3 Creative Ways for Kids to Respond to Reading At Home

One thing we’re all probably doing a bit more of these days is reading. Extra time at home means more time to catch up on good book, and to encourage our kids to read more than they normally do. Today, I wanted to share some creative ways to get students engaged with the texts they are reading. These are not your average response activities! 

Three Reading Response Activities Your Kids Have Never Seen Before:

Create a Theme Song

Have some students who are more musically inclined? After finishing a book, ask them to create a theme song for the book, as if it were a TV show. This can be as simple as just writing the lyrics, or they can add music if they have a favorite instrument! 

Character Emojis 

After finishing a book, ask students to make a chart of all of the major and minor characters. Then, ask them to scroll through the emojis keyboard on a phone or other device, and choose one emoji to assign to each character! They will draw the emojis on their chart, and then write about their reasoning for choosing each emoji. Their reasons should come from text evidence-things characters said or did throughout the story. 

Interview a Character

This activity digs deep into those inferencing skills! Students create an imaginary interview with their favorite character from the book they just read. They create questions based on evidence from the text (events that happened, conflict with other characters, the setting, etc.). Then, the students must pretend to be the characters, and answer the questions the way they think that character would answer them! This activity hits dozens of literacy standards at once!

These three ideas can get you started, but I have many more! My Reading Response Choice Boards give students engaging, unique response activities to do with texts from home, as early finisher activities, as projects in small groups, or however else you can think of using them! 

With distance learning in effect for many teachers and families at the moment, these choice boards can adapt to your teaching needs. You can email the choice boards to parents to print or project at home, and let students complete tasks with the paper and materials that they have at home, or you can post them in your digital classroom. For students without internet access at home, you can print and prep these choice boards as part of their ‘at home learning packets’ and include extra paper for finishing the tasks. Adapt the way these are used to best fit your teaching needs! 

See the Fiction and Nonfiction Bundle here!