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Download the plug-in tools you need to use our games and tools, or check to see if you've got the latest version.
Looking for ways to engage your students in online literacy learning? Find more interactive tools that help them accomplish a variety of goals-from organizing their thoughts to learning about language.
Check out our collection of strategy guides to find effective literacy teaching and learning strategies to use in your classroom.
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Student Interactive
Cube Creator
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| Grades | 3 – 12 |
| Interactive Type | Organizing & Summarizing |
| Tech Requirement | |
| URL | http://www.readwritethink.org /files/resources/interactives /cube_creator/ |
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ABOUT THIS INTERACTIVE |
Summarizing information is an important postreading and prewriting activity that helps students synthesize what they have learned. The interactive Cube Creator offers four options:
Bio Cube: This option allows students to develop an outline of a person whose biography or autobiography they have just read; it can also be used before students write their own autobiography. Specific prompts ask students to describe a person's significance, background, and personality.
Mystery Cube: Use this option to help your students sort out the clues in their favorite mysteries or develop outlines for their own stories. Among its multiple applications, the Mystery Cube helps students identify mystery elements, practice using vocabulary from this popular genre, and sort and summarize information. Specific prompts ask students to describe the setting, clues, crime or mystery, victim, detective, and solution.
Story Cube: In this cube option, students can summarize the key elements in a story, including character, setting, conflict, resolution, and theme. Students can even identify their favorite part of the story. This can be used as an alternative to the Story Map interactive.
Create-Your-Own Cube: Working on a science unit? Doing some research on volcanoes? The Create-Your-Own Cube is your answer. This version allows teachers and students to generate their own questions or topics. Teachers can type in the questions, lock them from editing using the padlock icon, and save the file using the Save tab at the top of the screen. The saved file can then be shared with students to enter in their responses. Students can also customize cubes on topics of their choosing.
Students can save their draft cubes to revise later. See the five-minute video tutorial Saving Work With the Student Interactives for more information on have to save, e-mail, and open a file in any of the ReadWriteThink Student Interactives. The finished cube can also be saved, printed, and folded into a fun cube shape that can be used for future reference.
For ideas of how to use this tool outside the classroom, see Bio Cube and Mystery Cube in the Parent & Afterschool Resources section.
Grades 9 – 12 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Gaining Background for the Graphic Novel Persepolis: A WebQuest on Iran
To prepare students for reading the graphic novel Persepolis, this lesson uses a WebQuest to focus students' research on finding reliable information about Iran before and during the Islamic Revolution.
Grades 9 – 12 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Recording Readers Theatre: Developing Comprehension and Fluency With Audio Texts
Students investigate audio texts of mystery stories, evaluate them in terms of both literary and audio qualities, and create Readers Theatre scripts, which they use to record their own podcasts.
Grades 9 – 12 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Sonic Patterns: Exploring Poetic Techniques Through Close Reading
Students develop close reading skills connecting sound with sense in the poem “Those Winter Sundays,” and write an original text that reflects their new learning.
Grades 9 – 12 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Investigating Genre: The Case of the Classic Detective Story
After critiquing a list of conventions for the genre, students read, view, or listen to a classic
mystery, and then produce a mystery of their own, reflecting on the purposeful ways in which
they adhered to or altered the genre conventions.
Grades 5 – 9 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
The Mysteries of Harris Burdick: Using Illustrations to Guide Writing
Students use illustrations from The Mysteries of Harris Burdick as a guide to write mysteries
and then present their stories to the class for students to discuss to which illustration each
story corresponds.
Grades 9 – 12 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Demonstrating Understanding of Richard Wright's Rite of Passage
Students use the elements of persuasion for a specific audience to demonstrate their understanding of Richard Wright’s accessible and engaging coming-of-age novel, Rite of Passage.
Grades K – 12 | Student Interactive | Organizing & Summarizing
The Story Map interactive is designed to assist students in prewriting and postreading activities by focusing on the key elements of character, setting, conflict, and resolution.
Grades 3 – 8 | Calendar Activity | February 3
In 1927, Joan Lowery Nixon was born.
As a class, a genre study of mysteries takes place and a chart is made about what makes a good mystery.
Grades 3 – 8 | Calendar Activity | October 31
Students research information on Halloween, create masks or costumes from a text they are reading, or write a narrative essay describing their best Halloween ever.
Grades 3 – 8 | Professional Library | Book
Guided Comprehension in Grades 3-8
This book has everything you need to use the Guided Comprehension Model effectively with students in in upper elementary and middle school.
Grades 1 – 5 | Professional Library | Journal
eVoc Strategies: 10 Ways to Use Technology to Build Vocabulary
Drawing on research-based principles of vocabulary instruction and multimedia learning, this article presents 10 eVoc strategies that use free digital tools and Internet resources to evoke students' engaged vocabulary learning.
Grades 5 – 8 | Activity & Project
Have children explore the different parts of mystery writing by making a puzzle about a favorite book. They can then invent and write their own mysteries using the online Mystery Cube tool.
Grades 3 – 5 | Activity & Project
Telling My Story: Make a Bio-Cube
Let children explore an interesting subject—themselves. An online tool will teach them to summarize and organize information as they write.
Grades 3 – 12 | Game & Tool
The Bio Cube asks children to summarize information about a person for a biography or autobiography. The activity helps them learn how to identify and shorten key ideas.
Grades 3 – 8 | Game & Tool
The Mystery Cube asks children to separate a mystery into six distinct elements. Using it, children begin to see how a writer constructs a mystery—and can try writing their own.
