Friday, August 20, 2010

Harry Potter Reading Lessons: Reading Comprehension

Harry Potter Reading and Writing Lessons: How to Build Reading Comprehension Using Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone By J.K. Rowling. Intermediate students that develop the response to literature or journaling and summarization skills process the reading fully.

Response to Literature and Journaling: Paired students or individual student work on one aspect of the writing process. BRAINSTORMING, PRE-WRITING, DRAFTING, REVISING, EDITING, AND PUBLISHING. Response to Literature or Journaling, as you read, is the most effective way of understanding a work of literature and strengthening understanding of the writing process at the same time. With journaling you integrate reading and writing instruction, students will relate to the story/text more completely, they will deepen their knowledge of the ideas, themes, opinions, conflicts, settings, images, conversations, characters, and interesting facts.

6th Grade Students Journal Entries: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone By J.K. Rowling

Chapter 11 Quidditch 

Vocabulary: Hogwarts, Witchcraft, Wizardry, Quidditch,

Setting: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, 

Characters: Harry Potter,  Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, 
and Professor Snape  

Summary: 

     Harry learns to play the exciting new team sport Quidditch. The New Quidditch season begins at Hogwarts, and Harry's first season is about to begin. Harry will play in his first match against his enemies Slytherin. To prepare, Harry and Hermione study Quidditch Through the Ages. The Quidditch match begins with Harry unsure of his ability on his new broom. Harry is the Seeker for the team, he must track down and capture a golden marble with wings called the Golden Snitch. The Golden Snitch buzzes Harry and darts off towards the fans. The Slytherin Seeker knocks past Harry and is penalized. Harry’s broom starts bucking wildly and flies around uncontrollably. Hermione sees Snape is doing magic with his wand towards Harry, chanting a spell and forcing Harry to dive and almost crash. The Weasley twins dart over to rescue Harry, Hermione runs to Professor Snape's bleachers and lights his robe on fire. The enchanted broom is back in Harry's control yet busted. Harry drops to the ground and crashes, and miraculously capturing the Golden Snitch. Luis 6th Grade

Harry Potter Reading Activities and Lessons


[PDF]Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - Literary Plan Sample PDF
written the first Harry Potter book on scraps of paper in a local café while her infant .... The third and final writing assignment, introduced in Lesson Twenty, gives ...

[PDF]Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - Teaching Unit - Prestwick House
Reading. Reading Informational Texts ... theme, foil, and tone, and find examples of each in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. 2. define the ... 4. write character sketches of Harry, Hermione, Ron, Snape, Hagrid, and McGonagall. 5. discuss ...

[PDF]LT8-Harry Potter - Blake Education
n Activities to take students into the book, through the book and ... Blake Education – Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone Literature Unit ... to take turns in writing down their group's ideas. ... Show students the book Harry Potter and the ...

[PDF]Harry Potter lesson arrangement | PDF-versie - Wikiwijs Maken
This lesson arrangement is based on the first film in the Harry Potter ... Write a dialogue between you and your best friend about why you agree or ... Together you choose one assignment to show, read out loud or act out in ...

[PDF]3rd-5th Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
William and Mary Navigator: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone ... reading. All of the questions on pages 13 ~ 22 of the Navigator may be used for .... Use of spoken and written - Incorporates activities for writing and speaking that emphasize.
Harry Potter Reading Activities For Teachers! 

HARRY POTTER READING COMPREHENSION GAME, GOBSMACKED! Have your children stand or sit on their desk so they are facing the teacher. Start at either end of the room and give the first child a Harry Potter Reading Comprehension question. They answer the question with the who, what, where, when, why, or how with detail showing knowledge of the readings. When students cannot give an answer to a question they say “GOBSMACKED” and must sit down. Students that answer correctly get a Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans and the game continues for that student. Continue the game until you are down to one child! The last child that has answered all the vocabulary gets a small bag of popcorn or other treats. Every child that answers a hard vocabulary question correctly gets a jelly bean plus a pretzel, stamp, or a sticker. The hard question includes academic reading vocabulary, plot, theme, wordplay, irony, antagonist, protagonist, imagery, and symbolism, etcetera. They love this activity and it's a great review of the literature and a great opportunity to teach complex literary concepts. We start with a mix of easy and hard questions to get the kids excited and ready to read the challenging books... I ask my students at the beginning of reviews if they want a hard, medium or easy question to give every child a bite of the Harry Potter apple!


