Do you lead novel studies or book clubs in your classroom? If so, this article will provide you with 21 digital novel study activities for any book that you choose for your students this year.
Students can work through ANY NOVEL, participating in engaging interactive reading response activities. These generic novel study activities are the perfect companion to all of your future book studies!
Novel Study Activities for Any Book: Story Elements
Plot Diagram
Understanding a plot diagram is critical for literature instruction. The interactive plot diagram allows teachers and students to gradually complete the sections in a digital space as they read a novel.
Characters
When students read, they should be thinking about and analyzing character traits, interactions, and changes. This comes in the form of character analysis, comparing and contrasting characters within a book or to characters in other stories, and noticing how a character evolves and changes from the beginning to the end of the story.
Novel Study Activities for Any Book: Literature Elements
Point of View
Point of view is sometimes a challenging concept for students to master. Each time a short text is studied, and especially during a longer novel study, the practice of identifying point of view should be revisited.
Also beneficial to draw students’ attention to is the difference between “point of view” and “perspective”. Point of view refers specifically to what form the text is presented in, and perspective is how the character views a particular object or event or his attitude toward something.
Predictions
Making predictions is a reading comprehension strategy that helps the reader check his or her understanding of the information in the text. It also encourages students to think ahead and be actively engaged in the story.
Making Inferences
Making inferences is a reading comprehension strategy that helps the reader draw conclusions about the text’s meaning and purpose, which helps the reader better understand the story or topic.
Making Connections
Making connections is a reading comprehension strategy that helps the reader understand the text at deeper levels and make meaning of what they read, which helps them to retain the information and engage with the text.
Character Conflict
Character conflict is present in every piece of literature and this is an element of the story that students can relate to on a personal level. This is also a valuable concept for readers to develop because being able to identify and analyze conflict is important in everyday life.
Compare and Contrast Novels
Allowing students to practice finding similarities and differences between multiple different books is great for helping them comprehend and better relate to what they are reading. When this strategy is brought into discussion, it also prompts students to investigate other possible books they may want to read in the future.
Novel Study Activities for Any Book: Word Study and Summaries
Chapter and Book Summaries
Summarizing is a reading comprehension strategy that helps the reader understand the main ideas and focus on key details, which aids their understanding of what they are reading and their ability to synthesize what they are learning through their reading.
Parts of Speech Hunt
This word study activity provides students the opportunity to review their knowledge of different parts of speech as they hunt and locate words within the text of the novel they are reading.
Novel News Report
The Novel News Report is another version of a summary, in that it asks the student to basically summarize a section of text but from the perspective of a journalist or news reporter. It provides a little more entertainment than a traditional summary.
New Vocabulary
Locating and documenting new vocabulary is an important tool for students to learn to manage. As they read, they should be noticing unfamiliar words and then researching to find the meaning of the word and how that changes their understanding of the text.
Novel Study Activities for Any Book: Creative Responses
Story Snaps
This activity requires students to respond to a prompt using pictures rather than text. As with several other activities in this collection, story snaps offer students an engaging and creative mode of practicing skills and documenting their learning.
Novel Comic Strip
What student doesn’t get excited to make a comic strip? This engaging activity asks students to drag and drop characters and add text to depict a major event from the novel.
Alternate Ending
An imaginative method of responding to a text and connecting with the story is to think of a different solution or ending to a story. That is what this activity allows students to do.
Novel Study Activities for Any Book: End of Book Projects
Create a Book Cover
Students are allowed to digitally design a book cover that depicts the story during this activity.
Reading Graffiti
Students get to use digital drawing tools to design a picture that depicts the story after they have read the book.
Posters
Students can create both a theme poster and a movie poster. These designs both require readers to reflect on the messages in the novel.
Students are also given the opportunity to rate the book based on their own opinion and reflections.
Are you ready to add these novel study activities to your teacher toolbelt? You can find my Novel Study Activities for ANY Book on Teachers Pay Teachers.
Remember to check out the article Picture Books For Teaching Comprehension Strategies
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