Even though readers investigate matters of the heart, this activity promotes the inner workings of learners' brains. The fifth lesson of six has the teacher first model the strategy to the class before having small groups practice. To...

Teach your readers how to engage with a text by using the request strategy. As kids read Antoine de Saint Éxupery's The Little Prince, they choose a passage of text and formulate questions to stump their partners or their...

This pre-reading activity will certainly make your class ponder. With five questions to reflect upon, get insight to the moral dilemma Percy faced in the novel Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. 

Readers respond to a series of questions focused onJuliet Marillier's young adult novel Wildwood Dancing, and crafted to reflect the levels in Bloom's Taxonomy.

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.

Encourage close reading for young learners with a lesson based on Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting. The first part of the resource guides readers through a Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA), prompting them to make...

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...

Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address provides the text for a series of close reading exercises that model for instructors how carefully crafted guiding questions can help readers think critically about what they read, thus developing...

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.

Passages from Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart provide the text for a QAR: Question Answer Response comprehension activity. Readers respond to right there, think and search, on your own, and author and you questions.  ...

Round out your unit on Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis with a series of reading comprehension questions. As kids read, they challenge each other to answer specific connection questions from the text.

Elevate children's reading comprehension skills with this collection of guided reading resources. From paper dice with basic comprehension questions printed on them to a system for using sticky notes to identify key...

An excerpt from Michel de Montaigne's essay "On Cruelty" provides advanced readers an opportunity to polish their close reading skills. Scholars read the passage twice and then respond to the provided questions.

Track the changes and developments in Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis with a reading comprehension worksheet. Individuals copy important quotations from each of the book's three parts, record their...

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...

Designed for teachers, this 12-page packet uses passages from Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace" to model how to design activities that encourage close reading of complex text.

Promote critical thinking and literary analysis with a short activity. Readers of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart respond to a series of questions modeled on Bloom's Taxonomy.    

In the novel, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, Percy is faced with a major decision. After reading, chapter 19, discuss the decision-making process Percy took, what he decided to...

A great aspect of teaching math is that children have the freedom to solve problems using a variety of different strategies. The focus of this lesson is for young mathematicians to become aware of many ways of answering addition...

Flotsam by David Wiesner and The Magic School Bus on the Ocean Floor by Joanna Cole, illustrated by Bruce Degen, begin a reading adventure pack focusing on oceans. With story listening and thoughtful discussion, scholars complete several...

An activity promotes reading comprehension. Readers analyze a text of their choice while activating prior knowledge and asking and answering questions. Scholars enforce multiple strategies to improve comprehension.

Although designed for those new to teaching phonemic awareness, the strategies and activities included in this 25-page packet are sure to engage kids and help them develop these essential skills.

Start with the question in mind with a discussion activity on Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. With four focus questions, note-taking prompts, and discussion points, readers practice answering thematic questions based on textual evidence.

Accompany a reading of First Come the Zebra written and illustrated by Lynne Barasch with a teacher's guide equipped with before reading, vocabulary, and after reading activities. Additional social studies,...