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.

The National Reading Panel identified three predominant elements to support the development reading comprehension skills: vocabulary instruction, active reading, and teacher preparation to deliver strategy instruction. L .9-10.3 knowledge of lang

Students often think they understand a body of material and, believing that they know it, stop trying to learn more. But come test time, it turns out they really don't know the material very well at all. Can cognitive science tell us anything about why students are commonly mistaken about what they know and don't know? Are there any strategies teachers can use to help students better estimate what they know?

An exciting introduction to reading! The instructor writes a simple, one-line story on the board from literature, and the students learn to sound out the words.

Increase your understanding of what you read by making digital notes in an article. Time to complete: 45-90 minutes

This lesson will help students read and comprehend nonfiction, specifically biographies, through determining criteria for text complexity. Included is a PDF and Smart Notebook titled Determining Text Complexity, and an example of a student's work.

Students will really be writing to sources with this lesson. They will write about cause and effects in a multi-flow map and then write sentences to explain the cause and effect relationships in this story.

Students will engage in discussions about story details and write an informational piece about the events in the story "Come Along Daisy".

In this lesson, students will take a more active role in their learning by discussing a read aloud with their partners. The teacher will become more of a facilitator in the lesson and allow the children to "wrangle" with the content.

In this lesson, students will take a more active role in their learning by discussing a read aloud with their partners. The teacher will become more of a facilitator in the lesson and allow the children to "wrangle" with the content.

SWBAT define words using a child friendly definition while adding an action in order to retain the meaning of new words.

Students will be able to compare and contrast two non-fiction books with a similar theme - in this case, plant life cycles. Extensive resources included such as worksheets, samples of student work, assessment ideas, extension activities, and videos of the lesson in action.

Students will get exposure to a folktale and work to understand the moral. This lesson uses two fables "The Fox and the Grapes" and "The Fox and the Hen". The lesson involves guided practice where the students write notes on the left side of a piece of paper after they read the text. Then after discussion students come up with a message or moral.

Read stories and solve mysteries based on clues provided. Also, submit your own mysteries for other visitors to this site to solve.

Come and check out this awesome pre-reading resource. This site offers examples of simple word games you can play with kids to increase their ability to recognize and use letters and sounds. Try these games the next time you're in the car or on the go.

In this lesson plan students will be able to focus on the main events of a book by drawing a storyboard. Lesson plan indicated for 2nd grade and above.

In-depth instructions on critical reading with lots of links to more reading guides and activities. A good site to help improve reading skills to become a better writer.

Contains plans for three lessons designed to improve comprehension of nonfiction, especially nonfiction texts on the web. It focuses on identifying text features, locating specific information, and generalizing that information. In addition to objectives and standards, this instructional plan contains links to sites used in the lessons as well as assessment and reflection activities.

This article discusses how creating Readers Theater scripts from informational text can improve fluency and build comprehension.

What is reading? Explore this article from to find the answer to this question.