Reading Guides help students navigate reading material, especially difficult textbook chapters or technical reading. Students respond to a teacher-created written guide of prompts as they read an assigned text. Reading Guides help students to comprehend the main points of the reading and understand the organizational structure of a text.

This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 6th Grade English Language Arts. 

This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 6th Grade ELA.

In this lesson, students are introduced to the question that will inform their essay: How does Bud use his rules: to survive or thrive?

In this lesson, students will briefly reread the Cronus myth, which they have already read closely in Lessons 2-3. Students then will write a literary analysis connecting a theme of the Cronus myth to a theme in The Lightning Thief.

In this lesson, students continue to plan for their literary analysis by studying a model essay and determining the theme of The Lightning Thief.

In this lesson, students will make a claim about two adversities faced by people in the Middle Ages and choose where they want to focus their essay.

In this lesson, students read the story of Rip Van Winkle and use Venn diagrams to compare his old life and his new life.

In this lesson, students read the novel "Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry" and participate in an Oprah Winfrey-style show to review the events in the novel and gain a more in-depth understanding of them.

This teachers guide for Searching for Silverheels by Jeannie Mobley includes a prereading activity, discussion questions, and writing and research activities for after reading.

A Seed Discussion is a two-part strategy used to teach students how to engage in discussions about assigned readings. In the first part, students read selected text and identify "seeds" or key concepts of a passage which may need additional explanation. In the second part, students work in small groups to present their "seeds" to one another. Each "seed" should be thoroughly discussed before moving on to the next.

In this lesson, students begin to practice analyzing the text in writing, aligning "The Hero's Journey" and "The Lightning Thief." This is an initial low-stakes writing task.

In this lesson, students will evaluate the model essay and begin to draft their own essays.

In this lesson, students will work on answering text-dependent questions about a close-reading excerpt that are designed to intentionally scaffold students toward finding appropriate evidence when connecting Percy’s experience to “The Hero’s Journey.”

Selective Highlighting/Underlining is used to help students organize what they have read by selecting what is important. This strategy teaches students to highlight/underline ONLY the key words, phrases, vocabulary, and ideas that are central to understanding the reading.

Students will particiate in a Socratice Seminar to discuss the idea of non-conformity as a relative theme in the novel Stargirl. Students will refer to text annotations and class discussions (option: complete TPFASTT) to make contributions to the student led discussion.

This teachers guide for Somewhere There is Still a Sun by Michael Gruenbaum with Todd Hasak-Lowy includes discussion questions and prompts for interpretation for each part of the book, assignments and worksheets, ideas to integrate visual media, and writing assignment ideas.

In this lesson, students write a short article for an imaginary music magazine in which they interpret the lyrics of a popular song.

In this lesson, students demonstrate their knowledge of the book "The Hundred Dresses" by Eleanor Estes by illustrating and paraphrasing each chapter to create a graphic organizer.

Story Maps are used for teaching students to work with story structure for better comprehension. This technique uses visual representations to help students organize important elements of a story. Students learn to summarize the main ideas, characters, setting, and plot of an assigned reading.