ACT has developed this list of activities to help middle-school students improve their reading ability. Parents and educators can use this information to help ensure that these students are on target for college and career readiness.
Comprehension strategies are conscious plans - sets of steps that good readers use to make sense of text. Comprehension strategy instruction helps students become purposeful, active readers who are in control of their own reading comprehension. The seven strategies here appear to have a firm scientific basis for improving text comprehension.
Drawing on New York City teachers' experiences, this article examines three ways to effectively integrate young adult literature into the curriculum: use core texts (usually novels, but also other genres as well) that the entire class read and study together; organize literature study with text sets, allowing students to select from multiple texts to read; and incorporate independent reading into coursework (via Sustained Silent Reading or at-home reading assignments).
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.
Contains plans for six lessons that ask students to write group book reviews after reading texts in literature circles. Students also learn about research and documentation as they put together their reports. In addition to objectives and standards, this instructional plan contains links to sites used in the lessons as well as assessment and reflection activities.
How do you chat safely with people you meet online? Games, social media, and other online spaces give kids opportunities to meet and chat with others outside the confines of their real-life communities. But how well do kids actually know the people they're meeting and interacting with? Help students consider whom they're talking to and the types of information they're sharing online. Approximately 45 mins.
LESSON OBJECTIVES: Analyze how well they know the people they interact with online. Reflect on what information is safe to share with different types of online friends. Learn to recognize red flag feelings and use the Feelings & Options thinking routine to respond to them.
How can you de-escalate digital drama so it doesn't go too far? Miscommunication is a common occurrence online and on social media. Plus, being behind a screen makes it easier to say things they wouldn't say in person. So how do we help students avoid the pitfalls of digital drama? Help them learn tips on avoiding online drama in the first place and de-escalating drama when it happens. Approximately 45 mins.
LESSON OBJECTIVES: Reflect on how easily drama can escalate online. Identify de-escalation strategies when dealing with digital drama. Reflect on how digital drama can affect not only oneself but also those around us.
How can you protect yourself from phishing? Internet scams are part of being online today, but many kids might not be aware of them. How do we help our students avoid being tricked into clicking malicious links or giving out private information? Use this lesson to help kids avoid online identity theft and phishing schemes. Approximately 45 mins.
LESSON OBJECTIVES: Compare and contrast identity theft with other kinds of theft. Describe different ways that identity theft can occur online. Use message clues to identify examples of phishing.
How do we find credible information on the internet? The web is full of questionable stuff, from rumors and inaccurate information to outright lies and so-called fake news. So how do we help students weed out the bad and find what's credible? Help students dig into why and how false information ends up online in the first place, and then practice evaluating the credibility of what they're finding online. Approximately 45 mins.
LESSON OBJECTIVES: Learn reasons that people put false or misleading information on the internet. Learn criteria for differentiating fake news from credible news. Practice evaluating the credibility of information they find on the internet.
Find a rationale, practices and strategies, and resources for incorporating writing in all areas of the curriculum. Learn how to write clear assignments and some methods to make grading of writing more efficient and effective. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.10 Write routinely over extended time frames
This one-page printable worksheet is designed for classroom use in evaluating a reading of nonfiction. The evaluation is set up in a rubric format.
Use this graphic organizer to analyze the elements of nonfiction and how the ideas interact.
This lesson will help students use ISearch as a library catalog. This is the first lesson of three lessons. In this lesson the teacher will mostly be demonstrating on a screen. Students may need devices to try a search if time allows.
Find stories, novels, and poems from more than one hundred authors. Download select works as MP3 files or read or listen to them online. Available selections span a wide range of literature, from nursery rhymes to the philosophy of Aristotle, and a variety of teaching support materials, such as graphic organizers, are included for a limited number of titles.
This lesson plan deals with timelines in connection to nonfiction reading. Included in the lesson plan is an overview, practice, objectives, resources, preparation, and more.
This page provides a detailed chart to aid students' understanding of texts. It goes through the steps of pre-reading, during reading, and after reading, outlining what students should be thinking about as they interact with a text. This chart would be useful to print and keep near a study area. RI.11-12.10a & b Text Complexity, RL.9-10.10a&b text complexity
POV (a cinema term for "point of view") is television's longest-running showcase for independent non-fiction films. POV premieres 14-16 of the best, boldest and most innovative programs every year on PBS. Since 1988, POV has presented over 400 films to public television audiences across the country. POV films are known for their intimacy, their unforgettable storytelling and their timeliness, putting a human face on contemporary social issues. POV's lesson plans offer rigorous entry-points to the study of critical social issues. This Collection includes: Media Gallery (56), Video (68), Lesson Plan (74), Interactive Lesson (1), Interactive (1), Document (3) for Grades 3-5, 6-8, 9-12.
Self-checking interactive tutorial puts reading comprehension skills to work by asking learners to make inferences, predict what happens next, and identify the main ideas in a series of short reading passages. Related materials include several videos and a downloadable worksheet.