Curated OER
Gary Paulsen's Canyons: Question the Author (QtA) Strategy
Gary Paulsen’s Canyons is the focus of an exercise that models how to read closely using a Questioning the Author (QtA) strategy. Complete directions for the strategy, which can be used with any text, are included in the richly-detailed...
Curated OER
Reading For Meaning
Select an article that explores people of another culture. After reading it as a class, distribute copies of this worksheet. It asks for a brief summary, encourages readers to make text-to-self connections, and asks learners to identify...
Curated OER
Reading Comprehension 6: Level 12
Although designed as an assessment, consider using this resource as the basis for a lesson on reading comprehension strategies or as a practice exercise. The five multiple choice questions, based on a short passage about stock market...
Curated OER
Guided Reading with David's Drawings by Cathryn Falwell
First graders participate in a guided reading lesson. In this guided reading lesson, 1st graders read David's Drawings by Cathryn Falwell, which is a realistic fiction book on the DRA:16 level. They determine the author's message, and...
University of North Carolina
Reading to Write
Silly journal and essay prompts may be fun to write, but they don't model the kind of writing needed for college papers and standardized tests. The 15th part in a series of 24 covers the concept of reading to write—during and after...
Curated OER
Reading Comprehension 5: Level 9
The piranha is the subject of a reading passage that is sure to engage your learners in a reading comprehension exercise. Pupils must employ multiple strategies to answer the questions based on the passage. Of particular value is the...
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.
Deer Valley Unified School District
Close Reading: Analyzing Mood and Tone
The AP Literature and Composition exam is all about close reading. Test takers are presented with a passage and asked to analyze how an author uses literary devices to create a desired effect. Prepare your students for the exam with a...
National Humanities Center
Teaching Emily Dickinson: A Common Core Close Reading Seminar
Three of Emily Dickinson's poems, "I like to see it," "Because I could not stop for Death," and "We grow accustomed to the Dark," provide instructors with an opportunity to model for class members how to use close reading strategies to...
EngageNY
Grade 9 ELA Module 1, Unit 1, Lesson 11
Address annotation, word choice, and tone in the same language arts instructional activity. Ninth graders read a section of Karen Russell's "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" and track character development based on supporting...
Idaho State Department of Education
Lessons for Social Studies Educators
Point of view, purpose, and tone: three concepts readers of primary and secondary source materials must take into account when examining documents. Class members view a PowerPoint presentation and use the SOAPS strategy to identify an...
Curated OER
Bring Read-to-Learn Activities into Your Classroom
Shift your instruction from teacher-centered to student-centered, which requires learners to do the heavy lifting.
Ontario
Weekly Lesson Plan for Shared Reading
Reading is fun! Here, practice making predictions and instill concepts of print including the front of the book's features, the text's message, the connection between text and illustrations, and directionality with these daily reading...
EngageNY
End of Unit 1 Assessment: Analyzing Author’s Point of View and How it is Conveyed
One step at a time. Scholars complete the end of unit assessment by reading pages 70–75 of World without Fish and analyzing each paragraph one at a time. They highlight key words leading to author's point of view and complete a point of...
Curated OER
Three-Level Reading Guide- The Apaches: People of the Southwest
A reading guide designed for Jennifer Fleischner's nonfiction text, The Apaches: People of the Southwest, provides readers with three levels of comprehension questions meant to encourage higher-level thinking.
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 predictions...
Curated OER
At Play Long Ago and Today: comprehension skills
In this comprehension skills worksheet, students read the book At Play Long Ago and Today and complete comprehension activities. Students complete 5 activities including note taking, compare and contrast, predicting, and author's purpose.
Curated OER
Author In The Spotlight
Complete an in-depth study of the works or a specific author. Working in pairs, students read at least four works by the same author. After completing the reading, they create an essay comparing and contrasting the works and create an...
Curated OER
CLOZE PROCEDURE for The Call of the Wild, by Jack London
An advocate of the cloze procedure to determine what learners already know about a topic? Class members listen to an excerpt from The Call of the Wild and then fill in the blanks on their cloze copy of the passage. Directions for...
Hampton-Brown
From "First Crossing"
Young scholars look closely at four tales taken from the collection of short stories, First Crossing edited by Donald R. Galloby. While examining the life of four teenagers and the lives they lead as U.S. immigrants, your enthusiastic...
Shmoop
ELA.CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.9-10.6
What does the author believe about his topic? Why did he write in the first place? Challenge your class to figure out the answers to these questions as they read through informational texts. The resource provides a breakdown of the...
Dream of a Nation
Creating Awareness through Action Oriented Writing and Research
Middle schoolers aren't too young to feel strongly about politics, social issues, consumer rights, or environmental problems. Demonstrate the first steps toward social change with a project about action-oriented writing. Eighth graders...
Curated OER
Lesson 2: Identifying an Author's Purpose (part 2)
Keep reinforcing the concept of author's purpose with a practice activity. After discussing the three purposes of writing, third graders will complete a graphic organizer intended to help them pin point textual evidence that proves...
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.