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Reading Comprehension Resources: Grades 9-12

TeacherVision Staff

  • Questions Before, During, and After Reading
  • Activating Prior Knowledge
  • "The Monkey's Paw" Short Story & Activities
  • Who Am I? – Character Description
  • Story Elements
  • Reading Comprehension Sequence Chain
  • Vocabulary Strategy: Use Context Clues
  • Vocabulary Strategy: Learn New Words
  • Target Reading Skill: Identify the Main Idea
  • Target Reading Skill: Identify Supporting Details
  • Reading Strategy: Take Notes
  • Target Reading Skill: Compare and Contrast
  • Target Reading Skill: Sequence
  • Target Reading Skill: Relate Cause and Effect
  • Five Elements of a Plot
  • Scoring Rubric: Literary Analysis/Interpretation
  • Make a Giving Tree
  • "The Fox and the Goat": A Lesson on Aesop's Fable
  • Story Pyramid
  • The Herringbone: Main Idea and Supporting Details
  • Asking Questions When Reading
  • The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
  • Rachel Carson: The Coming of a Silent Spring
  • Steps in a Process
  • Character Chart
  • Problem and Solution 2
  • Independent Reading Guide: Short Story
  • Framework for Questions Before, During, and After Reading
  • A Map to Organization
  • More Reading Comprehension Resources for Grades 9–12

Featured High School Resources

Black History Month reading comprehension packet

Related Resources

Classroom Essentials for New Teachers

About the author

TeacherVision Staff

TeacherVision Editorial Staff

The TeacherVision editorial team is comprised of teachers, experts, and content professionals dedicated to bringing you the most accurate and relevant information in the teaching space.

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literacy worksheets secondary school

Critical Thinking Reading Comprehension Worksheets

  • Take these as online quizzes here!

Short Story Reading Comprehension Worksheets

  • Beginning Level
  • Answers for this series are included at the end of each worksheet.
  • "My Friend" - Low Beginning. 3 answer choices. 7 questions. 74 words.
  • "My House" - Low Beginning. 3 answer choices. 7 questions. 92 words.
  • "Time to..." - Low Beginning. 4 answer choices. 11 questions. 89 words.
  • "My Family" - Low Beginning. 4 answer choices. 6 questions. 90 words.
  • "Rainy Day" - Low Beginning. 4 answer choices. 5 questions. 78 words.
  • "A Call to the Pool" - Low Beginning. 4 answer choices. 5 questions. 116 words.
  • "The Singing Bird" - Low Beginning. 4 answer choices. 5 questions. 96 words.
  • "Seeing Stars" - Low Beginning. 4 answer choices. 8 questions. 92 words.
  • "I Fly" - Low Beginning. 4 answer choices. 4 questions. 113 words.
  • "The Drive" - Mid Beginning. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 120 words.
  • "Zach's Animals" - Mid Beginning. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 104 words.
  • "Griffin's Talents" - Mid Beginning. 4 answer choices. 9 questions. 112 words.
  • "A Happy Visitor" - Mid Beginning. 4 answer choices. 5 questions. 170 words.
  • "An Adventure" - Mid Beginning. 4 answer choices. 5 questions. 177 words.
  • "Running" - Mid Beginning. 4 answer choices. 5 questions. 148 words.
  • "Paul Cooks" - Mid Beginning. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 112 words.
  • "Bella Hides" - Mid Beginning. 4 answer choices. 8 questions. 135 words.
  • "First Prize" - Mid Beginning. 4 answer choices. 8 questions. 155 words.
  • "What Number?" - Mid Beginning. 4 answer choices. 12 questions. 154 words.
  • "The Interview" - High Beginning. 4 answer choices. 9 questions. 205 words.
  • "Julian's Work" - High Beginning. 4 answer choices. 12 questions. 194 words.
  • "Talia's Special Day" - High Beginning. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 204 words.
  • "One Hundred Dollars" - High Beginning. 4 answer choices. 13 questions. 273 words.
  • "New Shoes for Maddy" - High Beginning. 4 answer choices. 11 questions. 223 words.
  • "The 20" - High Beginning. 4 answer choices. 12 questions. 256 words.
  • "Big City Noise" - High Beginning. 4 answer choices. 13 questions. 238 words.
  • Intermediate Level
  • "By the Water" - Low Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 9 questions. 225 words.
  • "A Cold Day" - Low Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 14 questions. 286 words.
  • "Vet Emergency!" - Low Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 247 words.
  • "Late" - Low Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 14 questions. 284 words.
  • "The Brenners" - Low Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 13 questions. 297 words.
  • "Bullied" - Low Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 13 questions. 197 words.
  • "The New School" - Low Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 14 questions. 286 words.
  • "The Park" - Low Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 11 questions. 297 words.
  • "Worth Working For" - Mid Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 280 words.
  • "The Rent Man" - Mid Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 12 questions. 215 words.
  • "Time with Grandpa" - Mid Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 9 questions. 237 words.
  • "The Bus Driver" - Mid Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 15 questions. 294 words.
  • "A Day Like No Other" - Mid Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 12 questions. 305 words.
  • "A Mystery" - Mid Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 247 words.
  • "Just One Touch" - Mid Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 15 questions. 326 words.
  • "Wanga" - Mid Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 13 questions. 340 words.
  • "Ana Finds an Apartment" - Mid Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 12 questions. 408 words.
  • "Guermo's Surprise" - High Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 9 questions. 372 words .
  • "Canopy of Nature" - High Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 8 questions. 332 words .
  • "Blizzard in Birmingham" - High Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 319 words.
  • "A Christmas in March" - High Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 385 words.
  • "Bail" - High Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 301 words.
  • "Clean Water Act" - High Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 632 words.
  • "BB" - High Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 511 words .
  • Advanced Level
  • "The Mini Problem" - Low Advanced. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 291 words .
  • "Flower Power" - Low Advanced. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 368 words.
  • "Seeing Clearly" - Low Advanced. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 284 words .
  • "Accused" - Low Advanced. 4 answer choices. 12 questions. 285 words.
  • "City Girl" - Low Advanced. 4 answer choices. 13 questions. 429 words.
  • "Fried" - Mid Advanced. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 235 words.
  • "Tattoo" - Mid Advanced. 4 answer choices. 11 questions. 350 words.
  • "The Transfers" - Mid Advanced. 4 answer choices. 12 questions. 381 words.
  • "Wild" - Mid Advanced. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 493 words.
  • "Scorpion" - Low Advanced. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 333 words
  • "Remains of a Marriage" - Mid Advanced. 4 answer choices. 11 questions. 345 words.
  • "Museum Hours" - Mid Advanced. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 179 words.
  • "Seeing Through" - High Advanced. 5 answer choices. 10 questions. 326 words.
  • "Ursula Pugh" - High Advanced. 5 answer choices. 8 questions. 324 words.
  • "Dreams" - High Advanced. 4 answer choices. 12 questions. 357 words.
  • "Tracks" - High Advanced. 5 answer choices. 11 questions. 531 words.
  • "Love Train" - High Advanced. 5 answer choices. 12 questions. 646 words.
  • "The Storm" - High Advanced. 4 answer choices. 12 questions. 407 words.

Informational Passages Reading Comprehension Worksheets

In these reading comprehension worksheets, students are asked questions about information they have read about a specific topic. each passage reads similar to a newspaper of journal article, and provides interesting information about some aspect of history, nature, mechanics, science, art, and more. questions involve critical thinking with a focus on logic and inference..

  • Answer Key - This answer key is available but still under development.
  • "The Sun" - Low Beginning. 3 questions. Under 50 words.
  • "Gas" - Low Beginning. 3 questions. Under 50 words.
  • "Music" - Low Beginning. 4 questions. Under 50 words.
  • "Birds" - Low Beginning. 4 questions. Under 50 words.
  • "The Heart" - Low Beginning. 4 questions. Under 50 words.
  • "The Butterfly" - Low Beginning. 5 questions. Under 50 words.
  • "Pigs" - Low Beginning. 3 questions. Under 50 words.
  • "The Brain" - Low Beginning. 3 questions. Under 50 words.
  • "The Ocean" - Low Beginning. 7 questions. Under 100 words.
  • "Trees" - Low Beginning. 4 questions. Under 100 words.
  • "Alligators" - Low Beginning. 6 questions. Under 100 words.
  • "The Blow-Dryer" - Low Beginning. 5 questions. Under 100 words.
  • "Green Grass" - Low Beginning. 6 questions. Under 100 words.
  • "Taste" - Low Beginning. 4 questions. Under 100 words.
  • "Bees" - Mid Beginning. 10 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "Frogs" - Mid Beginning. 10 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "Beds" - Mid Beginning. 10 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "Humans" - Mid Beginning. 10 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "Fish" - Mid Beginning. 10 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "Houses" - Mid Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Soda Pop" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "Tea" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "Ice Fishing" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Bears" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Flags" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Leonardo Da Vinci" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words..
  • "Tennis" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Dogs" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Money" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Abraham Lincoln" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Corn" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Umbrellas" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Ben Franklin" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Cars" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • Answer Key - This is the answer key for to the intermediate level informational passages.
  • "Helicopters" - Low Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Yellowstone National Park" - Low Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Empress of the Blues" - Low Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "The Cactus" - Low Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Space Exploration Voyagers 1 and 2" - Mid Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Television" - Mid Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Hibernation and Estivation" - Mid Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Marco Polo" - Mid Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Movie Ratings" - Mid Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Birdsongs" - Mid Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Counting" - Mid Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Easter Island" - High Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Mosquitoes" - High Intermediate. 12 questions. Under 700 words.
  • "Fingerprints" - High Intermediate. 11 questions. Under 700 words.
  • "Mother's Day" - High Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 700 words.
  • "Europe" - High Intermediate. 12 questions. Under 700 words.
  • Answer Key - This is the answer key for to the advanced level informational passages.
  • "Chocolate" - Low Advanced. 10 questions. Under 600 words.
  • "Houses Around the World" - Low Advanced. 10 questions. Under 700 words.
  • "Cells" - Low Advanced. 10 questions. Under 700 words.
  • "Soccer" - Low Advanced. 12 questions. Under 700 words.
  • "Bathtubs" - Low Advanced. 12 questions. Under 700 words.
  • "Pollution" - Low Advanced. 12 questions. Under 700 words.
  • "Interstate Highways" - Low Advanced. 10 questions. Under 800 words.
  • "The U.S. Census" - Low Advanced. 10 questions. Under 800 words.
  • "Sleep" - Low Advanced. 11 questions. Under 800 words.
  • "The U.S. Postal Service" - Mid Advanced. 11 questions. Under 800 words.
  • "Chemical Elements" - Mid Advanced. 11 questions. Under 800 words.
  • "Africa" - Mid Advanced. 11 questions. Under 1000 words.

Technical Reading Comprehension Worksheets

In these reading comprehension worksheets, students are asked questions about the meaning, significance, intention, structure, inference, and vocabulary used in each passage. each passage reads like an encyclopedic or technical journal article. answers for worksheets in this section can be found at the end of each individual worksheet..

  • "Water" - Beginning level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 300 words.
  • "Paper" - Beginning level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 300 words.
  • "The Flu" - Beginning level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 400 words.
  • "Nuts" - Beginning level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 400 words.
  • "The Sun" - Beginning level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 400 words.
  • "The White House" - Beginning level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 400 words.
  • "Soap" - Intermediate level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 400 words.
  • "Clocks" - Intermediate level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 400 words.
  • "The Robin" - Intermediate level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 400 words.
  • "Hybrid Vehicles" - Intermediate level. 4 questions with answers included. Under 500 words.
  • "Photography" - Intermediate level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 500 words.
  • "Biomimetics" - Intermediate level. 4 questions with answers included. Under 700 words.
  • "The Great Debates" - Intermediate level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 400 words.
  • "Salt" - Advanced level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 700 words.
  • "Colony Collapse" - Advanced level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 600 words.
  • "Columbian Exchange" - Advanced level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 700 words.
  • "Ethanol" - Advanced level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 600 words.
  • "Generations" - Advanced level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 600 words.
  • "The Hubble Telescope" - Advanced level. 7 questions with answers included. Under 1000 words.
  • "Intellegence Augmentation" - Advanced level. 5 questions with answers included. Under 1000 words.

