By the time your student reaches the 7th grade, he should be acclimated to the middle school environment. 7th grade students will strengthen the reading skills they learned in the 6th grade. They will do this by reading more complex texts and essays.
The students will be responsible for more deeply analyzing texts and providing textual evidence as support. These textual details will allow the 7th grade students to analyze, develop ideas, and make inferences which will strengthen their reading comprehension skills.
This article will provide you with activities to assist you as you help your students become better readers.
1. 40 Anchor Charts to Increase Reading Comprehension
These 40 anchor charts will help you increase the understanding of story elements, context clues, literary elements, characters, and more as you strive to increase 7th-grade reading comprehension skills. Start using these charts today! You can find these charts here.
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2. Body Biographies
This character poster engages your 7th grade students and provides them with lots of fun! This activity can be used to teach character analysis for a character in any book the students are reading. It allows students to infer character traits and values from details found within the text. You can find this fun and engaging lesson here.
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3. Body Biographies
This excellent activity can be used with any book and any grade level, but it is perfect for seventh-grade reading classes. Your students will learn about character development, character traits, and character conflict as the teacher guides them through this terrific lesson. You can learn about this amazing activity here.
Learn More: Amy Lemons
4. Story Element Cards
Use this great activity for a review of story elements. These editable cards allow you to create a story element wall or bulletin board for any book your 7th graders are reading in class. They will learn all about exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Begin using these cards today! Find out more about this great activity here.
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5. Socratic Soccer Ball
The Socratic soccer ball activity is a terrific activity to keep your 7th grade students engaged! You can use any soccer ball and a permanent marker to create this activity. Fill the ball with literary questions that can be used with any 7th grade reading level text. To learn more about this story ball, check here.
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6. Prediction Passages
This valuable lesson encourages students to use their pre-reading skills. Students will use their prior knowledge to make predictions and inferences about the 7th grade level text they are about to read. This activity is also a terrific way to teach about foreshadowing. Please visit this site to learn more about how to implement this activity with your 7th graders.
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7. Sticky Notes to Teach Reading Strategies
Middle school students love sticky notes! Therefore, 7th graders will enjoy learning reading comprehension strategies with sticky notes. Students will learn more about monitoring comprehension, activating prior knowledge, making connections, synthesizing, visualizing, and making inferences. Visit this site to learn how to use sticky notes to teach reading strategies to your students.
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8. Retell, Relate & Reflect
This book analysis technique is a wonderful way to get your 7th-grade students to think about their reading in a more helpful way. This reading strategy will help them to dig much deeper into their thinking by first summarising the story in retelling it. In the next step, encourage them to relate to the characters or plot, before reflecting on what they’ve read.
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9. Chit Chat Cards for Brian’s Winter
Brian’s Winter is a terrific novel to use with 7th grade students. This excellent activity offers Chit Chat cards that allow students the opportunity for discussion. They read the chapter cards and have conversations about the chapter with mall groups, partners, or the entire class. Students will be engaged as they reflect and discuss. Find this free activity here.
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10. Summary Sentences
Using summary sentences with your students allows you to understand what your students are comprehending from different sections of reading passages. These sentences can be used with various lengthen fiction and nonfiction texts. Visit this site to learn more about summary sentences.
Learn More: Upper Elementary Snapshots
11. Reader’s Notebooks
Reader’s notebooks can be so helpful throughout upper elementary. By seventh grade, students tend to become more and more independent, while teachers push them to build on this skill. Providing students with guided notebooks to enhance different comprehension skills is vital to their knowledge and understanding.
Learn More: Mrs. Beers
12. Choice Board
Providing students with a choice board gives helps them to decide what types of learning and projects they like most. It gives them the space to be both creative and independent. Giving students the chance to play games with the choice board can be even more engaging.
Pro tip: Even 7th graders love free time! Offer incentives for the most points or total class points.
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13. Reading Rubrics
It’s no secret that students are becoming more and more curious about how their grades are calculated by 7th grade. Therefore, providing students with a detailed outline of which points and direction teachers are looking for is essential for student success. Reading rubrics is a simple and great way to do exactly that! They can also be tailored to meet the curriculum and standards that are trying to be met.
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14. Cereal Box Book Reports
Every year I get students who are obsessed with art projects. It’s so important in seventh grade to foster that creativity. One great way to spread it across the curriculum is by finding different books that are able to be made into book reports. The cereal box book reports are one of my go-to’s that students absolutely love!
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15. Figurative Language Task Cards
Figurative language is found throughout all types of reading. Whatever the genre, Figurative language is there. Therefore, understanding it will absolutely help to enhance your 7th graders’ reading comprehension. Incorporating task cards with QR codes into the classroom can be a fun way to let students check their own work.
Learn More: Teachers Pay Teachers
16. Writing Prompts
It’s no surprise that there is a huge correlation between reading and writing. Designing your writing prompts around your reading curriculum can be a huge part of the overall understanding from students. When students can form a layout through their writing, they can better understand the author’s overall layout and hopefully, better understand the writing overall.
Learn More: 54 7th Grade Writing Prompts
17. Goal Setting
Setting goals becomes part of daily life during middle school. Students are used to having objectives and goals set for them throughout elementary and younger grades. By 7th grade, it’s time to start setting their own goals! Setting reading goals is one of the best ways to help your students do this.
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18. Push Pin Poetry
Push pin poetry is a fun way to expand comprehension beyond simple fiction or non-fiction texts. This interactive display will inspire and encourage your kiddos to make connections between a range of words as they add to it, growing the collaborative poems! They’ll also be inferring meaning from their classmates’ work as they add to the board!
