Keep Reading

Introduce your students to 8 different genres (both fiction and nonfiction). Students will become detectives to identify the genre by first using the images of covers of novels to make educated guesses using text features. Next, on a separate page, students will read the synopsis of the book and adjust any of their first attempts at identifying the genre. (Genres: realistic fiction, historical fiction, mystery, fantasy, autobiography, biography, informational, and poetry) Book titles and synops

Students use this checklist to self-evaluate their Close Reading skills applied to any reading assignment. This checklist notes the skills applied while reading and then looks at two levels of achievement. Close Reading strategies included are domain-specific vocabulary, text features, text structure, comprehension, and finding textual evidence. Students note how many times they read the text and score themselves on the level of effort they put in.

This double-sided task asks students to set reading goals, summarize, answer a choice question about genre, problem, or prediction, and then leaves a place for a teacher-created question. This "roll the dice" question can align directly with your mini-lesson or can be individualized for each student.

Students are provided with 20 sentences that are either compound or complex. Students have to identify which sentence is which.