Role Play Reading Comprehension Worksheets

In these reading comprehension worksheets, students can increase their understanding of colloquial and idiomatic expressions and get a feel for conversational english. they also allow several students to participate at the same time - which makes them really fun great for use in school or at home..

  • Answer Key - This is the answer key to the role play worksheets.
  • "What Time Is It?" - Beginning Level. 4 questions. Under 100 words.
  • "How Are You?" - Beginning Level. 4 questions. Under 100 words.
  • "Tie Your Shoes!" - Beginning Level. 4 questions. Under 100 words.
  • "Where Are My Glasses?" - Beginning Level. 4 questions. Under 100 words.
  • "A Cookie" - Beginning Level. 4 questions. Under 100 words.
  • "Where Are My Keys?" - Beginning Level. 4 questions. Under 100 words.
  • "City Life, Country Life" - Beginning Level. 10 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "Flu Shot" - Intermediate Level. 5 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "Vinegar" - Intermediate Level. 4 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "Wait for Me!" - Intermediate Level. 8 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Glasses" - Intermediate Level. 8 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Hungry" - Advanced Level. 8 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Want to Know a Secret?" - Advanced Level. 8 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "Milk and Aesthetics" - Advanced Level. 8 questions. Under 500 words.

Dual Version Reading Comprehension Worksheets

In each of these reading comprehension worksheets, the same story is told, but with two versions: one that is basic, and one that is more advanced. this allows students to make direct comparisons between the advanced version to the more basic one, and makes for a powerful learning experience..

  • Answer Key - Coming Soon!
  • "An Overcast Day" - Beginning Level. 4 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "Who Knows My Name?" - Beginning Level. 4 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "A Call to the Pool" - Beginning Level. 6 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Oh No!" - Beginning Level. 8 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "An Adventure" - Beginning Level. 6 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Happy Birthday" - Beginning Level. 4 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "My Family" - Beginning Level. 8 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "My Family" - Beginning Level. 5 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Driving Directions" - Beginning Level. 6 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "A Happy Visitor" - Beginning Level. 7 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "The Singing Bird" - Intermediate Level. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Violet Makes a Cake" - Intermediate Level. 8 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "A Visit to the Doctor" - Intermediate Level. 7 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Making Dinner" - Intermediate Level. 8 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "The Market" - Intermediate Level. 10 questions. Under 500 words.
  • "Maria Gets Her License" - Intermediate Level. 8 questions. Under 500 words.
  • "A Paper for School" - Advanced Level. 7 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "A Birthday Surprise" - Advanced Level. 7 questions. Under 600 words.
  • "Getting a New Job" - Advanced Level. 8 questions. Under 600 words.
  • "The Dinner Party" - Advanced Level. 9 questions. Under 600 words.

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Language Arts Classroom

12 Ways to Build Literacy in the Secondary Classroom

literacy worksheets secondary school

12 Ways to Build Literacy in the Secondary Classroom: secondary teachers share ideas for l iteracy in high school!

I love books. Love, love reading. I collect books and decorate with books. Most ELA teachers adore the written word and share my love.

Actually, many of us became English teachers because we want to share our love of reading with students. Among lesson plans, meetings, modifications, and other parts of the job, showcasing literacy may have fallen. Teaching literacy in high school is important, though. How can we promote literacy in high school?

I reached out to eleven teacher bloggers with the simple question: How can we purposefully build literacy in the secondary classroom? Can teens see informational texts as part of everyday reading? What works for older students will not be what works for younger students. We secondary teachers need new approaches for promoting literacy in high school.

Below, you’ll find honest and real ways to get older students reading, understanding the importance of literacy, and seeing the positive effects of knowledge. As we start school this year, implement a few of these practices to engage your older students with literacy.

Use literature circles and student choice to build engagement with literature.

Student-choice literature circles

One way that Christina, The Daring English Teacher , creates a literacy-rich classroom is by facilitating student-choice, high-interest literature circles. When teachers introduce students to high-interest novels, and when students have a choice in what they read, students gain an authentic love of reading.

To facilitate the student-choice literature circles, Christina first introduces all of the books to her students. You can do this by including a first chapter Friday routine into your classroom or by hosting a traditional book tasting activity. Once students select their books, it is time to dedicate class time to the literature circles. One key aspect in facilitating successful literature circles is by making sure that the students set their own group deadlines and expectations. This provides students with agency and ownership of the work. 

Finally, to hold students accountable, my students use these Response to Literature Task Cards to discuss the events in the book. They also use various pages from this Sticky Note Literary Analysis resource to dive deeper into the novel and conduct high-level analysis conversations about the books. As a culminating activity, students work together to create a one-pager representing their books. For group one-pagers, she prefers to use a larger size paper. Secondary literacy can be easy to approach!

Literacy with students can grow with conferencing.

Student Conferences

Melissa, author of Reading and Writing Haven , shares that a key to creating an inspiring reading culture with older students is building relationships. A key way to build relationships through books (and one that is growing in the secondary education classroom) is through conferring. Books are windows into the world, and when we have meaningful conversations with students about characters, conflicts, themes, and connections, we can learn more about our tweens and teens. Teaching literacy in high school is often about relationships. 

Conferencing with readers basically means that the teacher and student sit down one-on-one to have a meaningful conversation about the book a student is currently reading. At the beginning of the year, teachers sometimes focus on engagement questions (those that encourage students to open up about their prior reading experiences – even negative ones!) so that we can get a better picture of who they are as a reader.

Those conversations progress as the year continues, and, often, questions are tied to standards and reading strategies . For example, if you are using a whole-class text (let’s say a short story, novel excerpt, or picture book) to model how conflict impacts the theme, give students a specific strategy to help them apply that same skill to their independent reading books. When conferring with them, ask students to talk about how they are seeing the conflict shape the theme specifically. Even if we haven’t read the book, we can tell whether or not students can meet the standard. All we need is a snippet into their thinking, and then we can help to push them a little further along on the learning continuum by setting a goal for the next reading conference.

These free emoji reading response questions can be used as exit tickets and are helpful with determining whether students need a one-on-one conference for the standard-related question or whether the entire class needs a mini lesson. (It also makes for great literacy classroom displays!)

When teaching virtually, teachers can engage with students on tech platforms like Flipgrid, Padlet, and even journal prompts via Google Drive (albeit not at the same pace, but still worthwhile) to talk about reading.

If you’d like more details about how to make time for conferring with older students or how to choose reading goals and strategies for students to practice, you can read more about conferring with secondary readers on Melissa’s blog, Reading and Writing Haven . As a literacy coach, she has tons of ideas for secondary literacy.

Graphic novels are strong additions to classroom libraries.

Graphic Novels

As teachers re-examine their classroom libraries to include multiple and diverse perspectives that provide windows and mirrors for students, let’s chat about graphic novels. Staci from Donut Lovin’ Teacher wants to remind us that graphic novels are just as powerful and valid as other types of text! In fact, they shouldn’t just be part of our classroom libraries, they should also be part of the curriculum! (They are also beautiful, making graphic novels perfect literacy classroom displays!)

Teaching graphic novels entails learning how to read a graphic novel and can be used to help your students become better storytellers and writers that use descriptive details . Graphic novels can also be used to have students compare and contrast text types and it allows students to try out being graphic novelists themselves! 

There are many familiar book titles that have become graphic novels such as The Giver, A Wrinkle in Time, Anne of Green Gables, and The Odyssey, to name a few. There are also so many newer titles such as The Unwanted: A Story of Syrian Refugees, They Called Us Enemy, and The Best We Could Do that can provide historical context and connections to current events and experiences.   If you’re looking for more titles, check out these graphic novels Staci thinks will make a great addition to an identity unit, or even just your classroom library! Teaching literacy in high school will take a variety of books. 

Student work displays

Tanesha at Love Tanesha displays student work in the classroom to create community and enhance literacy learning. Doing so provides talking points for teaching literacy in high school. Below are a few best practices from Tanesha before getting started: 

  • communicate the purpose of work displays early in the year
  • ask students for permission to display work
  • don’t display grades 
  • when possible use typed work 
  • highlight the skill(s) in the work

Hanging and spotlighting student work is a great and simple way to build community and showcase student authenticity. Tanesha loves using work displays to highlight the range of ideas and interpretations in writing. Regardless of the genre, Tanesha believes that the classroom belongs to the students and should celebrate strong work habits, unique ideas, and overall growth. To build literacy in the secondary classroom, display student work. 

The Project Lit Community provides great books.

Project Lit

Staci Lamb from The Engaging Station creates a literacy-rich environment by building a classroom library that is inclusive and features a variety of lived experiences and perspectives with the help of the Project Lit Community.

In 2019, Staci and her friend, Anna (@klechuponagoodbook) started the Project Lit chapter at their school. They asked their friends, family, and colleagues for help in building their libraries through an Amazon wishlist. Not too long after, they had hundreds of books readily available for their book clubs. With help from others, they were soon teaching literacy in high school. 

If you need a starting ground for adding books to your library, Project Lit (@projectlitcomm on Instagram) is a great place to start. You can also check our Staci’s blog post featuring a variety of ways to build your classroom libraries on a budget.

Build relationships with parents so that students experience a uniform message: literacy is important.

Home Connections

Lauralee (you’re on her blog!) cultivates relationships with parents so that students experience a uniform message: literacy is important. An important factor to build literacy in the secondary classroom is to share your literacy goals with the adults in students’ lives. When she meets with parents for the first time , she explains her classroom’s methods:

  • A variety of books (including The Hate U Give ), genres, and authors during First Chapter Fridays .
  • A student-arranged classroom library.
  • Frequent trips to the school library.
  • Guest readers.
  • Student choice in independent reading activities.

When you build relationships with the people at home, students hopefully learn that books belong everywhere. She’s experienced fabulous support for independent reading and lit circles in her classroom because parents knew the research behind student choice. Furthermore, she’s seen magical transformations like parents reading alongside their students. Reading can become an important part of students’ lives when their parents understand what you’re trying to accomplish.

A special note: She does not share these posters with students. Teaching literacy in high school requires a relationship with parents. She shows the statistics because as a parent, she wants to know them. However, she does not stress that data with students. 

Build a classroom library with purpose, no matter the amount of space you have.

A Purposefully Designed Classroom Library

When space for a classroom library is a concern (or just nonexistent!) Amanda from Mud and Ink Teaching has you covered.  Classroom libraries are important parts of a literacy rich classroom, but not all classrooms belong to a teacher all day long.  

What’s most important, especially in this case, is creating a classroom routine that highlights specific titles and a small, dedicated space to the MOST loved books.  For Amanda, that means hosting First Chapter Fridays every week and giving students a sneak peek into the first page of a great, new book.  Students use a Book Log Tracker to color and indicate their favorites and future reads.

Amanda also has some easy hacks for small classroom spaces , including:

  • Using a 3-tier cart to display books
  • Moving extra books to a closet, but virtually cataloging them so students can see titles online
  • Using QR codes to YouTube videos of book recommendations and reviews

Read more about transforming your classroom library on her website here .

Show students the importance of literacy.

Literacy’s Importance

One way to promote a love for reading in your classroom is to clearly communicate the importance of literacy. Abby from Write on with Miss G has found success by being transparent with her students about why we read. Regularly sharing the research-based benefits of reading literature can help students understand that reading is lifelong learning, exploration, fun, and self-improvement. Many students don’t realize that reading improves empathy, life expectancy, intelligence, and more.

