Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonics: Encoding and Decoding, Three-In-One
Scholars use the provided pack of alphabet cards to construct basic CVC words, then write down each word they make in one of two columns. Column one is for real words and column two is for nonsense words.
Florida Center for Reading Research
Fluency: Connected Text, Express It!
Partners practice reading fluency by reciting sentence strips to each other with proper expression and intonation. Partner A chooses a strip at random and reads it silently, then aloud with expression. Partner B reads the same sentence...
Curated OER
The Old Man and the Sea: Guided Imagery
What do you imagine when you think of the sea? Put on some ocean sounds, close your eyes, and listen to a guided meditation based on the imagery from The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. After class members listen to...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonics: Onset and Rime, Rime Closed Sort
Practice onset and rime with this word sort activity. Beginning readers lay out the four picture cards along the top of the chart: fan, cap, tack, and lamp. Then, they flip word cards and sort them beneath the image with the same rime....
Speak Truth to Power
Dalai Lama: Free Expression and Religion
How is religious freedom connected to the conflict between China and Tibet? After reading an online passage of background information, your learners will divide into groups and both read and view an interview with the Dalai Lama. They...
Curated OER
The Old Man and the Sea: Questioning Strategies
Readers learn to ask questions about text with an activity based on Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. As they read, class members craft questions based on Bloom's Taxonomy and then find the answers themselves.
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Syllables, Clapping Names
Scholars practice identifying and counting syllables. Images of classmates are cut out and placed on a chart. Learners clap and count the syllables in each child's name. They finish by writing the number of syllables under the...
Poetry4kids
How to Write a Haiku
A haiku is the focus of an activity that challenges scholars to draft an original poem. Authors discover the origin and components of a haiku, read three example poems, then follow six steps to compose their own.
Florida Center for Reading Research
Fluency: Connected Text, Readers' Theater
Readers' theater is a fun way to get kids reading with expression and improve their fluency! There is a full script here for The Three Bears with five characters to assign.
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonics: Encoding and Decoding, A Digraph A Word
Learners view a series of images, then choose digraphs, consonants, and vowels to spell out the object's name on each card.
Florida Center for Reading Research
Fluency: Connected Text, Practice and Read
A reading activity boosts scholars' level of fluency while reading connected text. Working collaboratively, pairs read a word list three times and a specific text while their partner gauges their accuracy and speed.
Fabius-Pompey School District
Paired Passage Practice and the Extended Response Question
How do pupils relate paired passages to each other? Here's a resource that helps! The lesson includes a short story and a poem as a set of paired reading passages, followed by some analysis questions. It also includes an essay template...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonics: High-Frequency Words, Word Fishing
To practice reading high-frequency words fluently, learners play a fishing game at a learning center. They take turns fishing; each fish contains a single high-frequency word. To keep the fish they caught, they must be able to read the...
Brigham Young University
HOOT Directed Reading Thinking Activity
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...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Comprehension: Text Analysis, Persuade, Inform, and Entertain Sort
Why do authors write? Practice determining the author's purpose with a categorizing activity. Learners sort twelve short passages into three categories: persuade, inform, and entertain.
Wisconsin Family Assistance Center for Education
Sight Word Lists and Activities
Scholars examine newspaper articles and highlight two sight words to discover which appears more frequently. They then glue sight words onto paper to make flashcards before composing, writing, and creating picture representations of...
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway
Accompany a reading of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea with a thorough literature packet. Although the materials are meant to prepare readers for a timed essay, the background information and the activities are...
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
The Columnist Project
Imagine a list that includes Alan Abelson of Baron's, Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, and Mother Jones. High schoolers select a national columnist, read and annotate five columns by this author, noting the rhetorical...
Prestwick House
The House on Mango Street Activity Pack
Enrich a unit on The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros with a selection of related activities. The packet contains nine activities that go from pre-reading through wrapping up the novel. Young readers work on studying...
Illustrative Mathematics
Kitchen Floor Tiles
An interesting way to look at the kitchen floor is to count the number of tiles in the border. Fred starts with four white floor tiles and writes an expression for the number of tiles needed for the colored border. Algebra learners are...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Advanced Phonics: Morpheme Structures, Compound Construction
A phonics lesson focuses on morpheme structures—compound words. Pairs choose letter cards, identify a compound word that starts with that letter and write it on a whiteboard. Extension opportunities include additional practice pages.
Baylor College
Microbes and Disease
Discuss how diseases have impacted human history. Divide your class into groups and assign each group one of the following: tuberculosis, malaria, plague, cholera, smallpox, and AIDS. They read up on, complete a concept map, and present...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonics: High Frequency Words, Word Bowling
Go bowling for high-frequency words! Partners take turns drawing bowling ball cards and read the word printed on them. If the learner is successful, they record their score on a scorecard.
Poetry4kids
How to Write a Funny Epitaph Poem
What can happen if you eat too much cafeteria food? Or wear dirty clothes every day? Or talk back to your mother? Use a lesson on humorous poems as a way for students to practice silly rhymes as fictional epitaphs.