Teaching Reading and Literature, Grades 4-6. Standards Consensus Series

This book, part of a series of guides for K-12 teachers who are striving to align lively, classroom-tested practices with standards, that gathers together brief articles spotlighting suggestions for effective instruction. Noting that the upper elementary years are crucial ones in students' literacy development, the book opens with diverse ways for encouraging inquiry, ranging from enjoyable cloze activity to game-like approaches involving contradicting, predicting, and guessing, to exercises in critical and creative thinking. The next section addresses more sophisticated skills, featuring ways to stimulate comparing and contrasting, questioning, evaluating, and analysis of elements such as character, theme, and plot. The final section suggests strategies for using instruments and objects that link the world of print to other media and symbol systems. (NKA)