Here are nine post-reading activities that will engage your students and help them have a deeper understanding of what they've read.

WRITE A SUMMARY

• If students can summarize a piece of writing, you can be sure they've gotten the gist of what they've just read. Refer to our lesson on How to Write a Summary if they need a refresher on giving a condensed overview of a text.

CREATE A QUIZ

• Give students the chance to step into the teacher's role. Have students come up with comprehension questions—short-answer or true/false—to test their classmate's understanding of the text.

PLAY A GAME

• Put students into groups of three or four. Have them put away the text. Give them five minutes to think of as many facts as they can about the reading. The team that comes up with the most facts wins.

DO FURTHER RESEARCH

• Ask students to do online research on the topic and report findings back to class.

RETELL THE INFORMATION

• Have students sit in a circle. As they go around the circle, each student adds a sentence about the text, preferably in the order the information appeared in the reading.

MAKE AN OUTLINE

• As students make an outline of the reading, the main ideas and details will become clear. If students need help writing an outline, try our lesson on How to Write an Outline.

WRITE QUESTIONS

• Have students write 3–5 questions they have about the topic that the reading didn't answer. 

WRITE A STORY

• Encourage students to choose 8–10 new or interesting words. Challenge them to write a short story using those words.

IDENTIFY TARGET STRUCTURES

• Tie in the reading with a grammar lesson. Have students go back through the lesson and identify target structures (e.g., present perfect, modal verbs, articles, etc.).