5 Reading Activities to Increase Engagement and Rigor

How can we make reading instruction fun for our kids? These are going to be huge time savers for you and good news, you can utilize them with any text! All you need is text and colorful paper! I like to use card stock to reuse every year!

#1) Heads up:

You can use this activity for use for comprehension, grammar, and vocabulary. Go through the text and write down different places, vocabulary words, etc that you want students to know. Give them the cards and headbands (I got from the

Dollar Tree). Set the timer for 2 min. The partner has to be able to tell them the answer to what was on the top of the card by asking yes or no questions. If they didn't know they answer, they would skip it. They love it and it is so engaging. *This is similar to the Heads Up board game or app.*

#2) Graphic Organizer Activity:

Take a graphic organizer for plot and laminate it. (You can buy this one in my store here.) Add a ziplock bag on the back to hold the cards with different parts of the plot. Have them place the elements on the graphic organizer. This activity can be used with any graphic organizer.

#3) Summary Activity:

Allows for conversation to classify and analyze. Super simple and lots of ways to use this activity. Take a story and write two summaries. One will be a really good summary. Then take common mistakes that students normally make, too much information, too short, etc. You can laminate these to use over and over. Have students work together to discuss which one is best and why they think that. This can be done with partners or small groups.

#4) Numbered Heads :

Great for comprehension or literal questions to make sure kids are understanding what is happening in the text. There will be 4 different jobs to give kids. Each number represents a job that person will have. Number one reads, number two gives a short answer with evidence, number three states whether they agree or disagree with the reasons, and number four summarizes. Once they have their jobs, they are then given questions from the text. To see examples, watch the video linked below.

#5) Vocabulary + Quiz Quiz Trade

Use Quizlet.com and find any pre-made quiz. I found one on the elements of plot and printed them out on colored card stock. Create a huge deck of cards to use in your classroom. You can find them on mood, tone, etc. I leave them on the table before they start their groups. They then quiz themselves with a partner while they wait to get started. You can also do this as a whole group activity and trade the jobs each round!

To see me chat about these activities and see all the details, click below to watch!