4/24/2023

Five Fun Reading Activities for Middle School Students

It feels like getting students to focus on books and reading is becoming more difficult, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic led to all of us spending more time online. It’s up to educators to adapt their classroom activities to hold students’ attention and make reading fun for everyone—regardless of skill level. There are many ways to make reading exciting, and these fun reading activities for middle school students can also serve as informal assessments to track their reading progress.

Periodic, low-stakes, informal assessments allow educators to see whether students need more review before moving on to the next lesson. For literacy educators, these informal assessments are especially important when teaching new vocabulary or assessing story comprehension.

Informal assessments may be rooted in necessity, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be fun. Ultimately, anything that allows teachers to observe and evaluate student comprehension can be an informal assessment, and group activities and playful pretending are easy ways to have fun and check student understanding at the same time.

Make Learning Fun: Reading Activities for Middle School Students

Reading is something students tend to either love or hate. One study from 2021 found only 51.5% of students enjoy reading. This could be for multiple reasons, one of them being that students aren’t effectively being taught how to read. Research has shown that taking a Structured Literacy approach to teaching reading—combined with a curriculum based on the science of reading—is the best way to ensure students are reading proficiently.

Along with low literacy levels, students might also dislike reading for another reason. They haven’t been shown how fun it can be! One study looked at students who participated in Read for Good’s Readathon compared to students who didn’t, and research showed students who participated in the Readathon enjoy reading more, read a wide variety of materials regularly, and are more likely to read more in their free time. This is because the Readathon gives students a purpose to read, allows them the freedom to choose what they read, and their reading is free from assessment or evaluation.

So, how can teachers bring this same level of fun into their classrooms? We’ve created a list of some of the best activities to get your middle school students excited about reading.

1. Charades

Charades is an activity that’s ready to shake off its dusty, Victorian-parlor-game status and take on new life in the classroom. For students who like to get up and move, acting can be the ideal way to demonstrate how well they understand the lesson. Ask student volunteers to act out a vocabulary word for the other students to guess. Both the acting and the answers will reveal how well students understand the vocabulary.

2. Line it Up

Retelling the sequence of events in a story is an essential way to measure story comprehension, and a little creativity can transform a boring recall activity into an interactive game. To play, write key scenes and plot points from the story onto note cards and tape a card onto each student’s back. Students will have to work together and ask each other questions to find out which scene is taped to their shirts.

Once they’ve determined what point in the plot they represent, students can line themselves up in an order that represents the sequence of events in the story. If this sounds complicated, the game can be modified for all age groups and ability levels. Less advanced readers can break into small groups to sequence the beginning, middle, and end of a story, while advanced readers can get the whole class involved in ordering events from a more complex text.

3. Picture Perfect

For students who are artistically inclined, drawing is an excellent way to demonstrate how well they understand a concept. Ask students to draw a picture that illustrates a concept from the lesson. Then, divide the students into small groups and ask them to take turns showing their pictures to each other. The other students in the group can guess what vocabulary word or scene from a story is represented in the drawing. Educators can quickly see how well students understood the lesson by walking around the classroom and listening to the groups' conversations.

4. Reverse Game Show

Here’s a fun way to reverse roles between educators and students. At the end of the lesson, ask students to write a game-show-style question to be answered only by a vocabulary word or concept learned in the day’s lesson. A quick look through the questions and answers will show how well the students are able to define the terms. Bonus round: In addition to reviewing the notecards for a quick informal assessment, educators can start off the next day’s lesson with a review-focused game show.

5. Missing Persons

This is another game that does double-time to assess story comprehension. After reading a story aloud, ask a student volunteer to leave the room and return impersonating one of the characters from the story. The rest of the class can guess which character the student is pretending to be. From the volunteer’s acting and the responses of the rest of the class, it will be easy to see how well the students grasped the actions and attributes of the story’s characters. What's more, future thespians will love being able to demonstrate their knowledge in an engaging, theatrical manner.

Lower the Pressure Using Assessment Without Testing

Many students do best when the pressure is taken off—this means things like required reading, formal assessments, and strict guidelines can make it even more difficult to get your students to find success in reading.

While assessments (formal and informal) are an essential part of measuring student progress, there’s no need for educators to limit themselves to dry recall activities or comprehension questions. A little creativity can turn an informal assessment into a fun game for the whole class, allowing students to show their reading skills without the added pressure.

Along with in-class activities, there are more Software as a Service (SaaS) programs coming out that allow educators to gain insight into their students’ reading progress. This white paper examines how blended-learning programs save teachers time, make instruction time more efficient, simplify remote and hybrid-learning programs, and supplement a current curriculum for accelerated learning.