One way Abby loves to explicitly teach the benefits of reading is through “Why Read?” learning stations . Each learning station focuses on a specific reason for reading and pulls in informational text, multimedia, and studies to show students the advantages of reading.

Picture books add great diversity to secondary ELA classrooms.

Picture Books

Although they may seem too elementary for secondary ELA, picture books are one of the most unique and convenient ways to add diverse perspectives to secondary ELA classrooms. 

That’s why Jenna ( @drjennacopper ) loves filling her high school library with picture books.

Picture books make great thematic pairings, and students love the nostalgia of a picture book read aloud. Big kids like picture books too, and it’s an academically supported strategy.  Picture books are short, accessible, visually stimulating, and engaging, so they give you a great opportunity to introduce new perspectives. To learn more about how Jenna uses picture books to teach literary analysis, click here .

A reading habits survey will help ELA teachers grow literacy in their secondary classrooms.

Reading Habits Inventory

Emily Aierstok, founder of Read it. Write it. Learn it., has been implementing independent reading and the reading workshop model in her 7th grade ELA classroom for almost 20 years. Several years ago, she decided to phase out reading logs and prize incentives based on research that showed logs and incentives are ineffective in motivating students to read. 

Instead, Emily found that students needed to learn how to build a positive relationship with reading. Students who declared themselves as non-readers or as people who “hated” reading often didn’t have the habits to support reading. 

As a result, Emily created the Reading Habits Survey . Unlike a reading log, the Reading Habits Survey asks students to record their habits in order to set goals. Each week, students write down what they read, where they read, and how long they read. They also record the struggles they faced, or things that got in the way of reading. 

Every Friday, students in Emily’s classes review their Reading Habits, not for a grade, but for the purpose of setting meaningful goals. Students who are successful in accomplishing their goals share what helped them. Students who struggled share their struggles. Then, students set goals to work through those struggles and build on those triumphs. 

The Reading Habits Survey not only helps students, but it also helps inform Emily’s teaching. Emily is more aware of the WHY behind students’ reading habits and can help students build a stronger relationship with reading. 

Grab your free Reading Habits Survey here . You can read more about how Emily builds positive reading habits here .

Add a virtual classroom library to your tools.

Virtual Classroom Library

Looking to create a literacy-rich classroom from a distance? Shana Ramin from Hello, Teacher Lady suggests creating a virtual classroom library! Follow a few of Shana’s ideas to build literacy in the secondary classroom.

A virtual library is basically a collection of digital resources displayed on a particular platform, such as Google Sites or Google Slides. Digital libraries have been gaining in popularity due to the COVID-19 crisis, but many librarians have been touting their benefits for decades . For a little extra personalization, Shana suggests adding your own Bitmoji — click here to learn how to create a virtual Bitmoji scene in Google Slides .

Wondering what to include in your virtual library? Add links to your school’s library catalog, free audiobook sources like Libby , and other helpful resources such as research databases, YouTube book talks, and more.  The possibilities are endless!

Your classroom environment can affect how students see literacy.

Classroom Decor

Ashley Bible of Building Book Love creates a literacy-rich classroom by celebrating literature through bookish classroom decor and literary displays. She uses beautiful decor to build literacy in the secondary classroom.

You can see her magical library-themed classroom here . It’s full of fun and frugal tips for decorating  ELA classrooms such as using old book pages to create free displays. 

Speaking of old books, she also has a clever way of using discarded dictionary pages as a meaningful first day activity.  It serves double duty as a get-to-know-you assignment and student-centered classroom decor! 

12 Ways To Build Literacy in the Secondary Classroom: honest tips to increase secondary literacy with high school English classes. Teaching literacy in high school can include First Chapter Fridays, direct instruction, and read alouds. Encourage literacy in high school by modeling reading. High school literacy improves classroom performance and understanding of complex informational texts. Build literacy with a variety of tools.

Build literacy in the secondary classroom through intentional practices and relationships, through making a classroom library work for your community, through student choice, through picture books, and through collaborative practices.

This post contains various affiliate links. Please read my disclosures .

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literacy worksheets secondary school

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Reading Comprehension Worksheets

Inferences worksheets.

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Main Idea Worksheets

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Summary Worksheets

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Short Stories with Questions

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Here are a bunch of free reading comprehension worksheets. These will help students master reading skills. You can print, edit, or complete these worksheets online . Try the nonfiction or short story reading worksheets to cover general reading skills. Or focus on specific reading skills like making predictions .

Nonfiction Passages with Questions

  • Story Structure Worksheets
  • Characterization Worksheets
  • Setting Worksheets

Making Predictions Worksheets

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All Nonfiction Passages

This is a preview image of "Two Leaves". Click on it to enlarge it or view the source file.

All Short Stories

This is a preview image of Inferences Worksheet 1. Click on it to enlarge it or view the source file.

All Inferences Worksheets

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All Main Idea Worksheets

This is a preview image of Theme Worksheet 1. Click on it to enlarge it or view the source file.

All Theme Worksheets

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All Story Structure Worksheets

This is a preview image of Characterization Worksheet 1. Click on it to enlarge it or view the source file.

All Characterization Worksheets

This is a preview image of Setting Worksheet 1. Click on it to enlarge it or view the source file.

All Setting Worksheets

This is a preview image of Summarizing Worksheet 1. Click on it to enlarge it or view the source file.

All Summary Worksheets

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All Prediction Worksheets

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324 Comments

Thank you soooo much for all of these great resources! Especially valuable for my ELL students.

gdugeugeuygh

This test makes no sense.

Blanca Portillo

Wow. I could not not agree more with all these positive comments people have posted on this wonderful website. I do thank whoever created such a great resource for teaching. I have been exploring and using the worksheets. Not only do I but also my students have found them pretty useful and meaningful. Best wishes. and Keep up the wonderful work.

Thank you so much for your material. This has been a lifesaver! I wish to improve my students’ reading skills and you have been helping so much!

Priscilla Araba Hagan

Awesome. This has become my go-to site for testing my students’ reading comprehension. Keep it up!

I love your website my kids benefit so much from everything you do! THANK YOU!!

Priscilla Hagan

This has been a great find. I love the stories and so do my students. I have particularly found the nondiction passages wonderful – the ones which appear in their reading books are often bland and not engaging – and so do my students. They’re learning so much and it’s stirring their curiosity to do their digging about the topics they most enjoy.

Since comprehension questions in our part of the world are not mcqs – they are usuallyquestions which require short answers – I usually dowload the passages and prepare my own questions, with maybe one or two mcqs from your question bank thrown in. Thus, my students cannot find answers and it makes them do the hard work of comprehending the passages.

I also underline some of the words and phrases and ask them to find words or phrases which mean the same and can replace them in the passage – that’s another important component of questions asked on reading comprehension passages in my part of the world, Ghana. Maybe those complaining about cheaters can use some of these strategies. They can also tweak the questions on this site to do away with cheating.

Mr. Morton, you’re amazing. Love, love this site. My students and I are the better for it.

Ayana Sanchez

Hello from Panama, this website has proven so helpful to help my students study for the TOEFL

Keshia Cabriole

Good Morning may we use the Redwoods and Arm Races Story for our study? I would like to say that the story and questionnaire will be a big help if you allow us to use your story to our study.

Of course. Best wishes!

Sahar Zaher

Greetings from Egypt….I’ve been using this site for the past 3 years, and it never failed to impress me and my students. It’s very resourceful and I use it on daily basis. Wherever the owner of this site is, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

You are so welcome! Thank you for using my site.

Honestly, I am writing this short message from the far lower corner of Africa,all the way from Namibia. Coming across this website has just proven to me that truly good people still exist in this world,as opposed to my traditional name which means “Good people are extinct.” I am so grateful to the person who shared all this helpful and precious information. May God continue to fill your heart and life with gifts overflowing upto an eternal fold. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!

That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. I appreciate the kind words and hearing your story. I wish you the greatest possible success in all your endeavors.

Thank you so much for this. I am a 5/6 grader and I think my teachers will enjoy this too. I use this also over the summer so I can keep track of my smartness 🙂

Your website has been very helpful. I really appreciate all the material and worksheets you have available for free. Thank you!

gabriel simon

love your materials; like to be a member

Abeku Adams

Whoever you are behind this resource, know that you are a good person and I am grateful for making such superb materials available to us. I am in Ghana, West Africa. You’ve made life a lot easier. Do you have a button to which those who wish to make a small number of donations can go?

This website is supported by advertisements. No need for donations! But I am very happy that you like the site and took the time to comment. Best wishes!

Malik Radwan

These comprehensions were really helpful in studying It would be great if you would add poetry comprehensions too (the ones that ask for literary elements) Really thank you.

Do you mean poems with questions like these ?

Jornalyn N. Agapito

Thank you so much for this reading material. It was great help to my students to develop love in reading.

You’re such an amazing person! Thank you for sharing these materials. They helped me a lot as an ELA middle school teacher. May God bless you!

Excellent passages

I am looking for material for a 10-12 reading comprehension class. Your materials are great, but a lower interest level from HS students. Any suggestions for upper levels?

Thanks so much for sharing these wonderful worksheets!

JHANNET VELÁSQUEZ

EXCELLENT WEBSITE!

Excellent and the really valuable resource.

Delores J. Mayes

My students has searched and found the answer keys to these readings. I wish there was a way the teacher’s could sign in for the content and keep the cheaters from having the honest kids miss out on these readings. What has our world gone to. This is so sad that my students would copy answers word for word and expect to get a 100% as well as their parents. We are growing a nation of untruth and cheaters.

Yeah, that is pretty frustrating.

It’s tough to keep the content free and open while preventing students from finding the answers.

One thing that might help is downloading the .RTF file and editing the titles of the assignments. A persistent student will still be able to find the answers, but that may make it a little harder.

Also, remember, cheaters are only cheating themselves! And the system and everyone else too, but mainly themselves! Best wishes!

Hi Ma’am Dolores. That happened to me years ago during the MDL (modular distance learning) in our country, Philippines. You know what I did, I shorten my URLs and add number 1 at the end of it. This way, they can no longer trace my resources.

Alexandra Bardon

Thank you Mr. Morton for sharing! Your material is just what we need to keep students busy during lockdown. I really appreciate it. K. Bardon

Harbani Kaur

Thank you so much for sharing so much worksheets

This is a great website! thank you very much for sharing.

PASKARAN RAMAYA

Thank you very much Mr.Morton for providing such good reading texts . You have a big heart to share the resources without expecting nothing in return. I’m a teacher and it has been a great help to me in preparing reading materials for my students. Thank you!

Nusrat Jahan

I am pleased to get such a wonderful worksheet through this website.

love your website, thanks for caring and sharing your talents in many ways. the resources are quite helpful, and the games are invigorating

You, My Friend, have a guaranteed slot in heaven for sharing all of this amazing material.

I am a middle school remedial reading teacher and finding supplemental material for our students is always a challenge. Your content will be so helpful!

Thank you for your generosity. I have liked and am following your FB page, and I’ve already referred several of my teacher friends to check this out.

People like you make the world a better place.

I wish you all the success in the world, and hopefully some advertisers so you can start getting some money for all of this content.

Thank you for the kind words and the blessings. I wish you, as well, the greatest possible success.

Wonderful resources for teachers and learners.Express my heartfelt Thanks.

Great website could be a bit more specific on some stories and grade 4-8 is quite a gap

Übermom Fakoya

This is such a treasure trove, especially during this period of remote learning. To also offer these gems freely is great magnanimity on your part. I am grateful; thank you ever so much!

Do more worksheets for Grades 1-5.

