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Looking for some fun 4th grade reading ideas? Reading is a gateway to endless adventures, and for fourth graders, it’s an important time to explore and find joy in the process. I always found it helpful to start with some fun and creative ideas to use with my students. From escape rooms to reading buddies, these ideas are sure to make reading enjoyable and interactive. Dive in to discover how you can change reading from a routine task into an exciting journey for young readers!
1.Reading Passages and ELA Centers
This bundle contains 9 months of reading and ELA games, passages, and activities for students. Perfect for centers, group work, early finishers, or a whole class activity, each month contains multiple reading passages as well as games and activities to engage students and keep things fresh throughout the year!
2. Author Study
Choosing an author to focus on as a class or for students to research in groups is a great way to experience the wide variety of genres and stories out there. You can keep things fresh by focusing on a new author every month or even quarter, sprinkling in multiple genres and backgrounds! This 4th grade reading idea is great for exploration!
3. Book to Movie Comparison
Choose a book or even a few that have been adapted into movies and have students read them individually or as a class. At the end of reading, have students watch the movie and then write a summary comparing and contrasting the two. Such a fun way to dive into literary and cinematic elements!
4. Theme Park Reading Comprehension Escape Room
This 4th Grade Reading Idea contains five reading tasks for students to complete either individually or in groups. After completing each activity, students earn theme park main attractions and eventually solve the escape room! Teacher directions and little to no prep adds an extra bonus!
5. Book Trailer Creation
After reading a book, have students create a short video trailer incorporating key elements that make the book exciting without giving away the story. Allow students to share trailers with one another to encourage book exploration!
6. Literature Journals
Have students create a personalize a journal where they can write reviews, summaries, sketch thoughts, or ask questions about books or stories they have read. Cater this 4th grade reading idea to readers struggling to find their groove by offering incentives for thoughtful entries!
7. Baseball Reading Escape Room Activity
In this 4th grade reading idea students are challenged to work in teams or on their own to collect missing baseball items by solving reading tasks. They can complete the escape room by collecting all of the missing items, which adds a fun and competitive element to completing reading tasks!
8. Blind “Date” With a Book
Have students bring in or choose a book they love, wrap it in butcher paper, and have them write a preview of the book. Add these covered books to a classroom collection and allow students to choose a book to read based only on the preview and nothing else. This is such a fun activity to expand reading horizons without judging a book by its cover!
9. Reading Buddies
This 4th grade reading idea involves pairing students with a “buddy” from a younger grade. Students can get together once a month or whenever time allows and read together. What a fun way for the older kids to practice reading aloud while the young students get to listen to a fun read aloud!
10. Travel to the Moon Reading Escape Room
In this escape room activity, students will work to complete 5 different moon or space related reading tasks to collect the boarding passes needed to solve the escape room! This 4th grade reading idea is perfect for group or individual work with little to no prep!
11. Readers Theater
Using stories or reading passages for students to act out is great no matter the grade level! I love asking students to act out important scenes or chapters from books to practice comprehension and emphasis of important literary elements! This can be a great activity to mix up the usual written summary activities that come with reading longer texts.
12. Character Interviews
Have students conduct interviews with characters from their favorite books. They can write questions and answers from the character’s perspective, promoting deeper understanding of character development. This 4th grade reading idea is a great way to get students to connect with the characters in their books!
13. Literary Scavenger Hunt
Create a list of literary elements (e.g., similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia) for students to find in their reading materials. Award points for each element they discover. This is a great activity to get students comfortable with identifying literary elements within a text they are already reading!
14. Reading Olympics
Organize a reading competition where students earn points for each book they read. Set up teams and have them compete in various reading-related challenges. I have found that you can make any skill into the “olympics” to engage students and foster some friendly competition amongst the learning!
Once again, reading should be an enjoyable experience for students of all ages, but it does take some exploration to get there! I hope some of these 4th grade reading ideas have appealed to you and inspired a love of reading in your students!
Hi, I’m Shelly! Thank you for being here. I love helping third, fourth, and fifth grade teachers with fun and engaging activities that require no to little prep! Let me help you by taking some of the stress and work off your plate.
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