Note: A lot of these are geared more towards middle school and high school, but some may be adapted for younger grades.

For many teachers, the textbook is the workhorse of our classroom curriculum, especially for new teachers. Yes, it would be more ideal to have more student-centered and creative activities in the classroom. However, there are few teachers who have the time to create curriculum for the whole year or have the money to keep buying lessons and units on sites like Teachers Pay Teachers. On the other hand, our schools have paid thousands of dollars on textbooks and accompanying curriculum. They provide a lot of the information that our students will learn. With so many tasks on teachers’ plates, the textbook can be the safe and easy way to go, at least for the first year or so. However, following every lesson on the textbook curriculum can be non-engaging and uninspired.

So how can you make textbook reading more interesting or fun?

Incorporate problem solving, social learning, and opportunities for creativity. These three are key to increasing the engagement of students because they require more active, student-led participation than just a passive reading of the text with teacher-led activities and searching for answers to assessment questions at the end.

I’m a strong proponent for the idea that learning is genuinely fun! However, you have to really ask your students to rise to challenges and give them meaningful tasks and problems to solve. It is the key to engaging their brains (I hope that it’s obvious, however, that we need to set them up for success using thoughtful adaptations and scaffolding).

I am providing some activities below that can make working with the textbook a little more engaging. Each activity should require minimal extra planning. More importantly, each activity should increase student engagement, cultivate more critical thinking, and deepen learning. You can mix and match, adapt, or maybe some of these will even inspire you to create your own strategies (P.S. These should work for the history and literature classes, even science classes. Some may need to be tweaked for math). Let’s get started.

Ten Simple and Creative Activities to Make the Textbook More Fun

1. Preview Using Questions and Predictions

I wrote a short article on how to do this method (A More Engaging Way to Preview the Chapter: Questions and Predictions). Basically, you engage students through social learning (think, pair, share) and emphasize question creation and predicting answers based on evidence they’ve previewed in the text. This method should make students more invested in what they are about to learn in the textbook because they are starting with questions they’ve generated about what they are about to learn and will be seeking affirmations about their predictions. The social learning aspect is crucial because it provides students with affirmation and a low pressure springboard for their ideas. We all have more fun when we can learn with friends and have someone with whom we can discuss our thought processes.

2. Teacher or Student-Made Scavenger Hunt

This can be as simple as turning the end of the section or chapter assessment questions into items to hunt for. It’s best practice anyway to preview these questions before diving right into reading the section or chapter. However, I highly recommend at least rewriting the questions on a separate sheet and adding some fun images or clipart (1-2) to reflect a scavenger hunt theme. If you have a little more time, it might also be helpful to rewrite the questions with a little more humor or mystery. You could also write it from the perspective of a character, whether it’s a historical person or fictional character that shows up in the reading or maybe an inanimate object that you give life to. You can also create your own scavenger hunt questions or items to highlight any ideas or content you want to emphasize.  

What I actually love to do, though, is to have the students create their own scavenger hunt questions and items to give to each other. This takes very little prep on my part. Every time I’ve done this, 100% of my students were engaged and motivated. Just make sure that you give a quick mini lesson before the beginning of the activity to teach how to create scavenger hunt questions that are focused on the objectives, main ideas, and key details of the text. Remind them to write answer keys to keep for when they grade the scavenger hunts they’ve created and given to their partner(s). An additional benefit to this is that it won’t be so much grading for you because the students act as checks and balances to one another and grade their peers. I would just make sure to circulate around the room and supervise for quality and to look for anyone who needs help as the students complete the activity. 

3. Question Challenge for Students to Create Their Own Questions

The goal of this activity is to have students generate their own extension questions about the text. Direct them to ask questions that aren’t answered by the text. This should encourage deeper thinking or thinking outside of the box. For example, if the text is describing the highway systems of the Aztecs, an extension question can be something like, “Where did the Aztecs get the materials they needed to make the highway system and how did they transport it?”, etc. Such questions would also be great starting points for student generated research projects. This is a more challenging activity and will probably require some direct teacher modeling or think-aloud and some guided practice on your part. If students need extra motivation, try to make it into some sort of group competition or even just affirm them by writing down some of the questions they come up with on the board for others to see (as you circulate the room while they work on the activity). This could also inspire and give ideas to students who are stuck. If it seems particularly challenging, you may choose to have students work in pairs in addition to providing one-on-one support during work time.

4. Student Quiz Creation

I’ve found that motivation and engagement increases when students are given the opportunity to create their own quiz questions that they know they will give to a peer and grade themselves with their own answer keys. It is important for the teacher to give a quick lesson on what makes a good quiz question (highlights key details or main ideas, has an answer that can be confirmed in the text, etc). Provide examples from the book and analyze what makes these questions good. It’s also very beneficial to give some examples of “bad” questions or unclear questions. Just to help students keep things simple, I try to have them create more straightforward types of questions like True/False questions, fill-in-the-blanks, or two to three options multiple choice questions. However, there are a lot of excellent benefits to allowing short answer or long answer questions. For example, it will force students to define and create more specific criteria for answers when they are creating their answer keys (rubrics). This makes them think and engage more deeply about the content, which increases comprehension and retention. When it’s time for them to grade each other’s quizzes, I like having them sit next to each other so they can discuss the grading process and ask clarification questions. It’s another good way for each student (both grader and quiz taker) to get feedback on how they are comprehending and expressing their learning.