Lawrence Fried

Hi. I use your material alot. Question: Regarding these Reading Comp worksheets, how to you level them at “grades 2-6”? Quite a gap!

I have neglected the earlier grades for a long. I am beginning anew at this website: worksheetland.com

Please join me.

it so excellent helpful for English language learning

Mary Levtzow

Thank you for sharing and caring about each child’s potential.

Excellent website!!!

Thank you for allowing some things to still be available without having to sign your life away first.

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Reading Worksheets, Spelling, Grammar, Comprehension, Lesson Plans

Reading Comprehension Worksheets Grades 1 - 10

Use our free, printable reading comprehension passage exercises to improve your student's reading skills! Recognizing letters and words is an important first step in learning to read. However, it is only a first step; it is vital that students comprehend, or understand, what they are reading. They must be able to get the meaning of the text: What is the author telling the reader? This is reading comprehension, and it is an essential skill for success in school and in the real world. Below are our reading comprehension worksheets grouped by grade, that include passages and related questions. Click on the title to view the printable activities in each grade range, or to read the details of each worksheet. They are free for use in the home or in the classroom. Be sure to check out our spelling words  activities too!

1st Grade Reading Comprehension Worksheets

literacy worksheets secondary school

This 36 week first grade worksheet program for reading comprehension provides grade-appropriate passages and related questions, and can be used for other grades as appropriate.

2nd Grade Reading Comprehension Worksheets

literacy worksheets secondary school

This 36 week second grade worksheet program for reading comprehension provides passages and questions that are grade appropriate, but can be used with additional grades.

3rd Grade Reading Comprehension Worksheets

literacy worksheets secondary school

The 36 week third grade worksheet program for reading comprehension that we’ve organized here provides reading passages and activities designed for 3rd grade but can be used for other grades.

4th Grade Reading Comprehension Worksheets

literacy worksheets secondary school

The 36 week fourth grade comprehension program that is included here provides reading passages and questions that are grade appropriate, but can be used with additional grades.

5th Grade Reading Comprehension Worksheets

literacy worksheets secondary school

The 36 week fifth grade comprehension program provides passages and related questions that are grade appropriate, but can be used with additional grades.

6th Grade Reading Comprehension Worksheets

literacy worksheets secondary school

7th Grade Reading Comprehension Worksheets

literacy worksheets secondary school

8th Grade Reading Comprehension Worksheets

literacy worksheets secondary school

9th - 10th Grade Reading Comprehension Worksheets

literacy worksheets secondary school

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FREE Reading Comprehension Worksheets

Reading is a very important part of learning a language. it's considered a receptive skill, otherwise known as a passive skill, which means that students don’t necessarily have to produce language - just receive it. but more often than not, students have difficulty reading because of vocabulary and/or the context involved. busyteacher.org offers 1,314 reading comprehension worksheets that are sure to help your students stay engaged in their reading, by providing interesting stories and effective exercises. we as teachers don’t always have the time to make up our own stories, or go through books to pick out excerpts to present in our lessons. the reading worksheets on busyteacher.org offer a variety of different stories and texts in different categories and genres to help your students improve their reading ability and learn the language, all the while enjoying the stories they're reading. depending on what you're aiming to teach, you can use these worksheets in a whole variety of different ways in the classroom. if a worksheet has a story that contains dialogue, you could assign roles to students and have them act out what the characters say. you can also use the stories on the worksheets to create comprehension questions. some worksheets can even make for classroom discussion topics . after reading a passage, you can present a question to students, and ask them to give their opinions of where the story is going. these are just some of the many things you can do to make use of these worksheets in the classroom. whether you're teaching scanning, skimming, critical thinking, or reading for gist, busyteacher.org has the worksheet(s) you need for your lessons. there are worksheets on just about any topic you can think of - sports, business, history, and holidays to name a few. another handy feature on busyteacher.org is that each worksheet has the level shown in the description, which makes it easy for you to find an appropriate worksheet for your students. the thumbnail can be opened to full page view, so you can check if the worksheet is right for your lesson. some worksheets you'll find here are appropriate for several - or even for all levels, which means they're reusable for a future lessons with students at different levels. no registration or subscription is necessary to download our worksheets. they’re all free to download, copy, and use in your lessons. plus, all of them were created and uploaded by fellow esl teachers from all around the globe, and have helped other esl teachers in their lessons. in addition, if you have a worksheet you've created and would like to submit it to this site, you can do so by clicking the “submit a worksheet” link at the bottom of this page. join thousands of other esl teachers using busyteacher.org, and bookmark us as your number-one stop for worksheets to use in your lessons daily with 1,314 reading worksheets, planning your lessons has never been easier. get started by checking out the most popular worksheets below. try downloading one and using it in your lesson today read more... ...less.

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Reading and Writing Haven; English Teaching Ideas

Nonfiction Reading Response Activities for Secondary

Common Core Standards have required that English courses for older students have a heavy emphasis on informational texts. The problem with this mandate? Informational texts aren’t always enticing to reluctant readers, nor are nonfiction reading response activities.

Yet, comprehending, analyzing, and reflecting on nonfiction is an important life skill. When approached intentionally, lessons can be enjoyable, meaningful, and memorable for teens. The key to success is finding ways to get students to dig deep while engaging them and scaffolding learning.

In this post, you’ll find specific nonfiction reading response activities to use with junior high or high school classes.

Setting the Stage

Before asking students to analyze nonfiction, I’ve found it helpful to teach them about the reading skills I’ll be asking them to use, and I give them an introduction to informational texts .

During reading strategies units, I try to incorporate as many high-interest nonfiction articles as possible. My favorite sources are Common Lit, Newsela, New York Times Upfront, Scope, TED Talks ,  and any recent and relevant news article I can find. I want my students to understand how to navigate and utilize the text features, to be equipped with the tools they need to summarize and analyze them confidently, and to know how to think critically and evaluate them rather than passively accepting everything they read.

Introducing students to reading strategies and informational texts at the beginning of the year gives me a picture of their current strengths and weaknesses as readers. It also sets the stage for my expectations for them being active readers throughout the year.

Many of my favorite nonfiction reading response lessons from this unit follow a similar structure. They include all or most of these elements, depending on the time we have available and the complexity of the text:

Activate Background Knowledge

In order to engage students in a meaningful reading of a nonfiction text, they need to care about the topic. One of my favorite approaches for gaining students’ interest is through a video clip. I like to show them how the topic is relevant either to their life or in today’s world (their world!).

For instance, before reading about the triangle factory fire , watch this CBS video clip and discuss the responsibility the United States has to be aware of the working conditions of their suppliers. Ask, Should the United States refuse to purchase clothing from countries that do not ensure safety of their workers? How might this decision impact us on a daily basis? When students realize they are talking about some of the very clothes they are wearing, many will have a vested interest in the topic.

Close Reading and Annotation

With complex nonfiction, lead students through the process of previewing text features in order to make an educated prediction. Then, read the text out loud with students the first time through. Pause and summarize, and model for students how to ask questions or offer comments. As you read, work on monitoring predictions, adding to them and altering them as necessary.

After the initial read, ask students to comb back through a second time with a purpose. As they do, they . should annotate the text with specific questions in mind. For example, they might look for new vocabulary words they would like clarified, jot notes about what surprised them, and question the validity of the information. This first step of responding to the text is personal, and it helps students focus on basic comprehension.

Teaching nonfiction in secondary English classes can be rigorous and fun at the same time. Try this meaningful lesson plan structure from Reading and Writing Haven. #highschoolela #nonfictiontexts

Follow-Up Activity

Don’t let the annotation process to drag on. Students become bored quickly. If there are any reading strategies we don’t get to cover thoroughly during the first round of our close reading, incorporate them into a second activity, which students can complete in small groups or with a partner.

With nonfiction, try using a dice board full of questions that span a variety of depth of knowledge levels. Students roll the dice, discuss the answer with their peers, and ask questions if they need clarification. During this time, the teacher is able to walk around the room, carefully listening for misunderstandings and skills that are tough for my students. We can turn those into follow-up mini-lessons – bonus!

Incorporate Movement

After thinking through the meaning of the text, ask students to develop an opinion. Getting students up and moving has obvious benefits. One approach is to write a question on the board. Then, draw a continuum. Have students place a sticky note on the continuum to indicate their opinion on an issue or agreement/disagreement with a statement. Ask for volunteers to discuss their thoughts.

I’ve also asked students to complete carousel activities. Basically, that means you place large Post-It easel pad sheets around the room. On each sheet, write a question, or students generate the questions in small groups. They they circulate around the room with their several others. They discuss the question, and then one person writes a response. After all groups have answered all questions, review the responses as a class.

Extension Activities

I’ve used a variety of methods to ask students to respond to nonfiction texts both verbally and in writing. One of my favorites is to use task cards as writing and discussion prompts. I’ll ask students questions that require them to think critically, like:

  • What information would you include in an Insta story or Facebook live video about this article?
  • What symbol would best represent the ideas presented in this text?
  • How would you best capture the meaning of this text in exactly six words?

You can also ask students to take the information from a factual text and create an infographic, a one-pager, or a creative combination of the two. Students often love tasks like this because they can be completed artistically on paper, on the computer, or with a different medium. Plus, they can pull from information they have discussed during the previous exercises when completing this extension activity.

When I first began incorporating more nonfiction, I was less than enthused. (Major snooze fest.) Now, I look forward to finding new nonfiction articles and informational texts. When I’m watching the news or reading a magazine, I’m always on the lookout for fresh material to pique students’ interest. Nonfiction reading response can be rewarding and meaningful. Students have a hard time disliking a lesson when their teacher is passionate about it.

If you’re looking for more guidance regarding incorporating nonfiction texts, check out Language Arts Classroom. While I do this, she does that .

  • Summarizing Nonfiction: A Lesson Plan
  • Teaching Students to Read Visual Texts
  • Comprehension Strategies for Struggling Readers

RELATED RESOURCE:

Here are three nonfiction activities to use with any nonfiction article. They are scaffolded to move students from basic comprehension to a more analytical thought process.

Informational text and nonfiction articles activities for any text. Use with high school English classes.

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Hello! I only have one English 9 class this year (the others are Spanish), and I feel like I’m spending SO much time planning and prepping for this one class. So, this post was very helpful! We do not have books or student computers in my building, so (pretty much all year) I’ve been teaching a large variety of just about every type of informational and nonfiction text that I feel will help to improve their skills in a specific area. This is mainly because it is the most affordable way for me to teach my students right now, but I also feel using nonfiction texts help me teach grammar and writing more easily. I also have been using podcasts in the classroom on and off all year, and I’m so happy I chose to do so. I guess I never really know if I’m teaching/covering everything that I’m supposed to because I don’t really have anything (or anyone) to help guide my lessons (except the list of benchmarks and standards). Therefore, blogs like yours are a huge help to me! I just want to say thank you for all you do! You are appreciated more than you know! 🙂

Tara, thank you! How sweet. I think your situation is a common one. Please let me know if you ever have any specific questions because I’d love to write a post tailored to your situation. I’m sure there are other teachers who have very similar concerns. It sounds like you are doing awesome! Using high-interest nonfiction is extremely important for developing critical reading and writing skills.

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literacy worksheets secondary school

Literacy in Secondary Schools

How to improve literacy in secondary school subjects:

practical, research-based information

for Australian secondary schools

literacy worksheets secondary school

Disciplinary literacy

in  subject areas

literacy worksheets secondary school

An evidence-based approach to literacy in secondary schools

literacy worksheets secondary school

Effective literacy pedagogy in the   classroom

literacy worksheets secondary school

FEATURED POST

literacy worksheets secondary school

  • Aug 19, 2021

Scaffolding writing in subject areas

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DISCIPLINARY LITERACY IN SUBJECT AREAS

Each secondary school subject has its own 'significant, identifiable and distinctive' literacies (ACARA). Literacy in Secondary Schools is about helping teachers and students communicate like experts in the subject area.

