The highly-respected Reading Rockets program offers both teachers and students a toolkit of ways to connect more actively with the materials they read. Some of these techniques are specifically for fiction-reading, others are designed for reading nonfiction and informational texts, while others are useful for any text.

Students must "become" a character in a novel in order to describe themselves and other characters using powerful adjectives.

Through a close reading of "Amelia Bedelia", students reread the material to discuss text-dependent questions, promoting deep thinking about the text and its characters.

Groups of students read and discuss American folklore stories, each group reading a different story. Using a jigsaw strategy, the groups compare character traits and main plot points of the stories. A diverse selection of American folk tales is used for this lesson, which is adaptable to any text set.

Students "become" one of the major characters in a book and describe themselves and other characters, using lists of accurate, powerful adjectives.

Students will compare and contrast the written version of Pandora's Box with a video clip version. Video clip and worksheets are included.

Students attend a 19th Century Victorian party to celebrate Scrooge's new outlook on life. They research characters from Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" and assume those personas for the party.

Students write a persuasive letter to the editor of a newspaper from a selected fictional character's perspective, focusing on a specific issue or situation explored in the novel.

Students respond to a book they have read by thinking symbolically to create a business card for one of the characters.

In this alternative to the traditional book report, students respond to a play they have read by creating a resume for one of its characters.

Students explore familiar literary characters, usually first encountered as adults, but whose childhood stories are only told later. Students then create childhoods for adult characters from books of their choice.

In this alternative to the traditional book report, students report on their novel choices using Facebook-like pages.

Students write resumes for historical fiction characters. They first explore help wanted ads to see what employers want, and then draft resumes for the characters they've chosen.

In this author study, students listen to and discuss four books by Leo Lionni. They identify similarities and differences in the stories and then compare two stories of their choice.

The list of ten things about Opal's absent mother that her father shares in "Because of Winn-Dixie" serves as inspiration for students to create their own lists describing literary characters.

Students find examples of adjectives in a shared reading. Then students "become" major characters in a book and describe themselves and other characters, using powerful adjectives.

Character Perspective Charting allows students to compare multiple characters and their points of view to better understand a story.

After reading "The Tempest" or any other play by William Shakespeare, students work in small groups to plan, compose, and perform a choral reading based on a character or theme.

Students view examples of blogs, learn the basic elements of blog creation, and then create a blog from the perspective of a fictional character.