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.

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...

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.

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.  ...

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...

Question the text with a reading comprehension activity based on Chaim Potok's The Chosen. Learners read four passages from the book and decide if the question after each passage is between the reader and the author, for the reader...

Engage young readers in using context clues with this collaborative vocabulary activity. In pairs, children draw from a deck of cards, with each card asking a question about a context involving a specific vocabulary word. After...

Enrich your study of Charlotte's Web by E.B. White with this useful resource. Included here are 22 discussion questions, 15 extension ideas, and 10 curriculum questions that cover characters, plot, farming, and much, much more.

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.

Great literature discussions are a consequence of carefully crafted questions, interpretative questions that permit more than one response, and responses supported by specific evidence from the text. The discussion questions in a guide...

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...

Cross-comparison, the technique of focusing on two different texts with the same themes, motifs, events, etc., is employed in an exercise that asks groups to examine two different translations of “The Ruin,” a poem, written in Old...

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949, can seem strangely prophetic when compared to modern news events and politics. Readers of Orwell's dystopian classic sharpen their critical thinking skills by engaging in...

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...

To prepare for a performance task assessment, class members review the stages of the water cycle and then individuals assume the roles of drops of water for a Reader's Theater exercise. The script, a graphic depicting the water...

The ambiguity in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre makes the novel a perfect choice for a shared inquiry discussion. Readers respond to open-ended questions with evidence drawn directly from the text. 

Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their eyes Were Watching God has been highly praised and severely criticized for its depiction of African American folk culture. A set of primary source materials, including photographs, articles, essays, and...

A set of 14 primary sources provides background for a study of Lorraine Hansberry's drama, A Raisin in the Sun. Featured are images from stage productions of the play, white supremacy protests, a clip from a television interview, and...

This lesson plan pairs high and low leveled readers together to make partner reading beneficial for both. Learners read a selected text as a team, when the lower leveled reader is stuck, his partner is there to help him out. And by...

Tap into the wisdom and knowledge of older members of the community with this New York Times plan. To warm up, learners write about and discuss advice they have been given. After reading "The Life Report," an op-ed column that asks older...

Charles Schulz' Charlie Brown and Friends, a collection of Peanuts comic strips, provides young readers with an opportunity to engage in full-class discussions, work in groups to examine how Schulz develops his characters, and...

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.

Check out this fantastic research project where learners work to see the modern world through the eyes of a historian and analyze a contemporary event of their choice. An in-depth reflection on the project is given by the project...

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" serves as an exemplar for a mini-lesson on semicolons. Working alone or in small groups, class members first circle all the semicolons in the letter, and then consider how this...