How to communicate in Health and Physical Education

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Literacy and subject areas are intertwined. We can teach literacy and the subject at the same time.

Dr Trish Weekes

Academic, literacy researcher, literacy consultant and

publisher of  L iteracy Works resources for secondary school subjects

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literacy worksheets secondary school

Here you can find activities to practise your reading skills. Reading will help you to improve your understanding of the language and build your vocabulary. The learning materials in this section are written and organised by level. There are different types of texts and interactive exercises that practise the reading skills you need to do well at school, get good marks in your tests and exams, and get more out of your free-time activities. Take our free online English test to find out which level to choose. Select your level, from beginner (CEFR level A1) to advanced (CEFR level C1), and improve your reading skills at any time and at your own speed.

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literacy worksheets secondary school

Are you an elementary (CEFR level A1) learner of English? Practise and improve your reading skills with these texts and exercises.

literacy worksheets secondary school

Are you a pre-intermediate (CEFR level A2) learner of English? Practise and improve your reading skills with these texts and exercises.

literacy worksheets secondary school

Are you an intermediate (CEFR level B1) learner of English? Practise and improve your reading skills with these texts and exercises.

literacy worksheets secondary school

Are you an upper intermediate (CEFR level B2) learner of English? Practise and improve your reading skills with these texts and exercises.

literacy worksheets secondary school

Are you an advanced (CEFR level C1) learner of English? Practise and improve your reading skills with these texts and exercises.

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8 Reading Activities for High Schoolers That They'll Actually Enjoy

These reading activities are entertaining enough to keep teens engaged while they grow their literacy skills.

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Reading and writing skills are important at any age, but we know it's not always easy to keep older kids engaged. Reading activities for high school have to be really compelling to compete with all the other things vying for teens' attention. These fun literacy activities will have them putting down their phones and picking up their pencils.

Literacy is a broad term used to describe skills related to reading and writing. While much of the focus on literacy takes place in elementary school, there's definitely a need for continued development of skills at all grade levels.

Fun Reading Comprehension Activities for High School

There's no denying that a major component of literacy is reading comprehension, or the ability to make sense of the words on a page. The thing is, it's not always an easy thing to teach because it's such a broad topic. Students need to understand different kinds of texts across many aspects of life including work, home, and family.

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These activities help you zero in on specific aspects of reading comprehension while keeping kids' attention.

Create a Quiz

Instead of having students take quizzes or tests after reading a novel, we love the idea of allowing the students to create the quiz. A test is meant to see what a student has learned after studying specific materials. This activates a student's ability to remember information, but it doesn't do the job of teaching reading comprehension.

Creating a quiz will make students think more specifically about what information was important and how to examine whether someone else has learned that information. This is a tricky way to teach reading comprehension because they have to work hard to know the material before they can write a quiz about it.

Preparation:

Create a list of short stories appropriate for your class

Instructions :

  • Ask each student to choose a short story from your approved list.
  • After reading the story, challenge students to create a comprehensive quiz about the story. Quizzes can be no less than 10 questions and no more than 20. Questions can cover a variety of topics such as characters, plot, and theme.
  • Once the quiz is complete, have students create an answer key.
  • Assign the selected stories as homework, or read and discuss them as a class. Use the student-created quizzes to gauge individual understanding of the story.

Online Profile of a Villain

We love this creative literacy activity that really lets kids get into the details of characters. The concept is simple; readers must select a book based only on a fake online profile created using its content. There are no cover images, author names, or plot summaries visible. This is fun way to get students focused on understanding characters and reading outside of their comfort zones.

An awesome bonus is that a student will need to consider all context clues if they hope to find a book in their preferred genre. If they end up with a genre they might not choose, they get to see how they feel about it (it might just be a new fave).

Preparation: 

  • Ask each student to think of a book they would recommend to a friend. Supply reading lists if necessary.
  • From the chosen book, each student should then write a character summary of the most villainous character.
  • You'll need to have card stock and markers on hand.

Instructions: 

  • Using the character summary, students should create an online profile of the villain. Remind students that a profile highlights positive qualities so they will need to put a positive spin on any negative traits.
  • Write the completed profile on the piece of card stock. Illustrations and creative text techniques are allowed to enhance this new cover for the selected book as long as they do not include an obvious clue as to the villain's identity.
  • All students should place their completed book covers at the front of the room.
  • Choose an order and have students select a character that they might want to learn more about. The book they select will be the next reading assignment.

World Mapping

Many children's stories and fantasy books have a map of the fictional world included. These maps can provide a fun backdrop for a unique listening and reading comprehension activity. Students will be challenged to hear their partner above all others and interpret their words into an image.

Active listening skills are an integral aspect of adolescent literacy and a big component of reading comprehension. Listening not only involves hearing a word but also interpreting its meaning, and that's great practice for understanding and processing what you read.

  • Select two to five "other world" maps illustrated in popular fantasy books, like Winnie the Pooh or Lord of the Rings .
  • Prepare a step-by-step script of directions for drawing each map.
  • You'll need to have blank paper and colored pencils for each pair of students.

Instructions:

  • Separate the class into pairs. Give one person from each pair the script and the other person a blank paper and colored pencils. It's suggested that no two groups have the same world.
  • All pairs should start the activity at the same time. This will create a loud atmosphere full of distractions.
  • To start, the script reader should begin telling his partner the directions in the correct order. The person with the paper will need to listen to his partner, follow the directions, and create a world map.
  • Once all maps are complete, groups with the same script can show a comparison of their world map.
  • Open a discussion about what part of the activity was most difficult and why.
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Activities to Connect Literacy and Modern Media

Viral videos, countless social media platforms, and entertainment flood the lives of teenagers today, but reading and writing don't have to compete for attention with them. We love the idea of incorporating all kinds of media into reading activities for high school to entice teens to participate and help them expand their knowledge to real life.

Make Your Own Photo Meme

Our phones are absolutely flooded with photos these days, and Instagram is a fixture at this point. Memes are all about combining words with photos, and coming up with the right words is a big part of literacy. The goal of this activity is to give students some light-hearted practice at writing. Students will be challenged to come up with text on the spot, but the humorous nature of the photos should help keep stress levels low.

  • Print funny images from the internet, leaving space on the paper to write under the image. On the back of the image write a genre such as romance, dystopian, science fiction, comedy, drama, or mystery.
  • Give each student one image and a few minutes to examine it.
  • Instruct students to write a funny sentence or two describing their image as it pertains to the given genre, basically creating their own meme. For example, an image of a kitten wrestling a rabbit with the word "mystery" on the back might prompt a caption like "I'm not kitten. Somebunny got hurt, and we need to find out whodunnit."
  • One by one, ask students to share their meme with the class.
  • After each speech, have the class guess what genre the meme would fit in.

Re-Tweet Poetry

Communicating effectively without a ton of words is a skill that can take some practice. On X (previously known as Twitter), the limited character count of posts challenges writers to get a point across in a concise manner.

Preparation :

Assign a poem to each student. Have the students read the poem before the activity.

  • Familiarize the class with the guidelines for X, namely the maximum character count of 280.
  • Students must first rewrite each stanza of the poem to fit into a single 280-character post while still conveying the tone, mood, and point of the stanza.
  • Once the entire poem has been rewritten as a series of tweets, students should create two hashtags to accompany the posts. The hashtags should relate to either the theme, title, or author of the poem.

Analyze Song Lyrics

Teenagers live by their soundtracks, maybe even more than they did in previous generations. Incorporating this love for music into a lesson about comprehension and writing can be pretty powerful. Students will need to interpret the meaning behind song lyrics, specifically if there is one controversial message that stands out.

Ask each student to choose a favorite song and submit it ahead of time. Check lyrics for availability and appropriateness before approving students' song choice.

  • Present each student with a copy of the lyrics for their chosen song.
  • Ask each student to write a literary analysis essay using the chosen song.
  • As an added learning experience, you could ask students to present their song and analysis to the class.
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Activities to Focus on Words and Their Meanings

Vocabulary lessons can be incredibly dull and boring when they involve memorizing lists and reciting them back to the teacher. The thing is, being familiar with an extensive vocabulary can help students sound more professional in adult settings. These fun activities can help.

Beach Ball Vocab Lesson

Active lessons are awesome when you need to gain and keep the attention of teenagers. This age group is best suited for an active in-class game because they should be able to keep on task while having fun.

  • Use a permanent marker to create distinct sections on a beach ball, create as few or many as needed.
  • In each section, write a command dealing with the use of a vocabulary word. Some examples would be: change to an adverb, define the word, use it in a sentence, think of a rhyming word, and think of another word with the same root.

How to Play:

  • Instruct students to sit on their desks or have all the desks arranged in a circle before game play.
  • Write a vocabulary word on the white board, call out a student's name, and throw them the ball.
  • The student should then shout the answer to whichever prompt is closest to their left thumb as it pertains to the word on the board.
  • If the student answers correctly, the teacher should choose a new vocab word before the student calls out a classmate's name and throws the ball to that person. If the student answers incorrectly, the same vocab word is used and the ball is thrown to the next player.
  • Continue game play until all vocabulary words have been used or time is up.

Comic Strip Scene

Comic strips offer a place to showcase an entire story in very few words (plus their just really fun). This activity will require students to tap into their creativity and vocabulary skills in rewriting a scene from a play.

  • Scenes from a play
  • Blank paper
  • Colored pencils or markers
  • Assign a scene from a play to each student.
  • Instruct students to create a comic strip inspired by this scene. The purpose of the comic should mirror that of the scene, but the tone should be humorous as that is typically how comic strips are written. The basic idea is to capture the essence of the scene in images and only a few choice words. No text from the scene should be copied in the comic aside from character and location names.
  • Display and discuss the comic strips as a class. What were some of the most effective ways a particular scene was portrayed?

Connect the Dots and Have Fun

The best reading activities for high school involve covering a wide variety of skills related to the use of language. Help high school students prepare for successful adulthood by incorporating different activities that include each of these skills, but don't forget to have fun at the same time.

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Teaching High School Students Active Reading Skills

Strategies used before, during, and after reading can help high school students locate and retain important information.

High school student reading and taking notes in class

Although many people consider reading to be a passive activity, research supports that it’s an active activity that involves complex cognitive processes.

In over two decades of teaching, I’ve heard many students say, “I’m not a good reader.” While secondary educators often don’t see themselves as reading teachers, I see our role in the classroom as one whereby we can teach students strategies that strengthen their reading skills and improve their learning outcomes. By teaching active reading and having students map out their reading, educators can engage students with reading so that they are not only learning to read but reading to learn.

Making the Active Reading Process Visible

It was common for me as a secondary teacher to have students read a text and then analyze it after they’d finished reading. However, when I noticed that students weren’t able to engage in an analytical discussion about a text until they finished reading the entire text and they couldn’t recall what they had read, I was forced to confront the idea that I was doing it wrong. Most of the thinking happens during the reading process, but my classroom was designed to engage in thinking after reading. I had to change what I was doing.

I decided to show my students my thinking process during reading, so I read a story out loud to them and then mapped out my thinking while I was reading. This exercise was an opportunity for students to visualize what happens in the mind of an active reader.

Days later, I discussed the story with my students again, and they still remembered vivid details about it, which revealed that when students engage in the guided active reading process, it can enhance reading recollection. I knew that this process worked during guided reading, so I wanted to build self-efficacy by putting more individual responsibility on students.

