I am always looking for ways to engage my learners with post-reading or reading response activities. I have students write literary analysis paragraphs and essays as a response to reading, and there is most certainly a place for this activity in any ELA classroom. But, with distance learning I found it ever more difficult to truly engage my students in that task. I searched for ways to get my students reflecting on their reading; analyzing the texts, citing textual evidence, and creating commentary about that text. Essentially, I wanted the elements of a good literary analysis packaged in an engaging activity. So, I turned to social media! I have shared a few of my favorite engaging response to reading activities below.
Snapchat the Story - Reading Response Activity
For this reading response activity, I wanted students to become or take on the role of the protagonist. This could easily be modified to focus on the antagonist or villain of the story for an interesting twist. As this character, I asked them to create a series of Snapchat story images to depict the most important moments from the text. This can be done digitally for students who prefer to find relevant images or digitally create images, and it can be done with paper/pencil for those that love to draw! Then, just as you can in Snapchat, I asked students to create text over the image to describe this event to their Snapchat friends. This is a great way to get students analyzing the plot for its most critical moments, those that truly impacted the story.
To expand thinking on this a bit, I do ask students to explain the significance of this moment, and of course, I ask them to provide textual evidence to justify their answer. With these guided prompts, students will be crafting elements of a literary analysis while engaging in a platform that they enjoy!
Tweet About a Text - Reading Response Activity
This reading response activity is similar to the Snap a Story activity in that I ask the students to become the protagonist. I share that the protagonist LOVES to tweet about his/her/their life. Focusing on the plot elements or critical moments of the text, students will craft a tweet, complete with hashtags, to share this event out to their followers. To keep this meaningful for secondary standards and focused on those literary analysis elements, I ask students to explain the tweet and its connection to the plot of the text with textual evidence. Students will be writing mini literary analysis paragraphs while creating these twitter posts! I find that these are great places to start if your students have yet to complete full literary analysis essay, or as a fun alternative if you have already covered this standard but wish to continue that practice.
Texting About the Text - Reading Response Activity
I switched this reading response activity up a little bit; I ask students to focus in on the conflict of the story. First, I ask them to reflect on this conflict, asking them how the character deals with this conflict, and how they attempt to solve this conflict throughout the text. Then, students reimagine this conflict as if it played out over a series of text messages. There are great fake texting websites you can use for this process (ifaketext.com), or you can just use a digital or PDF image like the one I have created to the left.
After students recreate this conflict based on events from the text, I ask them to reflect, yet again, on this new conflict. What would be different if the conflict played out over a series of text messages? What would remain the same? And, of course, I ask them to justify their responses with evidence from the text!
Create a Playlist - Reading Response Activity
One of my favorite activities for asking students to respond and reflect on their reading is through this create a playlist activity. To make this fun, I set up the background. I explain that they are film composers, and the text that they just read is about to be made into a movie. Students are to create a playlist for all of the critical elements of the text, from the exposition; the setting and character introductions, to the inciting event, rising action moments of tension and suspense, moments of foreshadowing, and the resolution. Students love identifying songs to fill those elements! I am always amazed at how well the lyrics and even the beat of the tune will fit in with the moment they describe. To bring in those literary analysis elements, students must justify their song choice using evidence from the text. This is also a great end-of-year activity because it is so innately engaging! For a fun twist, students can also create the album cover and title! This is great for your artistic students and early finishers.
Character Comedian, A NETFLIX Comedy Special - Reading Response Activity
Okay, so we all have that student, or those students. The class clowns, the pranksters, the clever and quick-witted students who are always joking around. This activity is right up their ally, so to speak. I explain that the protagonist, or any character from the story, has become a comedian preparing for their own comedy special on NETFLIX. I also explain that comedians often play off of their very own life stories when creating their comedy routines. Students are then tasked with creating jokes or funny stories to retell parts of the story. Of course, I ask them to justify this joke with evidence from the text! If you are interested in trying out this activity with some or all of your students, click here for this free resource.
Instagram the Story - Reading Response Activity
My students love Instagram, so what a perfect opportunity to get students reflecting on their reading through this engaging social media app. I ask students to create those top 9 Instagram posts from the perspective of one of the characters within the text. They create or find a digital image for the post, and then use the caption to express ideas as that character - complete with hashtags! Just like the other activities, I ask students to reflect on their thinking and include text evidence to support those thoughts!
These are great activities to offer to students after they have read choice novels as they can pick the activity that works best for the text they have read and their own interest. You can also pick a particular activity to correspond with a class novel!
Quick Disclaimer:
I have definitely seen teachers effectively use the actual social media platforms to have students share their reading responses. Teachers have asked students to make specific TikToc, Twitter, or Snapchat accounts just for school purposes. I think there are ways to approach this to ensure the safety of all your students. Currently, this is not something that I am doing as I teach these activities. Not all students in my community have ready access to these social media sites or the technology needed to perform the tasks. The versions that I work with below can all be completed on school computers, and can be printed if school computer access is a challenge. The route you choose to take will depend on your specific community of learners, their access to social media through cell phones and/or computer access, the age of your students, and parent permission. I would not recommend asking students to sign up for any social media site without first gaining permission from your administration and parents/guardians. This is just my little disclaimer!
