Harry Potter Reading Activities For Teachers!
HARRY POTTER: GOBSMACKED!
Have your students stand up, or sit on their desk so they are facing the teacher. Start at either end of room and give a random Harry Potter trivia question to a student (Reading Comprehension question). If they answer correctly they stay standing until all students have a chance to answer a question. The game can be played as a lightning round with just one quick round or many rounds until you have two kids standing for a few Harry Potter HOT (Higher Order Thinking) questions. When students cannot give an answer to a question they have to say “GOBSMACKED” (Brit slang for dumbfounded) and must sit down. Students that answer correctly get a Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Bean if you are playing the lighting round, if playing for a Gobsmacked champion the game continues until you have a winner. The student that wins usually gets Harry Potter popcorn. Extensions: Students can ask for a challenge question that relates to a literary element, HOT questions, or a Tier 3 academic word that relates to HP, and every child that answers a hard vocabulary question correctly gets a nice small sample of jelly beans or pretzels, stamp, or a sticker. Anytime students’ answers any question correctly all students including those that are out have to buddy buzz with a partner the question and the answer. Students love this activity and it's a great review (Formative Test) of Harry Potter 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 motivated to keep the Harry Potter reading fresh and exciting. I ask my students if they want a hard, medium or easy question to give every child a real chance at answering correctly! Background information: We read all Harry Potter chapters twice before jumping into games like Gobsmacked. Sean Taylor
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.
I use great literature like Harry Potter as the cornerstone of my literacy program to build a love of reading also to 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 limited reading vocabulary, and they are under exposed to quality literature like Harry Potter. Using Harry Potter for core literacy planning and book clubs gives my students access to challenging books, but also the great movie clips and inspirational theme music that can assist with lessons. The HP characters have a special appeal for kids that face daily adversity if taught in an enriching way. 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 tie in or build background knowledge and understanding of literary elements. Sean Taylor M.Ed
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, Start a Harry Potter Book Club Today
Please submit your Ideas!
