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A photo of an apple next to a cup filled with multi-colored pencils, in front of a stack of books. At the top of the image there is pink and blue text that says "Student-Centered Reading Guides in Secondary ELA"

Adaptable Class Novel Study Activities

These class novel study activities will help increase student participation and strengthen their critical analysis! Even if you’ve got the most incredible unit ready for your core novels, having some generic class novel study activities in your pocket is a great idea. I once had three students in my class not allowed to participate in our Speak unit, and I had to come up with something QUICK! Having activities for any high school class novel ready to go will help you weather changes. Class Novel Study Activities I break my activities for high school reading into four verbs: remember, understand, create, and analyze.  Remember What are some basic ways you want students to show that they remember portions of your class novel? The key here is to stay out of the nitty-gritty and focus on

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Danielle Hall October 11, 2022
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Creative Reading Response Activities for any Novel

Are you looking for ways to make your independent reading more engaging? Try these reading response activities! Using reading response activities is a great way to give students choice and help them connect to the texts they read. Middle and high school students want to share their opinions in addition to learning to analyze, and these activities can develop both skill sets. Creative Reading Response Activities for Secondary ELA What are reading response activities? Reading response activities ask students to refer to the text as they make an observation, argument, or prediction. These are useful for independent reading activities and class novels because students ground their writing with supporting details from a fiction or nonfiction text. Example reading response prompts: Reading response activities are great informal daily writing. They can be short – perhaps 4-6

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Danielle Hall September 7, 2022
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9 Tips to Encourage Independent Reading with Simplified & Successful Book Conferences

I love independent reading (or student-selected reading), and I love talking about books! It only makes good sense to me, then, to allow my students to show their growth in independent reading through book conferences. Book conferences are an informal conversation between the teacher and student to show completion of and reflection on a novel. Whether you are trying out reading conferences for the first time, or you are looking for ways to make them more effective, I can help! What makes a good reading conference? Obviously, the main goal of a reading conference is to assess the students’ comprehension of their book choice, but I think a successful reading conference should also strengthen your relationship with the student.  In order to make effective book recommendations to them in the future, it might help to

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Leila Hobbs June 28, 2022

Independent Reading in High School

How to Keep Kids Reading in High School One of my biggest goals as a high school teacher is to help my students love reading. I am an avid reader, and hit my book challenge for the year (75 books – woo-hoo!), and I want my kids to find books that they can connect with. I see the primary blogs talk about guided reading, group reading, and Drop Everything And Read!, and I want that for my classroom, too. Getting kids to love reading in high school should be more of a priority, I decided. This year, after doing some research and reading a great post by Laura Randazzo, I decided to implement Student-Selected Reading (SSR) in my classroom. I’ve done it for a semester now, and here’s how it’s going. 1. Implementation – Reading

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Danielle Hall January 5, 2016