Mapping the Active Reading Process

After modeling active reading, I had the students read a story in small groups and map their thinking by using the prereading, during reading, and after reading method . It allowed students to collaborate with each other to construct meaning and explore how we all experience texts differently. I also chose this collaborative reading and mapping exercise so that struggling readers could work with their peers who had stronger reading skills, to engage in the reading process together. 

Then, several weeks later, while reading a new story, I asked students to individually map out their thinking. When I assessed their work, it revealed that students were able to engage in the reading process to construct meaning.

Active Reading Creates Good Noise

I’ve had students say, “Reading makes me sleepy” or “Reading is boring.” However, I’ve found that teaching students how to be active readers and map their thinking has changed how they read. Instead of students silently reading at their desks, the classroom is filled with noise—pencils on paper, dry-erase markers rolling on desks, and students’ voices talking with their classmates about what they’re reading. This noise demonstrates interest and also sparks engagement within my students who initially said they didn’t like reading.

I created a poster with prompts to give students to consider while they read. It provided a starting point for mapping out their thinking process during reading, but they also initiated student conversations. 

Because students paused while they read in order to think, they were engaged in their learning, and the engagement led them to want to talk with their peers to share what they were thinking about. It moved reading from a quiet and solitary activity to a cooperative one with exchanges like this:

“Wowie!! Did you read the part with the ultimatum?”

“No. What page is that on?”

“Page 3. What page are you on?”

“I’m on page 2.”

“Oh. So, what do you think the answer to the riddle is?”

“I don’t know. It’s tricky. What do you think?”

“I already know because the answer is on page 3.”

“Oh. Stop reading and just wait for me to get there. Give me a minute and we can talk.”

Listening to my students’ conversations revealed some interesting things.

First, they used the active reading prompts to launch into mapping their reading and engaging in conversations, but they also moved beyond the prompts to create their own questions. Additionally, they made connections beyond the text to other texts they had read or to their own lived experiences. I heard students say, “This is like the movie I saw because no choice is a good choice” and “This reminds me of a time when I came home from school and something just didn’t feel right.”

Second, the visibility of the mapping, coupled with the conversations that were happening in the classroom, allowed me to identify students who were having difficulty with reading.

Identifying Struggling Readers

Often, particularly in high school, struggling readers can go unrecognized. Their lack of participation in class discussions can be seen as shyness. When they don’t complete reading comprehension tasks, it can look like disengagement, or when they don’t do their reading homework, it can seem like laziness. However, research shows that these are also signs of an adolescent student who struggles with reading .

The students’ maps allowed me to identify those who needed additional support. This visibility allowed me to intervene and support them during the reading process rather than afterward. I sat with these students one-on-one and offered different strategies to help them develop their reading skills. The methods I used included the following:

  • Offering reading materials that aligned with student’s reading level
  • Providing access to an audio reading of the text
  • Reading out loud with them
  • Giving them more time to read so that they could process at their own speed
  • Sharing a glossary of difficult words in the text so that they could better understand the reading

When students have difficulty reading, they often choose not to read, which results in their not submitting work or turning in partially completed work. As a result, my intervention takes place after everyone has finished reading and, often, when we’ve moved forward in the class. When students are taught how to map their reading and then encouraged to use it, it allows them to remain engaged during the reading process and acts as a resource for them to use during small group and full class discussions.

Having notes prompts students’ ideas and willingness to participate. Further, because they’ve read and understood the text, they are able to complete evaluation tasks that occur after the reading, leading to decreased incidents of nonsubmission or partial submission of work.

When students are illiterate or under-literate, they often feel excluded from reading-centered tasks. Yet, interventions with supportive strategies during the reading process helped my students feel included and confident. This led to their being able to engage with their peers in meaningful conversations about what they read.

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Join experts at two excellent CPD events in March 2024 and discover practical strategies which are guaranteed to help you improve students' speaking and listening skills in your subject. In Liverpool on 15 March , we will also be joined by acclaimed spoken-word artist Steven Camden aka Polarbear whilst our session on 8 March in Nottingham will explore the what, why and how of Post-16 oracy.

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17 Engaging Reading Activities for High School

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Reading activities are vital for academic performance, but also for all other aspects of life. By the time they’re in high school, students should have already mastered their reading skills, which allows them to work on efficiency, speed, and improving reading comprehension for complex technical subjects. This is where reading activities for high school students come into play. 

High school students are teenagers with a rebellious spirit and sometimes a disinterested attitude toward school and reading in general, as their social life is becoming more important. Nonetheless, high school is also a time when students need to think about their future and make life-altering decisions regarding their future career path. 

You can understand how, in a situation like the one described above, reading comprehension and good reading habits are essential for students’ future. But, how do you engage students in potentially intense reading materials without disengaging them? With reading activities and strategies that will make reading a fun and meaningful experience, of course! 

In this article, we’ll focus on 17 effective reading activities for high school that you can introduce in three phases: pre-, during, and post-reading. Each cluster of reading activities has its specific purpose and benefits. Best of all, we made sure the activities are based on general principles and flexibility, meaning you can use them regardless of whether you’re teaching English Literature , Science , or any other subject.

Pre-Reading Activities for High School Students

The first cluster of reading activities is called pre-reading activities because they precede the reading assignment. Their aim is to facilitate reading and improve comprehension by preparing the student for the topic. To illustrate this, think of a paper on the causes of the Revolutionary War . In fact, this is a good example that we’re going to stick with throughout this article in order to visualize the nature of the reading activities. 

So, the students need to read a paper about the Revolutionary War. What might facilitate or otherwise impair the reading comprehension, speed, or learning process for this assignment?

Three Pillars for Good Reading Skill in Academic Context

Reading comprehension will primarily depend on previous knowledge, general vocabulary, and the familiarity of specific terminology (not counting individual differences between students). Speed and efficacy will depend on the reading strategies and it mainly affects the students’ reading motivation and attitude. The learning process , on the other hand, depends on many different things, but knowing what to pay attention to, how to organize the content, and sharing impressions with others helps immensely. 

These three elements roughly define the outcome of all reading activities in one way or another. Therefore, we should keep them in mind when deciding when a reading activity helps the students. For instance, reading comprehension is tightly associated with precious knowledge, vocabulary, and familiarity with the topic which is what pre-reading activities target. On the other hand, the speed and efficacy of reading depend more on the reading strategies implemented during reading. Now, if you think post-reading activities help the learning process the most, you’re right, but learning is also very dependent on the pre-reading activities, and the student’s motivation. 

Let’s start with the pre-reading activities! 

Pre-Reading Activities

Word association.

Word association is a powerful technique that’s mostly implemented in the classroom when children are still learning how to read. However, word associations are also very useful when students are required to read a text on a complex topic or a new subject. With this technique, children will activate the right vocabulary needed for processing the text. 

How to use word association? There are two ways. First, you can use abstract words for which children need to find words with similar meanings or instances where the same words would have a different meaning. Another way is for kids to match words with definitions or practical applications of that word without changing the meaning. 

Just make sure that all the words used in the word-association task complement the reading material and activate the students’ vocabulary that will help them effectively read the text. 

Discussions

The second pre-reading activity is an open discussion before the students read the material. We know that discussions are essential as a post-reading activity, but they’re also incredibly helpful before reading. How? Well, they prime students for the reading material by offering some information about the topic and forming expectations on what the material is supposed to address. 

It’s not the same when you read without knowing or expecting anything, and reading while thinking: “Oh, they explained how the Revolutionary War began, but they didn’t mention anything about the causes. I wonder if they will talk about this further in the text because in the discussion, Brian mentioned the Sons of Liberty. They sound so cool, and I wonder what was their influence.”

Students will have an opportunity to hear different opinions, for example, what other classmates know about the topic, which naturally stimulates their curiosity and brings the topic on a more concrete and understandable level.

Text Survey

Text Survey is another powerful pre-reading activity for high school students because it teaches them how to identify the value of the text before reading it. In other words, during their university studies, students will be expected to do independent work, read tons of academic articles, and most importantly, filter out relevant information. This is why teaching them how to do text surveys, before investing a lot of time to read the full text, is essential for high school students. 

First, let us just say that a text survey is not the same as skimming – a common misconception. The latter is a strategic, selective reading method for highlighting the most important information from the text (we’ll explain it in the next section). Text surveying, on the other hand, is a pre-reading activity that allows students to determine if the text is something they actually want to read. 

Of course, when you assign students a particular text, they don’t need to survey it because they have to read it. But, since surveying is an essential academic reading skill, you can create opportunities where it would be beneficial for students to survey the text. 

How to do this? Again, we’ll use our Revolutionary War example. Let’s say students need to prepare a presentation on this topic. Share with them ten papers that approach this topic from different angles or discuss different causes, effects, or consequences, and so on. Assign each student a specific task – what their presentation should be about, and ask them to base it on the information from the papers. 

Now, some of the papers won’t even deal with the subtopics some of the students need to take. This is why, unless they want to read all the 10 or 15 papers, they’ll need to survey them to find which one is the best fit for their assignment. 

Surveying involves looking at the authors, headline, abstract and keywords (if available), the chapter titles, subheadings, date, etc. Basically, all the information that stands out and was used to outline the text. It’s an extremely beneficial technique because it takes only 5-10 minutes and saves a lot of time.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming can be done within the discussion or as a separate pre-reading activity. Just like word association, it helps students to activate their previous knowledge on the topic, make them think, and form hypotheses about the text’s scope and purpose. 

Within the classroom, you can organize brainstorming sessions in different ways, but here’s one example. 

Show students the book cover or the headline of a paper they need to read and ask them the following questions: 

  • What comes to mind when you see this cover/headline? (write down the words)
  • What do you think this text/book is about?
  • Why do you think the text/book is about xx (make them associate the topic with the course itself)?
  • In one word, what do you think it’s the main underlying message of this text/book?
  • In one word, why do you think I chose this for us to read? 

Speed Chatting

We’re all familiar with the concept of speed dating, and I assume high school students are too, which is what makes this pre-reading activity even more fun. Speed chatting is based on the concept of speed dating, only in speed chatting the purpose is to find as much as you can about the topic, instead of the person. 

How to organize speed chatting? Introduce a topic, let’s say the Revolutionary War. Then, before they need to read a book or a text on that topic, ask them to go on speed chatting with each and every one of their classmates, sharing their previous knowledge about that topic. Usually, students should sit in pairs, one against another, and speak about the topic for one minute before moving on and speaking with another classmate. 

As you may assume, the benefit of speed chatting is that it maximizes the students’ previous knowledge before they read a topic. In other words, if one student knows a lot about the topic, that will be shared among everyone like gossip.

Introducing Vocabulary

A more formal pre-reading activity involves you sharing a glossary with important, new, or difficult words that students will encounter in the book or in the assigned text. However, make sure you all engage and discuss the glossary in the classroom and out loud, instead of expecting the students to go over it alone. For instance, each student can read a word in front of everyone and make a sentence in which they apply the word. This is because some students might be too shy to say that they don’t understand some of the words. 

Video Introduction

Watching movies, TEDtalks, video tutorials or animated visual presentations is not reading, but it’s a great way to prepare students for reading a text on a specific topic. In our example about the Revolutionary War, seeing a short movie, an animation with a timeline, the landscape, or simply how people re-enact the war, will put visual images in their heads while reading the text later, which helps to remember and understand the content in a faster and easier manner. 

In many of the above-mentioned examples, we’ve seen that questions are a great way to make students think, activate their previous knowledge, or get them talking about the topic. However, thinking about questions as a pre-reading activity is a little different. 

According to Tudor (1989) , there are five categories of content-related pre-reading activities, including pre-questions that the text should answer and questions that activate previous knowledge. In fact, the author also included content organizers, vocabulary activities, and predictions. It’s interesting that he found predictions and questions that activate the students’ previous knowledge are a lot more effective for reading comprehension than vocabulary exercises. It’s proposed that this phenomenon is due to the ability of students to use contextual cues and overcome vocabulary deficits thanks to background knowledge. 

