Our middle school literacy coaches have collaborated this semester on creating a resource to support effective instruction with novels.  Whether you are just now diving in to your first novel study with students or this has been a staple of your instructional practices for years, we want to encourage you to review the information below that include our purposes, expectations, strategies, and suggestions for effective instruction with novels.  

• To build reading stamina as students engage in standards-based learning

• To introduce students to high-quality fiction that leads them into deeper thinking and opportunities for inquiry

• To increase student awareness and understanding of other cultures, life experiences, and societal interactions.

• When selecting a novel, a teacher should choose a novel that s/he is familiar with so that s/he can lead students through standards-based activities strategically with both the plot resolution and the summative assessment in mind. 

• Students’ reading experience should be varied and appropriate for level.  Scaffolding support is appropriate for a grade level text being taught to students who do not read on grade-level.  However, at every level, students should hear the teacher read, should hear other students read, AND should read independently throughout the novel study.  

• Written responses should not be limited to reading comprehension questions.  Students should be asked to respond to their reading in a variety of written ways that require deeper thinking and levels of expression. 

• Vocabulary instruction should be included in the unit.  Vocabulary terms may be words from the novel as well as academic terms to assist students in analysis.  

• The teacher should provide shorter, paired texts with the novel to provide opportunities for reading in different genres and for different contexts as well as to promote student inquiry.

• The teacher should provide scaffolding and support for decoding, fluency, and comprehension through shared reading with a grade-level text for students who may read below grade level. 

• Due to the length and intensity of the novel unit, no more than one novel should be taught per semester.

Teachers should plan for diverse experiences throughout the novel study.  Students will stay more engaged if the unit includes a variety of vocabulary, reading, and writing activities.   Allow students to engage in targeted, academic activities as well as creative, interest-driven formative assessments. 

• Anticipation activity--engage students before they read with real-world connections to themes, research to build background knowledge, pre-assessments for vocabulary, agree/disagree discussion starters, or interest surveys. 

• Journal--give students the opportunity for personal response and/or literary analysis as they move through the study. 

• Character timeline--help students visualize character development and make creative connections between characterization and plot movement.

• Socratic seminar--let student-created questions guide their discussion. 

• Comprehension check--insure student understanding with a quick, formative assessment.

• Perspective switch--ask students to rewrite a passage from a different character’s perspective, in a different dialect, or in a different time period.  

• Visual representation--invite your visual learners to create a storyboard, trailer, mind map, etc. to represent parts of the book.

• Sometimes students get bogged down in a novel. This can affect a teacher’s ability to pace instruction and provide standards-based learning activities for students.  It might be helpful to skip one or more chapters and summarize as needed to ensure that class time is focused on addressing standards. 

• Students may move through the reading at different paces.  If students read ahead of the rest of the class, a teacher may invite those students to keep a written conversation with him/her to help them stay engaged without giving away key moments in class discussion. Students may be given an enrichment activity (such as those shown above) to extend their thinking.  

• Students who cannot understand the text will quickly lose interest.  Differentiation is key to helping all students access and enjoy the novel study.  Be prepared to offer small group instruction and targeted assignments to meet students where they are.  Consider these strategies: 

• Provide a Spanish translation of the novel for Hispanic students who are emerging in their English-proficiency.

• Small group discussions can be ability-grouped for higher level thinking discussion points for some students and focused comprehension support for other students. 

• Give struggling students a copy of annotated passages.  These annotations will help students fill in the gaps and notice the most important points.