Working in small groups, students read and discuss Elie Wiesel's memoir Night and then take turns assuming the "teacher" role, as the class works with four different comprehension strategies.

Capture students' enthusiasm for film and transfer it to reading and literature by substituting film production roles for the traditional literature circle roles.

Writing a review of an author's work challenges students to develop their critical thinking skills. It provides an opportunity for students to speak their minds—and to enjoy being heard.

Students interview family members, and then create graphic family timelines based on important and memorable family events.

In this graphical mapping project, students assign a value to the events, characters, and themes in a novel and think about how the elements of the story are all interconnected.

The list of ten things about Opal's absent mother that her father shares in Because of Winn-Dixie serves as inspiration for students to create their own lists describing literary characters.

Students create a soundtrack for a novel that they have read, as they engage in such traditional reading strategies as predicting, visualizing, and questioning.

Explore the modern significance of an older text, such as Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, by asking students to create their own modern interpretation of specific events from the drama.

This lesson takes advantage of students' interest in music and audio sharing. Students investigate multiple perspectives in the music downloading debate and develop a persuasive argument for a classroom debate.

Students read and analyze fairy tales, identifying their common elements. They then write their own "fractured" fairy tales by changing one of the literary elements found in the original.

In this lesson, students build classroom community by exploring environmental print and a teacher-created display that focuses on a favorite book. They then create and share their own presentations.

Students explore naming conventions in digital and non-digital settings then choose and explain specific names and profiles to represent themselves online.

This lesson asks students to analyze the features of a poet's work then create their own poems based on the original model.

Students suggest and categorize words that they associate with a novel they have recently read, ranging from details about the plot to feelings about a character.

Students examine opening sentences of texts they will read during a unit or course and make predictions. They return to their predictions throughout the course as they read the texts.

Students apply the analytical skills that they use when reading literature to an exploration of the underlying meaning and symbolism in Hieronymous Bosch's early Renaissance painting Death and the Miser.

Students explore the connotations of the colors associated with the characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.

Focus students' attention on alliteration in this ocean-themed unit. Students explore alliteration in framing texts then compose their own class book to explore figurative language in their own writing.

Students identify, explore and apply the elements of circle plot structures to their own stories by using graphic organizers, reading and writing stories, and using checklists to assess their work.