Reflective or summary questions formulated as “What we’ve learned in this activity?” or “Based on everything, what can we expect to learn from the text/book?” are good examples of questions that activate background knowledge and work perfectly when implemented after speed chatting, brainstorming, or discussions. 

The answers to these questions should be in the form of predictions that students expect to be fulfilled by reading the assigned literature. 

Strategic Reading Activities

Strategic reading activities for high school are activities that students can implement while reading the text, regardless of the topic of the material. They help them to better organize the material, give them a sense of structure, improve reading comprehension, but also increase the speed and efficacy of reading, which in turn prevents students from becoming disengaged when they come across long reading materials. 

  • Skimming – the first strategy involves quickly skimming the material before students engage with it on a more in-depth level. However, it’s not and should not be a replacement for reading (which is why we classified it as a separate reading activity). Skimming is the process of skipping details, data, graphs, or other elaboration for the purpose of getting the main (big picture) idea or argument behind the text and preventing one to lose oneself within the details. After skimming, the students should read the text again, this time paying attention to all the details. 
  • BEP – Beginning and End-Paragraph – the BEP is an awesome reading habit after just reading an academic text. The reason for this is that more often than not, academic literature is long and complex, which might make some students overwhelmed – not knowing what was the purpose of the text and its conclusions. Therefore, quickly going through the introduction and the end-paragraph again gives a nice overview and refreshes students’ memory. 
  • Key Fragments – ask students to always think about the most important pieces of information (according to them) that the text introduces. Then, they can highlight this information and use it later, without having to go over the whole text again. Also, when studying, these key fragments should be enough for the student to connect all the other information around them.  

Post-Reading Activities for High School Students

Finally, we got to the last cluster of reading activities that help students consolidate knowledge and improve the learning process after reading the material. When thinking about post-reading activities for high school, ask yourself  “What could students do to engage with the material after reading it?” Basically, post-reading activities should require students to use what they’ve read in one form or another. 

In addition, we propose six different activities which you can organize after the students finish reading the material. 

Outlining 

The first, and probably the simplest post-reading activity is to ask students to outline the text based on specific requirements, depending on the topic and subject. For example, if the students are reading a book or a text about the Revolutionary War, ask them to outline the material based on the timeline on which events occurred, or the causes, effects, and consequences discussed. When talking about a topic, there’s more than one way in which you can organize the content. Therefore, you can ask students to outline the material the way they think it’s most informative, or as previously discussed in the example, give them specific instructions. 

Graphic Organizing

Very similar to outlining, graphic organization of the material is basically a visual representation of the outline of the text. You can ask kids to prepare a graphic organization of the text after their usual outline. What do they need to include? 

First, they can customize it any way they want to. The two important things which every graphic organization should have are “nodes” where a message or a word or a symbol is drawn and “connections” between the elements of the graph. The connections are usually presented with lines and other variations representing different things. For example, a sequence of arrows pointed only in one direction might indicate a timeline between the “nodes.” However, they can also be color-coded or pattern-coded, representing different relations. 

The value of this activity is that it engages kids to once again think of the structure and connections between different elements of the text, which is very helpful for consolidating knowledge and indicates that the text was fully comprehended.  

Summary Writing

A more classic post-reading activity in high schools is writing a summary of the text or book that students have just read. This is sometimes a graded assignment with specific instruction or topic, but it’s maybe even more helpful if it becomes a habit. Summaries don’t have to be long or detailed and the main idea is for students to work on their skills of extracting valuable information from a piece of text. That is, from the summary you can evaluate how much the students have understood the material and what kinds of information they focused on. 

Then, you can give them feedback. Again, following the example of the Revolutionary War, some students might be focusing too much on the dates without mentioning the causes or the reasons, others might only talk about the causes and use narration (writing it like a story), without remembering any year, and so on. 

Character/Topic Analysis

As the texts become more and more complex, students might start to struggle to keep up. For instance, their comprehension might be good, meaning they understand the texts, but can they meaningfully analyze the text or even attempt to critique it with well-formed counter-arguments? This is what you need to find out to make sure they’re hitting the learning objectives set for the year. 

To help them out, give them frequent readings and after that share a template for them to use in order to analyze the topic/character/event. Here’s an example of one type of template for analysis:

  • Graph 1: What’s the argument/strategy/style/feature used?
  • Graph 2: Textual evidence – Where can we find that in the text? 
  • Graph 3: What’s the purpose for using that argument/strategy/style/feature (what is the author trying to tell us)?
  • Graph 4: How does this argument or strategy support the claim? 
  • Graph 5: What’s the effect?

Presentation

We’ve mentioned presentations a couple of times before, and that’s because they’re a great way for kids to present the text they’ve been reading. In presentations, students have visual freedom (adding graphics, animations, images, symbols, drawings, etc), as well as writing freedom (they present orally, which means the writing serves only them). 

Other students may ask questions or comment which is a really great way for everyone to see how others understood the text.

Finally, the last reading activity for high school students is, again, discussion, but this time as a post-reading activity. How is it different? Well, during the discussion after reading the text, students should share their general impressions. Here are a couple of questions usually answered during the final discussion. 

  • Were your expectations met? 
  • What was surprising or unexpected? 
  • What was learned? 
  • What questions were raised while reading? 
  • Where can we go from here? 
  • Do you need a follow-up reading for better comprehension? 
  • Do you want to elaborate your knowledge on a specific aspect of the topic? 
  • What got your interest the most?

Before You Go

As we’ve seen, there are many different reading activities for high school students that can promote reading comprehension, motivation, speed, and efficacy of reading, as well as the learning process itself. Hopefully, we did a good job organizing this article and you’re satisfied with the way we classified the reading activities. We believe that this way, you can make clear connections with the benefits obtained with each of the activities and their overall purpose. 

Of course, you don’t have to implement all of the activities, that would be way too overwhelming which defeats the purpose because it will eventually make reading an undesired activity. Instead, pick the ones you think will best work for your students or try different ones and see what the students’ feedback is. 

Finally, if you need any help on any of the reading topics, don’t forget to head over to our website and pick out a worksheet ! They’ll engage the students, teach them something more about the topic, and save you a lot of time! Also, make it a habit to regularly check our blog , as we share new informational guides, such as this one, every week!

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Nouvelle ELA Teaching Resources

3 Quick Media Literacy Activities for Secondary ELA

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These quick and low-prep media literacy activities will help you improve your student’s critical thinking skills, teach rhetorical analysis and persuasive techniques, and even practice public speaking!

A stack of newspapers with a white rectangle in the center. There is pink and black text that says "Short & Sweet Media Literacy Activities"

To me, teaching media literacy goes hand in hand with teaching Secondary ELA. After all, understanding and interpreting a novel, or analyzing an author’s purpose isn’t so different from critically reading a news article or blog post.

Media literacy is especially critical if you’re teaching about current events or exploring topics like immigration or social justice in ELA .

I also have a new resource (2023) that has 15 lesson plans analyzing pop culture short texts, like TV episodes, songs, short films, and more! It is a fantastic, standards-aligned resource that builds media literacy skills. Check out the 15 Pop Culture Analysis Activities resource here.

What is media literacy? 

Teaching media literacy is all about helping students develop their critical thinking skills and become responsible consumers and creators of media. Students with strong media literacy skills can: 

  • Understand how media is being constructed for a purpose
  • Assess the influence of that media on themselves and others
  • Create media thoughtfully and conscientiously

-definition from medialiteracynow.org

Why is media literacy important?

Media Literacy moves beyond just teaching students to identify persuasive techniques and propaganda – it helps them understand the messages they are receiving every day. Beyond traditional literacy skills of reading and writing, students need to be able to decode videos, social media posts, songs, and much more. 

Media literacy activities for high school and middle school help students move from a “hunch” about what someone is trying to sell them to being able to critically analyze messages.

Quick Media Literacy Activities:

1. “buy my pencil” speaking game.

I originally shared this game in the post “ Six Ideas for Teaching Media Literacy ” over at the Secondary English Coffee Shop Blog. 

In this activity, students try to convince each other to buy a pencil. They will employ various persuasive techniques , even if they do not yet have the names for all of them. This is because students absorb persuasion constantly, and demonstrate various techniques on a hunch. After a few minutes of letting them try to sell a partner their pencil, call students back together and have them describe the techniques they used.

To extend this, you can have students perform these impromptu skits in front of a larger group or in front of the class. This is a great way to get some informal public speaking practice , and I’m always a proponent of making public speaking less intimidating.

2. Persuasive Techniques Bell Ringers

literacy worksheets secondary school

Use these bell ringers as daily media literacy activities for high school or middle school. Students will practice analyzing persuasive techniques in writing, ads, and music. They will also use persuasion effectively in scaffolded writing and artistic tasks!

These bell ringers are so useful for teaching media literacy because they provide daily practice and leave plenty of time to touch base on skills. 

Want tips like these delivered right to your inbox? Sign up for my monthly Teaching Tips Newsletter and you’ll get that, plus free resources and other subscriber perks 🙂

3. Introduction to Rhetoric Doodle Notes

literacy worksheets secondary school

Use this FREE media literacy activity to introduce ethos, logos, and pathos to students. Students watch two videos and read an article, all found for free online. As they go, they complete their visual notes. 

This is a great activity to kick off your Persuasive Techniques and Media Literacy Unit !

Bonus Resource! Using Newsy in the classroom

Have you heard of  Newsy ? It’s a platform for in-depth video coverage of a variety of topics, and it’s free for your use.

They’ve taken stories from CNN, BBC, HuffPo, and many more sources, and condensed them. Videos range in length, but generally run around two minutes.

The reporters speak slowly, and each video includes a transcript. This concise style makes Newsy videos easy-to-digest for non-native speakers.

Newsy with Adult ELLs

I currently use Newsy with adult English language learners. Students enjoy Newsy because it is “real English” and doesn’t have the same “fake” feel as a scripted conversation.

Students also enjoy that Newsy topics are current and interesting, in domains that matter most to them (technology, business, economics, etc.).

Newsy with Younger ELLs

You can use a Newsy video to start off your class period, having the video act as a conversation starter. You could also have students complete a KWL chart before viewing the video in order to activate prior knowledge. This would be a great approach with younger students, particularly if you are teaching ESL as part of another class. For example, you could use a Newsy science video to build scientific vocabulary.

You can also use Newsy videos to reinforce summarizing skills and practice main idea. The videos are short enough that you could show three or four in succession and have students pinpoint the main idea in each.

Newsy in an ELA Classroom

In an ELA classroom, you can use Newsy in a variety of ways.

-to accompany a journal topic.  This is a great way to draw students in with something visual and auditory before asking them to write. Also, at a run time of about two minutes, these videos won’t take up too much time. I like to do videos with journal topics a couple times a week.

-to kickstart a research mini-project.  After viewing a video as a class, give students the rest of the lesson to do a quick inquiry. For example, if students watch a video about McDonald’s new custom ordering scheme, have students research other fast-food restaurants that have tried this. Has it worked for them? Have students present their findings (and sources!) to small groups.

-to prompt debate.  After viewing a video, have students take sides of an issue. Give students time to research and then debate their opinions as a class or in small groups

-to serve as a model.  Have students work in pairs to prepare (and produce!) a two-minute news clip about a topic. The resulting videos would even be short enough to watch in class on a “viewing day”. This would be a great way to get kids to dive into research, as well as incorporate reading, writing, speaking, and listening into a project.

A grid of brightly lit TV screens, below there is a pink square with black text that reads "Short & Sweet Media Literacy Ideas"

I hope this post showed you how teaching media literacy is in middle or high school ELA! As teachers, we aren’t just here to help students make sense of Shakespeare, we’re also here to help them make sense of the world around them.

