Reading

Jump to Lesson plans in the following Reading areas:

Reading
Questioning
Reading Expository Text
Vocabulary
How to Read a Textbook
Reading and Interpreting Diverse Materials—Web sites
Reading and Interpreting Diverse Materials—Newspapers and Magazines
Reading and Interpreting Diverse Materials—Charts, Graphs, and Maps

Reading

Six Comprehension Strategies
This site provides an overview and lessons for each of the following skills: Making Connections, Questioning, Visualizing, Inferring, Determining Importance, and Synthesizing.
http://wilearns.state.wi.us/apps/Print.asp?ap=&cid=821

Reading Across the Curriculum
This site describes reading strategies for content teachers and provides student reading checklists for different purposes: reading to be informed, reading to perform a task, and reading for literary experience.
www.pgcps.pg.k12.md.us/%7Eelc/readingacross.html

Teaching Strategies for Using Materials in an Inclusive Classroom
Using the CSR model, this site outlines four strategies that can be used in an elementary school curriculum: "Preview," "Click and clunk," "Get the gist," and "Wrap up."
www.teachervision.fen.com/lesson-plans/lesson-6735.html

A Road Map for Content-Area Reading
Middlewebs offers a downloadable map for reading nonfiction and questions for students to ask before, during, and after reading a social studies example.
www.middleweb.com/ReadWrkshp/JK34.html

Questioning

Guidelines and Student Handouts for Implementing Read-Aloud Strategies in Your Class
Here is a collection of guidelines, checklists, and assessment tools to start think-aloud strategies with students. It is taken from Jeff Wilhelm's book Improving Comprehension With Think-Aloud Strategies.
teacher.scholastic.com/reading/bestpractices/comprehension/strategies.htm

Using the Think-Aloud in Reading Instruction
This site provides an overview for the Think Aloud strategy and an online Thank Aloud example.
http://web.grps.k12.mi.us/academics/5e/thinkaloud.html

Webs (The Discussion Kind!) in the Classroom
Education World provides an overview, sample lessons, a chart of discussion webs, and cross-curriculum examples.
www.education-world.com/a_lesson/lesson032.shtml

Reading Expository Text

Teacher Directed Reading Using Expository
This is an all-purpose lesson for guided reading of expository text. It helps students in learning content and reading expository text critically.
www.connieprevatte.com/teacher_expository/default.htm

In the Classroom o a Toolkit for Effective Instruction of English Learners
This site provides lessons on content reading, including ones on vocabulary, reading expository and narrative texts, writing, and inquiry.
http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/practice/itc/

This Week's Tips: Reading Success with Expository Texts
This site lists practical teacher tips for guiding students in reading expository texts. It also has a downloadable two-column question and answer organizer.
www.glencoe.com/sec/teachingtoday/weeklytips.phtml/146

Vocabulary

Secondary Content Teacher Reading Strategies
This section contains a number of vocabulary lessons and activities, including decoding multi-syllabic words, prefixes/suffixes, content area vocabulary, feature analysis map, using context clues, and unknown words in context.
www.ops.org/reading/secondarystrat1.htm

Reading in the Content Areas: Study Guides and Vocabulary Activities
This page includes activities for teaching vocabulary in content areas, such as identifying key vocabulary and concepts in the reading selection, List-Group-Label, creating "Possible Sentences," and identifying the pattern of exposition.
coe.sdsu.edu/people/jmora/Pages/ContentStudyGds.htm

Teaching Vocabulary in the Content Areas
This page contains specific tips for teaching content reading vocabulary words, prefixes, suffixes, etc.
www.pgcps.pg.k12.md.us/%7Eelc/readingacross2.html

Vocabulary Word Maps: Strategies for Reading Comprehension
This is a download of a visualizing map for teaching vocabulary.
curry.edschool.virginia.edu/go/readquest/strat/wordmap.html

