1. Meaningful Activities

2. Add a Caption or a Title to the Passage Pick an appropriate passage, a short story, a joke, or a cartoon picture. Have students read and try to come up with the most appropriate title or caption. Have students compare their choices with one another.

3. Write a Mini Saga With a given topic, write a mini saga in any format, e.g., story, dialog, poem. The mini saga has to be 50 words in length. Ask them to try to include a few ideas in their mini saga. Have students share their writings with each other and try to interpret each other’s work.

4. Cloze Passages Provide a few passages with blanks and choices for the blanks. Teach them how to read and comprehend the passages and use the context clues to figure out the best answers to complete the passages.

5. Hypertext Flash Cards When reading a passage, provide a few hot areas that contain extra information for words or phrases. This can be done with the bookmark features in MS Word. Teach students how to do it and let them create their own Hypertext Flash Cards to study. They’ll enjoy it.

6. Create Two-column Notes Use the word processing table or the spreadsheet program to put information in two columns. One column contains the words or phrases. The other column contains extra definition and usage information and examples. In the second column, leave the voc words blank, except the first and the last letters. Print out the notes and fold them for them to study.

7. Use Mnemonics The Solar System: The nine planets in our solar system are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Making up a mnemonic phrase is a good way to remember the order of the planets, from closest to the Sun to furthest away. In a mnemonic phrase, the first letter of each word helps you remember a list of things. My Very Educated Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pizzas. Pluto has been dropped from the list.

8. Create an Idea Puzzle Use the concept mapping tools. Cut out ideas and have students sort out the ideas and organize them in groups or categories.

9. Replace Words with Pictures and Symbols for Young Readers

10. Turn a Reading Passage into Dialogs Use your creativity to come up with a scenario to turn the reading passage into dialogs. Have students practice the dialogs.

11. Have Students Record Their Own Reading Have students practice to master their own reading passage. Use computer and microphone to record student’s own reading to a recording program or a PowerPoint Slide.

12. Learn New Words with Examples Learn new words at the sentence levels. Provide them with more sentence examples and ask them to explain the meaning of the sentences. Use synonyms and antonyms. Teach students to create sentences with newly learned words.

13. Using Synthetic Speech The synthetic speech can allow many different voices. Some synthetic speech programs will allow users to customize the pitch and speed, and highlight words as they are read. Teachers can prepare a passages for younger or ELL students to learn to read. The synthetic speech programs can read numbers correctly.

14. Using Fun Challenges If you have a 3 gallon pail and a 4 gallon pail, how can you measure the amount of water for 5 gallons? Suppose you have a 3-quart and an 8-quart pail, with no markings on either pail. How can you use these pails to get exactly 4 quarts of water in the largest pail? (Grades 4-6) At what time is the sum of the digits on a digital clock the greatest? (Grade 3)

15. Curious Mind - Why Why do mosquitoes buzz in our ears? Is my ancestor greater than Christopher Columbus who discovered America? Why? Are zebras white with black stripes or black with white stripes? Why something sink and others float in water? How did scientists know how hot the sun is if they had never been there?

16. Games for Factual Information Historical figures: Who am I? Who want to be a millionaire? Jeopardy game

17. Teach students to paraphrase Read a paragraph and try to express it in one’s own words. Try to say the same thing using three different ways and paragraphs.

18. Teach students to summarize Read a passage, an article, or a chapter from a book, and summarize it. Try to write the summary in lesson than 30 words. Try to identify the most important concepts, key words, key phrases. Teach students to outline.

19. Music and Lyrics Play music associated with the learning content. Write lyrics for a popular theme song to help students learn and memorize factual information, for examples, 50 states, capitals.

20. Using Visuals Use pictures to explain things or events, for example, the prairie, poverty. Have students watch and analyze the visuals. Hold discussions based on the visuals. To provide a quick and efficient overview about the learning topics. (How can you cover an introduction of continent, landform, climate, and natural resources in 5 minutes?)

21. Teach Them Procedures Demonstrate how math problems are solved. Break down the problems. Provide steps. Reinforce the learning of the logic about the steps and sequences. Have students think through the steps. Provide more meaningful exercise problems.

22. Games BINGO Anagram Scrabbles Round Robin

23. Teach Vocabulary Teach high frequency words. Teach vocabulary in context. Teach usages of vocabulary words. Engage students in using new words in their speaking and writing. Use device such as word wall, personal flash cards, journal to enhance the learning.

24. Using Tools and Resources Magazines Web sites Videos

25. Find Hidden Pictures