Do you have any go-to media literacy activities? Comment below!

Happy teaching!

P.S. If you try any of these activities with your students, I’d love to hear how it went! Reach out on IG @nouvelle_ELA 🙂

Further Reading...

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5 Short Stories to Celebrate AAPI Heritage Month in Secondary ELA

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15 YA Thrillers for the Classroom Library

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12 YA + MG Books for Reluctant Readers

4 short stories to celebrate hispanic heritage month, adaptable class novel study activities.

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Reading Comprehension Worksheets

Free printable Reading Comprehension worksheets that are designed to help children practice their comprehension skills. Comes from a commercial initiative.

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Content objective: This resource should enable a child to:

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How technology is reinventing education

Stanford Graduate School of Education Dean Dan Schwartz and other education scholars weigh in on what's next for some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom.

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Image credit: Claire Scully

New advances in technology are upending education, from the recent debut of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT to the growing accessibility of virtual-reality tools that expand the boundaries of the classroom. For educators, at the heart of it all is the hope that every learner gets an equal chance to develop the skills they need to succeed. But that promise is not without its pitfalls.

“Technology is a game-changer for education – it offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), who is also a professor of educational technology at the GSE and faculty director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

For K-12 schools, this year also marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, which has provided pandemic recovery funds that many districts used to invest in educational software and systems. With these funds running out in September 2024, schools are trying to determine their best use of technology as they face the prospect of diminishing resources.

Here, Schwartz and other Stanford education scholars weigh in on some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom this year.

AI in the classroom

In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately worried that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or coach students during the writing process.

AI can also help automate tasks like grading and lesson planning, freeing teachers to do the human work that drew them into the profession in the first place, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty lead for the AI + Education initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “I’m heartened to see some movement toward creating AI tools that make teachers’ lives better – not to replace them, but to give them the time to do the work that only teachers are able to do,” he said. “I hope to see more on that front.”

He also emphasized the need to teach students now to begin questioning and critiquing the development and use of AI. “AI is not going away,” said Lee, who is also director of CRAFT (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), which provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students across subject areas. “We need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology.”

Immersive environments

The use of immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality is also expected to surge in the classroom, especially as new high-profile devices integrating these realities hit the marketplace in 2024.

The educational possibilities now go beyond putting on a headset and experiencing life in a distant location. With new technologies, students can create their own local interactive 360-degree scenarios, using just a cell phone or inexpensive camera and simple online tools.

“This is an area that’s really going to explode over the next couple of years,” said Kristen Pilner Blair, director of research for the Digital Learning initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which runs a program exploring the use of virtual field trips to promote learning. “Students can learn about the effects of climate change, say, by virtually experiencing the impact on a particular environment. But they can also become creators, documenting and sharing immersive media that shows the effects where they live.”

Integrating AI into virtual simulations could also soon take the experience to another level, Schwartz said. “If your VR experience brings me to a redwood tree, you could have a window pop up that allows me to ask questions about the tree, and AI can deliver the answers.”

Gamification

Another trend expected to intensify this year is the gamification of learning activities, often featuring dynamic videos with interactive elements to engage and hold students’ attention.

“Gamification is a good motivator, because one key aspect is reward, which is very powerful,” said Schwartz. The downside? Rewards are specific to the activity at hand, which may not extend to learning more generally. “If I get rewarded for doing math in a space-age video game, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be motivated to do math anywhere else.”

Gamification sometimes tries to make “chocolate-covered broccoli,” Schwartz said, by adding art and rewards to make speeded response tasks involving single-answer, factual questions more fun. He hopes to see more creative play patterns that give students points for rethinking an approach or adapting their strategy, rather than only rewarding them for quickly producing a correct response.

Data-gathering and analysis

The growing use of technology in schools is producing massive amounts of data on students’ activities in the classroom and online. “We’re now able to capture moment-to-moment data, every keystroke a kid makes,” said Schwartz – data that can reveal areas of struggle and different learning opportunities, from solving a math problem to approaching a writing assignment.

But outside of research settings, he said, that type of granular data – now owned by tech companies – is more likely used to refine the design of the software than to provide teachers with actionable information.

The promise of personalized learning is being able to generate content aligned with students’ interests and skill levels, and making lessons more accessible for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Realizing that promise requires that educators can make sense of the data that’s being collected, said Schwartz – and while advances in AI are making it easier to identify patterns and findings, the data also needs to be in a system and form educators can access and analyze for decision-making. Developing a usable infrastructure for that data, Schwartz said, is an important next step.

With the accumulation of student data comes privacy concerns: How is the data being collected? Are there regulations or guidelines around its use in decision-making? What steps are being taken to prevent unauthorized access? In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data.

Technology is “requiring people to check their assumptions about education,” said Schwartz, noting that AI in particular is very efficient at replicating biases and automating the way things have been done in the past, including poor models of instruction. “But it’s also opening up new possibilities for students producing material, and for being able to identify children who are not average so we can customize toward them. It’s an opportunity to think of entirely new ways of teaching – this is the path I hope to see.”

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Florida school requires parental consent for pupils to listen to Black author’s book

Permission slips indicate how some schools are trying to comply with Ron DeSantis’s laws targeting teaching of race and race issues

A Florida school has received backlash after it required parents to provide written consent allowing their children to engage with a Black author’s book. The permission form detailed an activity in which “students will participate and listen to a book written by an African American”.

Chuck Walter, a parent at Coral Way K-8 in Miami, posted a photo of the slip on X, writing: “I had to give permission for this or else my child would not participate???” He tagged the Miami-Dade county public schools superintendent, Jose L Dotres. (Dotres’s office did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.)

Walter’s post comes days after another Miami school, iPrep Academy, drew ire for asking for parents’ permission for students to participate in “class and school wide presentations showcasing the achievements and recognizing the rich and diverse traditions, histories, and innumerable contributions of the Black communities”.

The permission slips indicate how some Florida schools are trying to comply with the state’s “ Parental Rights in Education ” law, more commonly known as the “don’t say gay” law, and the “Stop Woke Act”, both signed by the governor, Ron DeSantis, in 2022. The former prohibits discussions of sexuality and gender in classrooms, while the latter regulates how race and race issues can be taught in schools. Critics have suggested that Florida lawmakers are aiming for erasure or to teach a false history to the state’s children.

The Florida commissioner of education, Manny Díaz, called the situation a “hoax”, posting on X: “Florida does not require a permission slip to teach African American history or to celebrate Black History Month. Any school that does this is completely in the wrong.”

But DeSantis and other Republican lawmakers in the state have created an environment in which teachers are severely limited in how they can discuss race, gender and sexual orientation in all grades, and officials have not provided concrete guidance on how to comply. As a result, some teachers and districts have created policies, like the permission slip policy, to ensure they are acting in accord with the law.

For Miami-Dade county public schools, compliance has included requiring parental consent for all club meetings and events, guest speakers, college adviser visits and other enrichment activities, the Miami Herald reported . Teachers now face time- and resource-consuming hurdles to ensure their students are able to hear from Black historians and Holocaust survivors, for instance, which has been a normal practice in local schools in previous years.

In an interview with NBC , Walter said that his daughter, a first-grader, almost did not participate in the activity because she had not mentioned the form or the event to her father, thinking it would be boring.

“The idea that kids can have a say in what activities they participate in is really strange,” Walter said to NBC. “And then the idea that some kids would be taken out of class, that just seems bizarre.”

Until clear guidelines on compliance are enacted, though, schools in the state are forced to create their own, perhaps overzealous, methods of ensuring their teachers are operating within the law.

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    Here are a bunch of free reading comprehension worksheets. These will help students master reading skills. You can print, edit, or complete these worksheets online. Try the nonfiction or short story reading worksheets to cover general reading skills. Or focus on specific reading skills like making predictions .

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    The use of a word wall in a classroom can be a highly effective teaching strategy to improve literacy skills. Word wall activities encourage active student participation. Gestures, such as pointing to key words during a lesson, offer visual reinforcement which can be very helpful for students.

  8. Reading Comprehension Worksheets

    Below are our reading comprehension worksheets grouped by grade, that include passages and related questions. Click on the title to view the printable activities in each grade range, or to read the details of each worksheet. They are free for use in the home or in the classroom. Be sure to check out our spelling words activities too!

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    5 Brain-Based Vocabulary Activities for the Secondary Classroom Trying to find some new practice activities for your existing vocabulary units? These brain-based vocabulary approaches are unique — perhaps just what you need. Do your students smile at you when you begin a vocabulary lesson? Do they act interested or ask questions?

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    With 1,314 reading worksheets, planning your lessons has never been easier. Get started by checking out the most popular worksheets below. Try downloading one and using it in your lesson today! read more... Most Popular. Animal Riddles. Conditionals Reading Comprehension and Speaking Practice.

  11. Nonfiction Reading Response Activities for Secondary

    With complex nonfiction, lead students through the process of previewing text features in order to make an educated prediction. Then, read the text out loud with students the first time through. Pause and summarize, and model for students how to ask questions or offer comments. As you read, work on monitoring predictions, adding to them and ...

  12. Secondary whole-school literacy resources

    Whether you're looking for fun maths worksheets or brand new guided reading activities, we have thousands of free and premium resources for you to download. From early years to primary, you'll find phonics worksheets and numeracy games and all you need to revise for Sats. From secondary to post-16, we have everything from French lessons to ...

  13. Literacy in secondary schools

    Literacy in Secondary Schools is an evidence-based resource for improving literacy in subject areas. This site provides free research-based literacy advice for teachers and schools. It helps principals, deputies, literacy coordinators and head teachers / leaders of learning to improve disciplinary literacy.

  14. Reading

    A1 reading Are you an elementary (CEFR level A1) learner of English? Practise and improve your reading skills with these texts and exercises. A2 reading Are you a pre-intermediate (CEFR level A2) learner of English? Practise and improve your reading skills with these texts and exercises. B1 reading

  15. 8 Reading Activities for High Schoolers That They'll Actually Enjoy

    Preparation: Print funny images from the internet, leaving space on the paper to write under the image. On the back of the image write a genre such as romance, dystopian, science fiction, comedy, drama, or mystery. Give each student one image and a few minutes to examine it.

  16. Teaching Active Reading Strategies in High School

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  17. Resources for early years, primary and secondary schools.

    Premium. Primary and secondary literacy year planner 2023-24 (printable) Plan your exciting literacy events and moments across the year using our printable calendar and display in your staffroom to inspire planning. View details. Premium. Developing language and literacy in science.

  18. Improving Literacy in Secondary Schools

    School Phases. This guidance report aims to help secondary schools improve literacy in all subject areas. It provides seven recommendations related to reading, writing, talk, vocabulary development and supporting struggling students. Throughout the report, recommendations emphasise the importance of disciplinary literacy.

  19. Literacy across the curriculum at secondary school

    November 11, 2021. Effective literacy practice in secondary schools enables students to access and engage in learning in all subject areas. This research review explores the literacy demands of the secondary school context, and outlines some ways in which secondary school teachers may develop and enhance learning through a disciplinary literacy ...

  20. Secondary

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  22. 3 Quick Media Literacy Activities for Secondary ELA

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  23. Reading Comprehension Worksheets

    Free printable Reading Comprehension worksheets that are designed to help children practice their comprehension skills. Comes from a commercial initiative. How it maps to the curriculum. 1-2 3-4 ... To register for a Scoilnet Account you will need to have a Teaching Council number and a roll number for your school in Ireland.

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  26. Florida school requires parental consent for pupils to listen to Black

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  27. "More than just a school" say parents fighting to save Dalry Primary

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