As an intermediate grade teacher, I was always looking for ways to make reading more interesting while improving the students' skills.
Of course, I had to follow the reading curriculum that was required for my grade level.
But I tried to incorporate supplementary projects for enrichment.
The favorite, and most successful, was the use of the novel unit.
It is also called a literature unit.
My students and I both loved these units, and looked forward to the time of day that we would work on them.
Here is the process we followed.
First of all, we chose the novel.
Our reading specialist had classroom sets of books by popular authors.
I took several different books and passed them around to the students.
After giving them time to look over the books, we voted on which one we wanted to read.
Once we decided upon a book, I searched for a skill workbook to go with it.
There is a growing number of these to go with many different novels.
They had reproducible pages that went with each chapter of the book.
The worksheets covered reading skills for that age group, but they were related to the book content.
If I couldn't find a novel unit to match the book, I searched the internet for free or paid units that I could purchase online.
As a last resort, I would make them up myself, but this took a lot of time and preparation.
I also searched for an audio recording of the book.
The first place to look was the public library.
If they didn't have it, they could check their network of affiliated libraries and possibly find it.
I could also use allotted classroom funds to purchase it.
Sometimes, I would just buy it myself.
We usually read one chapter a day.
I didn't want them to get overwhelmed.
This way we could finish a novel in about a month.
If they were very "on task" that day and wanted to read more, we might do two chapters.
If we had the audio recording, they listened and followed along in the book.
They were required to do this.
They couldn't just sit there and listen.
If we didn't have the recording, I might read the chapter to the class as they followed along, or students could volunteer to read.
Another method might be to have them read silently and then discuss the chapter, but this never worked as well for me.
It would depend on your individual class.
After reading the chapter, I assigned a skill sheet from the workbook.
These covered vocabulary, comprehension, and other various grade-level reading skills.
These sheets were part of the reading grade.
We also discussed the chapter, characters, story elements, and made predictions.
Sometimes the novel sparked an interest in other subjects.
For example, when we read Number the Stars, we did a related history unit on World War II.
The students were much more interested after they had read of the experiences in the book.
I also had a big poster on the bulletin board with columns for "novel", "author", and "genre".
Each time we finished a book, we added it to the poster.
I kept it up all year long, and the kids really felt a sense of accomplishment as the list of novels grew.
Finally, when the book was finished, we watched a movie related to the book.
It was always wonderful when we could find a movie of the book, like Old Yeller.
But that was not always available.
So I would try to find an appropriate movie that was as close to the theme of the book as possible.
For Number the Stars, I couldn't find a movie, but I did find another one about a girl who lived in Holland during Nazi occupation.
This method could easily be applied to homeschooling.
It would actually be easier because you wouldn't have to worry about buying or finding a classroom set of books.
You could purchase one book for your child or borrow one from the library.
If you are able to incorporate novel units into your reading program,either in the classroom or at home, you're in for an adventure that you and your children will greatly enjoy.