5. Skits Using the Textbook as the Script

In this activity, groups of students are required to create a skit using the textbook as the script. It’s nice because it doesn’t require the time consuming and sometimes messy and challenging act of the students themselves having to come up with the lines (though there are also great benefits to this) or the teacher scouring the internet looking for premade skits with the right amount of speaking parts, etc. Students can take turns or assign one student in their group to be the narrator and read from the textbook while the rest of the group acts out (silently or with narration breaks) what is being read. You can have every group do the same piece of text or break up larger text into smaller pieces assigned to different groups. I also like to ask them to generate one or two questions they can ask their viewers after presenting their skits to help them evaluate how well they communicated key ideas and to provide an extra motivation for their viewers to closely pay attention. You can allow props or background text and stage signals as you see fit. In my experience, the kids get really excited and creative about these things and it’s another great way for them to interact with the content and really integrate with it, rather than just passively trying to memorize it. 

6. Student Created Comic Strips

This is a tried and true method. Having students create comic strips to summarize their learning is a good way to diversify your assessments and give an additional opportunity for processing learning. Illustrations, in combination with text, can sometimes be easier for students, as this method gives more flexibility and range for expressing what students have learned. Students are actually involved in a deep thinking and creative process that requires them to summarize in their own way rather than summarizing using the same way the textbook has presented the information or in a way that just rewords everything.

7. Gamify the Text

Playing a game using the information students are reading in the text will really up their engagement and investment, in addition to helping them process and master the information. You can inject games in between sections or at the end. Some of my favorites are simple games like Charades, Trivia, Outburst, and Pictionary. These games require very little materials and pre-planning.  Sometimes part of the fun is having the kids create the game cards as they read. For example, we’ve played History Taboo with the students creating Taboo cards for the opposing team on little whiteboards or index cards. The biggest thing I work on is logistics: grouping and a point system that will work for that particular class. I also try to keep in mind any students who will need extra assistance and what kind of specific adaptations I’d need to make for them. Some of the games are deceptively easy but are actually difficult for some students. Make sure they know it’s coming. Some students fail and are embarrassed in front of their peers because they didn’t anticipate it. Avoid this and just try to make sure everyone is engaged by prepping them. Maybe privately allow open notes for some of the kids that struggle more with memory and anxiety.

8. Jigsaw Text

This activity gives the challenge of a puzzle. Reprint the text and cut up the sections. Mix up the sections and put a set in an envelope. You can make sets for individual students, pairs, small groups, or maybe even just use one set for the whole class. It just depends on your comfort level and the needs of your particular class. Give the envelopes to the students (or individual sections to individual students if you are having the whole class do one set) and task them with putting it all into the order they think the sections should go based on the information inside the text. This activity helps with comprehension and also makes them pay attention to the thought process of structuring a piece of writing which would help their own writing and comprehension. It makes them focus on the big picture, which not only increases retention, but helps with critical thinking and planning, and flexible thinking. 

9. Student Critique of the Text

You can ask the students how they think the text can be written better. Can details be written more clearly? Is there enough evidence provided? Are the sections in an order that makes sense or flow well? Are there any more details that could be included to make the text more useful? Does it get right to the point? How can it be written in a more interesting manner? How can the titles and subtitles by changed to make them more descriptive or interesting? Should there be more pictures, graphs, etc.? If so, what kinds would be most helpful? 

By asking your students to complete this activity, you are asking them not only to think about the content of the text but also how the content was put together and if it was done in an effective and interesting way. This kind of analysis, since they are interacting more deeply with the text, will help them more than just increasing their retention of the information. It will help them become more aware of their own thinking and what areas are vague to them. It will give them greater motivation to clarify confusing ideas or terms from the textbook. This practice should eventually help them to become more familiar with their own thought patterns/learning style and what kinds of things help their own individual learning style. Finally, this type of text analysis will help students with their own writing and how they communicate their own thoughts. They learn what is effective and what is not effective when trying to express ideas. 

10. Students Rewrite/Represent the Information in a More Interesting Way

This is very related to the method above in that you’re basically asking the students to take it a step further by trying to do better than the textbook. It can be something as simple as getting them to replace headings and subheadings with something more catchy and informative or something more humorous. Or it can be as involved as asking them to present the information in a more interesting way using a different medium: like a poster or infographic, a news segment, a music video (like School House Rock), or an education show/skit (like School House Rock or Sesame Street). 

How to Develop Your Own Methods

There are definitely an infinite number of ways you can make textbook reading more fun. These are just a few suggestions you can use to start with or to inspire you. Remember: 1) the human brain is made to solve problems and rise to mental challenges and puzzles. Mystery is always intriguing; 2) we, as humans, are social beings. We learn better with others, whether it’s through a friendly competition or through activities that are more cooperative; and 3) creativity activates the same brain region as memory and imagination, the bilateral campus. So when you involve students in creative tasks, you engage their memory and imagination, which not only makes engaging with the textbook more fun but will also increase retention. Finally, do try to maximize the modes of learning by incorporating not just reading but also writing, drawing, talking, movement, etc. This type of diversification will help you reach more of your learners and make the content more engaging. 

As with any lesson, remember to keep some things in mind: IEPs, low performing kids, high performing kids, adaptations, and grouping. Make sure your kids who struggle with grade level reading and comprehension are engaged by allowing them tools and structures to make the activity and text accessible and comprehensible to them. You may want to segment or pre-assign a section for them to be responsible for. 

Consider the unique needs of the individuals in your learning community as you plan these activities and adapt as you see fit.

I hope this helps! Thank you for teaching!