is an effective way to improve reading comprehension. Apply the Question Answer Response strategy to your unit on William Shakespeare's The Tempest. As kids read each passage, they decide if the answer...

Can you tell everything about a character based on their actions? Delve into the prominent characters of Karen Russell's "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" with helpful reading tips and discussion questions. A thorough lesson...

Students practice the techniques and strategies to become more fluent readers through visualization. They read and construct mental images from the reading of a text. The book, "Charlotte's Web," by E.B. White is read in class and then...

Really? Rapping The Odyssey? Really. A discussion of the oral tradition of story telling and its links to Epic poetry sets the stage for a series of activities that encourage improvisation to integrate music into other classrooms....

Enter the world of Harry Potter and learn new vocabulary at the same time. A high-interest reading passage provides insight into the history of Harry Potter. Follow-up activities incorporate key vocabulary strategies, such as using...

Good literature can be much like an iceberg requiring readers to presume that the bulk of the meaning may be inferred to be found below the surface. Here's a lesson that asks scholars to conduct a close reading of passages from The...

Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage provides the text for a reading comprehension activity that asks class members to develop questions based on the novel.

Victor Martinez's Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida is used in an activity that models how to develop questions to aid in comprehension of a text.

Asking questions about what you're reading is an effective way to connect with the text. After kids read passages from Kyoko Mori's Shizuko's Daughter, they identify questions about the passages as Right There, Think and...