Virtual Thesaurus
This is an interactive virtual thesaurus with an interactive map showing the meaning of your word.
www.visualthesaurus.com/desktop/index.jsp

Voycabulary
VoyCabulary™makes the words on any web page into links so that you can look them up with just a click!
www.voycabulary.com

How to Read a Textbook

Web Tools for Educators: Sq3R Chart Generator
This page by Teach-nology helps students generate an SQ3R chart.
www.teach-nology.com/web_tools/graphic_org/sq3r/

Reading Across the Content Areas: Textbook Activity Guide Strategy
This document provides examples of worksheets for different curriculum areas.
www.phylsquill.com/downloads/tag-examples.doc

Reading and Interpreting Diverse Materials—Web sites

Cyberbee: How do I integrate the Internet into my classroom curriculum?
Infused into each of the curriculum areas that Linda Josephs includes on this site are ideas on how to help students better use web sites in order to gain content understanding.
www.cyberbee.com/intclass.html

Jo Cool or Jo Fool - For Teachers
Jo Cool or Jo Fool is a web-based "cyber-tour" that asks students to make specific decisions and judgments about web sites they visit on the tour. The teacher page provides information on the goals of the site and includes a link to a teachers' guide with information on how to integrate the web site into the classroom.
www.media-awareness.ca/english/special_initiatives/games/joecool_joefool/jo_cool_teachers.cfm

Webquest
This site provides information on how webquests can help students focus on the content of a particular web site and how to integrate webquests into one's own teaching.
www.webquest.org/

The New York Times Learning Network
Free reading comprehension activities accompany New York times articles. Includes
an online dictionary and several types of comprehension questions.
www.nytimes.com/learning/  

Reading and Interpreting Diverse Materials—Newspapers and Magazines

Cartoons for the Classroom
The Detriot Free Press has put together an extensive resource that helps you use newspaper cartoons in the classroom. Included on this site are lesson plans and lesson plan templates, an index of political cartoons, and a directory of cartoons from around the world.
nieonline.com/detroit/cftc.cfm

Teaching with The New York Times
This is a collection of lesson plans that use articles from The New York Times as the jumping off point. Each lesson helps teach students how to read and interpret information presented in newspaper articles.
www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/lessons/archive.html

Using Newspapers in the Classroom
This site provides brief explanations of some activities you might try when teaching students how to effectively read newspapers. Parts of speech, outlining, sequencing, and visualizing are a few of the areas covered.
www.teachersdesk.org/news.html

Reading and Interpreting Diverse Materials—Charts, Graphs, and Maps

Create a Graph
This site from the National Center for Education Statistics gives students the chance to learn how to design and then create graphs online. They then have the opportunity to interpret the data shown on the graphs they have created.
nces.ed.gov/nceskids/graphing/

Exploring Maps
Lessons on navigation, location, and exploration are included in this resource geared to students in grades 7 through 12. It is provided by the United States Geological Survey.
http://interactive2.er.usgs.gov/learningweb/teachers/exploremaps.htm

What Do Maps Show?
This is another set of lesson plans from the United States Geological Survey. This group is geared to students in grades 5 through 8. It covers how to read topographical maps and working with maps.
http://interactive2.er.usgs.gov/learningweb/teachers/mapsshow.htm

Ten Classroom Approaches to Media Literacy
This article includes tips for integrating critical thinking skills as students learn to use different types of materials. It also lists several curriculum areas with ideas for teaching students how to use diverse types of resources within each.
www.medialit.org/reading_room/article338.html

21st Century Literacies—Resources—Media Literacy and Visual Literacy Lesson Plans
The lessons provided here help students understand how to analyze the images they see every day. For example, one lesson looks at how a camera shot-a close-up vs. a long shot-has an impact on the message that the image sends to its viewers.
www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/21stcent/sitemap.html#media

Do you have a favorite lesson plan or web site that is not included in this list?
Email: literacymatters@edc.org