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19. Stop and Jot
Seventh graders are hard because they’re stuck in the in-between of teenagers and kiddos. It’s hard to find activities that they’ll love, while still providing them with age-appropriate learning techniques. This poster will be a great visual in the classroom to help remind them of the best comprehension strategies and skills they’ve learned in previous grades.
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20. Mind Maps
Mind maps are some of the best ways to help your students to be creative, while also being problem solvers and note-takers. Creating a mind map specific to a book can help them put everything they read into their own creative thoughts. Making it easier to comprehend, process, and display the information. Here is an example of how to integrate them into your classroom.
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21. RACE Approach
Most likely by 7th grade your kiddos have probably heard of or used the RACE acronym in their reading classes. If they haven’t it might be time to chat with the other teachers in your school about integrating it! This is an easily explainable and engaging strategy to comprehend different reading materials.
Learn More: Henry County Schools
22. Riddles, Riddles, Riddles
Rindles are a fun and engaging pastime that students of all ages will love. The best part about riddles is that they’re engaging, but also extremely beneficial for gaining a better understanding of context. There are many different aspects to understanding context, thankfully riddles help your kiddos expand on their current knowledge.
Learn More: 100 Riddles To Keep Your Students Engaged and Entertained!
23. Understanding Reading Comprehension
Understanding the entire idea of reading comprehension could be really beneficial to your students. It’s sort of like giving them certain objectives to reach. It helps students to monitor and assess their own learning and where they’re at with their understanding.
Pro tip: After this video, work together with students to create some reading objectives for the month, year, quarter, whatever!
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24. Audiobooks
Audiobooks are extremely helpful for students and their comprehension development. Listening to audiobooks helps students to learn more advanced vocabulary and allows them to relax and draw better mental images.
Learn More: Tristan Mason
25. Read Alouds
Even in 7th grade, read-alouds are still important for students and their reading skills. Students may be older and less engaged, but deep down, they need to be listening to different stories. This will help to both improve their fluency and improve their mental imagery.
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26. Collaborative Reading
Working off one another is always helpful for any student. Whether they need help with comprehension or fluency, working with peers almost always shows improvement. Using prompts during these short readings can be very beneficial to each member or partner in a group.
Learn More: Teachers Pay Teachers
27. Text Message Analysis
Getting students to analyze a text can be very challenging in the middle school grades. This activity provides students with plenty of engagement potential as they will love the text message format.
Learn More: Teachers Pay Teachers
28. Making Inferences
Making inferences is essentially using the information that is presented and making assumptions about the unknown. This is huge when reading different types of texts! Using a picture of the day to encourage students to make inferences is an engaging and adequate way to get the wheels turning.
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29. Roll a Response
When it comes to reading projects, doing the same thing can be a little bit daunting. Not only for students but also for teachers. Therefore, Roll a Response is a perfect way to provide different projects to students or groups in the classroom.
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30. Asking Questions
Build rapport with your students, while getting them to answer tough questions. Asking and answering questions is never easy, especially when reading or working in groups. Especially, when you’re 12. Providing students with an outlet and making questions asking a totally acceptable thing in your classroom will help to build a community between students.
Learn More: Battle Creek Middle School
31. Responsible 7th Graders
Handing out a syllabus in the 7th grade might just be your next biggest adventure. Honestly, giving seventh graders a syllabus just helps them to become more responsible. Not only giving it to them but also constantly referring back to it. This will help them throughout their classes as they grow.
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32. Daily Reading Comprehension
The Evan-Moor daily book set is one of the most helpful additions to any classroom. These pages can be used daily and are linked across the curriculum to a variety of standards. They can also help you and your students to teach objectives within a short amount of time.
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33. Comprehension Jenga
No matter the age or grade, when games are brought into the classroom, students are engaged. Incorporating Jenga into your centers or reading lessons can be a great way to provoke student conversation.
Pro tip: Write questions on pieces of paper and tape them onto Jenga blocks to be used for multiple subjects.
Learn More: Jodi Ann
34. Game Show Quiz
If you’ve read a book or a story and need a fun way to get students engaged in their learning, create a game show quiz! Better yet, have students create their own Game Show quiz! They will absolutely love creating and participating in these Game Show activities.
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35. Create a Matching Game
Another great online game that students can create is a matching game. These can be made to practice vocabulary, learn new words in a story, or really anything that requires students to memorize! It’s a perfect way to build up vocabulary and ultimately comprehension skills.
Learn More: Worldwall
36. Video Lessons
Video lessons can be a super way to add a little excitement to your comprehension activities. Edpuzzle is a fantastic resource where you can craft your own video lessons for your class, including your own video and audio, YouTube videos, and interactive questions. These lessons would be perfect for your kids to work through at a computer or device with some headphones in to keep them focused!
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37. Exit Tickets
As kiddos get older, assessments get more complicated. Exit tickets are great informal assessments that can really be used for any grade, in any subject. These reading exit tickets are a great way to assess students’ understanding of a specific chapter or story read.
Learn More: Teachers Pay Teachers
38. Vision Boards
Creating vision boards with students is so much fun. It doesn’t matter if you’re working with figurative language, poetry, or just simple book reports integrating vision board creation can be icing on the cake. Students will love getting their hands on cutting up magazines and printing from computers to create their visionary masterpieces.
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Concluding Thoughts
Since 7th graders must learn to more deeply analyze a text and provide evidence from the text, these activities are great resources to help you achieve these goals with your students. You should be able to implement these activities into your lesson plans to increase your students’ reading comprehension skills and help them become the best readers they can be!
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