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.

This lesson describes how small groups of students can plan meetings to discuss what they've read in a "just for fun" book club they've organized—and that they control.

Book Boosts—one-minute raves at the end of independent reading time—are easy ways to suggest new titles to students, and they act as a way for students to have something to think about as they read.

Students respond to self-selected books in journals, and talk about their books daily in small groups. The teacher guides students by offering suggestions and writing with them in dialogue journals.

Students practice different ways of collaborating to read a work of literature. They work in different roles as they compose and answer questions, discover new vocabulary, and examine literary elements.

Character Perspective Charting allows students to compare multiple characters and their points of view to better understand a story.

Based on the Guided Comprehension Model developed by Maureen McLaughlin and Mary Beth Allen, this lesson introduces students to the strategy of evaluating, using the Meeting of the Minds technique.

Based on the Guided Comprehension Model developed by Maureen McLaughlin and Mary Beth Allen, this lesson introduces students to the comprehension strategy of knowing how words work.

Guided comprehension moves your middle-grade students beyond decoding to become successful, independent readers. The sketch-to-stretch strategy encourages students to use "brain TV" to help them understand a text through visualization.

Students identify interesting words from Shakespeare's plays and add them to a classroom vocabulary collection.

Students watch a sample of artistic video clips online and respond through creative writing while using the vocabulary words they are currently studying.

An instructional strategy called story innovation teaches students fluency, comprehension, vocabulary, and story structure. This unique strategy can be adapted for many purposes.

This lesson teaches students how to revise dull "telling" sentences into vivid, descriptive "showing" sentences.

This lesson is a conversation-starter! In this lesson, students learn about striking up deep-thought conversations and staying on topic in the form of a book talk.

Seven blind mice—see how they spend each day of the week in this lesson that uses the book Seven Blind Mice to guide students through shared reading, writing, and listening activities.

Students make purposeful choices for their reading materials, thinking about their reasons for reading a book and using strategies to match books to their abilities.

Connect home and school, literature and life, as students take a storybook character home with them and take turns writing stories about his visit.

Students will be the definition of vocabulary experts as they use the skills they learn in this lesson to track, define, and ultimately master unfamiliar words.