My students have had success with  Focused Reading Book Reports.  These are not your typical summary book reports. They each have a specific point for students to concentrate on as they think about the book.

Download these forms for free and try them out with some of your students.

FOCUSED BOOK REPORT #3 Minor Character Major Impact

FOCUSED BOOK REPORT #7 Surprise

FOCUSED BOOK REPORT #9 Rate This Book

FOCUSED BOOK REPORT #10 Three Easy Pieces

These forms and 14 more Focused Book Report forms, plus many other effective reading assessments can be found in my book Hi-Impact Reading Strategies.

These assessments have worked at all levels in my Spanish classes (1-AP), and most recently, in my Latin classes. I’ll show some student examples of these in a few days.

Oh, I didn’t mention that I volunteered to teach Latin at a school my daughter started? I’ve been learning Latin for 8 months and teaching it for 6 months!

I’ll blog about what I’m learning and re-learning about language teaching soon. Stay tuned…