Harry Potter Reading Party!


Chocoadia Del Hermione


  • Butterbeer
  • Hogwarts Popcorn
  • Halloween Feast
  • Harry Potter Trivia Sparkle
  • Rubeus Hagrid Scottish Tea Party
  • Design a Harry Potter Board Game
  • Create Your Own Spells Using Latin Word Roots
  • Interview Harry Potter
  • Reading by candlelight
  • your ideas...

We explore Harry Potter books for magic spells, charms, and incantations to teach prefixes, suffixes and introduce Latin root words. Students use a basic Latin glossary to decode the spells from Harry Potter and make their own. 

A sample of my students invented spells using Latin Roots

Harry Potter Latin Root Words / Spells 
  • Comphotoposhous  It blinds your opponent for 10 minutes.
  • Donamorbrev  To make someone fall in love for a short time.
  • Liverphill  It gives a person free love.
  • Creadecadem  To create 10 clones of yourself.
  • Cosmdokeineiv  To teach people to be wise.
  • Viviodeca  It makes people live for 10 more years.
  • Chronacide  It kills very slowly.
  • Creacosmatic  You can make your own world.
  • Filaendo  Gives someone faith-belief.
  • Dynamgen  It makes you more powerful.
  • Anthropamor  Makes you fall in love with the first person you see.
  • Domindynam Gives power over all you command.
  • Pathymor  Suffer death instantly.
  • Zodynam A spell that can give animal power.

Why I Read Harry Potter Every Year!



I use great literature like Harry Potter as the cornerstone of my literacy program. Reading rich literature builds a love of reading and it exposes students to the ins and outs of literary elements which are the key components for the creation of any literary work WHY Harry Potter! Students that need to make the greatest gains in reading have a very limited reading vocabulary and are underexposed to complex quality literature. Traits of high-quality academic "analytical" reading and deep comprehension are underdeveloped or nonexistent in many at-risk students because of the large language and vocabulary gap. Using Harry Potter for daily read alouds gives me access to the books rich language and creates 1000's of teachable moments. Using the great Harry Potter movies as a hook, anticipatory set, or student activating activity gets students excited and engaged. Movie clips are a great tool to unpack all literary elements and frontload background knowledge. In short Harry Potter helps to make reading fun! I tell my kids, “If you don’t like reading Harry Potter, you are doing it wrong.”

Students will understand settings, characters, plot, theme, mood, antagonist, and protagonist quicker when you tie in a movie clip, theme music, or imagery to build background knowledge and understanding of literary ideas and elements. use great literature like Harry Potter as the cornerstone of my literacy program to build a love of reading and teach the ins and outs of literary elements in a kid-friendly way. WHY Harry Potter! Students that need to make the greatest gains in reading have a very limited reading vocabulary, and or underexposed to quality literature. Most traits of quality reading and comprehending are underdeveloped or nonexistent in at-risk students because of a large language and vocabulary gap. Using Harry Potter for book clubs gives me access to the books, but also the great movies, inspirational theme music, and characters with special appeal for kids that face daily adversity. In short Harry Potter helps to make reading fun! I tell my kids, “If the don’t like reading Harry Potter, you are doing it wrong.”

Students will understand settings, characters, plot, theme, mood, antagonist, and protagonist faster when you have a movie clip, or theme music to build background knowledge and understanding of literary elements. 

Students always have a stronger auditory or spoken vocabulary due in part to exposure to media. Using the student’s strengths to build connections to literary elements, in a format kids love, watching movies clips and listening to music makes building background knowledge fast, easy and fun for students. Using auditory knowledge to develop areas of vocabulary weakness is one method that helps my students become fluent, excited, erudite readers. Students will quickly transition from the cinematic elements to the literary elements using Harry Potter. Sean Taylor M.Ed

Create Your Own Adventure!


1 comment:

  1. I see Harry Potter as something "heavy", very rich in detail.... building a summary out of its chapters sounds like a great exercise for reading comprehension

    ReplyDelete

Thank you!