The Double-Entry Journal strategy enables students to record their responses to text as they read. Students write down phrases or sentences from their assigned reading and then write their own reaction to that passage. The purpose of this strategy is to give students the opportunity to express their thoughts and become actively involved with the material they read.

Paragraph Shrinking is an activity developed as part of the Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS). PALS is a classwide peer tutoring program in which teachers carefully partner a student with a classmate. The Paragraph Shrinking strategy allows each student to take turns reading, pausing, and summarizing the main points of each paragraph. Students provide each other with feedback as a way to monitor comprehension.

This article describes eight cognitive strategies - including monitoring, tapping prior knowledge, and making predictions - to help readers develop their comprehension skills.

Engaged, accountable reading requires students to interpret, and respond, often creatively. This article suggests several personalized ways to hold students accountable for their reading.

Many reading programs claim to boost student performance, but how is that measured? Johns Hopkins University examined more than 200 published studies to create this quick guide to programs.

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.

To improve students' reading comprehension, teachers should introduce the seven cognitive strategies of effective readers: activating, inferring, monitoring-clarifying, questioning, searching-selecting, summarizing, and visualizing-organizing. This article includes definitions of the seven strategies and a lesson-plan template for teaching each one. RI.9-10.10a&b text complexity

When teachers structure cooperative learning groups as part of the overall reading program, they also open the door to a multiple intelligences approach to literacy, which is inherent in cooperative learning. This article offers guidance on Literature Circles and Cooperative Tear, two cooperative learning strategies supported by research.

In this lesson, students will explore how music and language arts naturally overlap to promote literacy as they cultivate their creative and critical thinking.

This screencast focuses on using post-reading questions to evaluate and improve understanding of a text. It offers general question ideas and a specific example of questions for "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee. [3:37]

This screencast focuses on asking questions as you read, including: the purpose; types of questions; examples of questions for character, setting, and events; and a literary example. [2:44]

Describes the beginnings of American poetry, beginning with a publication in 1610. Click through the 18 sections to get the full picture. Extracted from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature.

Discussion of the earliest poetry in Colonial New England. Describes common themes and forms and identifies specific poets of the period.

Click through this site to find a brief biography of Henry Vaughan, a chronology of his life, links to his works, and essays about his works.

This site contains links to texts of many works by Richard Lovelace. "The world will have forgotten all the great masterpieces of literature when it forgets Lovelace's three verses to Lucasta on his going to the wars." --Thomas Aldrich

Edward Hirsch's poem "Fast Break" captures a single slow-motion play on a basketball court. In this video [6:06] excerpted from Poetry in America, join Hirsch, host Elisa New, NBA players Shaquille O'Neal, Pau Gasol, and Shane Battier, and a group of pick-up basketball players as they use basketball to understand poetry, and poetry to better understand the game of basketball. Hirsch himself reveals how he shaped his couplets to represent offense and defense, teamwork and rivalry, enduring friendship and human mortality. Shaquille does the play by play, heading this episode's team of on-court interpreters who explore "Fast Break" as sport, art, and lens on human character.

Build a greater understanding of poetry and poet's voice. Develop and interpret a poem for a oral performance. Links include presentation rubrics and participation rubric.

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. 

A nice, easy-to-read page with info on John Donne. Gives good insight into the metaphysical style of poetry with links to several of his poems. RL.9-10.10a&b text complexity