HIP is pleased to offer these resources without charge to support classroom teachers in developing their reading programs.
Readers' Theatre
Readers' Theater is a semi-staged play based on a small section of a book or story. Students use their voices, facial expressions and sound effects to turn a section of text into a brief drama. The script is not memorized, but the performance must be carefully rehearsed. Often the sound effects require the devoted attention of one student. The goal is dramatic reading – either live or recorded. As much research has shown, re-reading of text is terrifically important in developing reading skills, and Reader's Theater makes that re-reading interesting.
Choose Readers' Theater from the right-hand column to gain access to eleven free, downloadable scripts based on HIP novels. To download an assessment/marking rubric, click here. To download an MP3 file of students performing the Readers' Theater script for Student Narc, click here.
Teacher Created Materials
Our HIP teacher's guides (available for $5.95 on this website) offer a great deal of material to help students before, during and after the reading of HIP novels, but sometimes teachers create their own more extensive activities for these books. Here's some self-study guides developed by teacher Julia Masterson for her students:
- Shola's Game Questions (Word file)
- Shola's Game Questions (Adobe file)
- Shola's Game Solutions (Word file)
- Tag Team Questions (Word file)
- Tag Team Puzzle (Adobe file)
- Tag Team Powerpoint Assignment (Word file)
Feel free to download these pages for use in your classroom. HIP pays an honorarium for the right to offer these materials on our website, and we encourage other teachers to share what they've developed for their students.
HIP Three-Minute Reading Assessment
Many teachers and parents have asked for a quick, one-on-one reading assessment that can be used with the reluctant readers in their classrooms. This is the beta-version of an assessment we've been developing over the last year. It provides a fast assessment of a student's reading ability from grade 2 to grade 6 levels using graded selections from HIP Jr. and HIP Sr. books. Click here for more information and to download the teacher and student versions of the assessment.
HIP Reading Assessment: What should you do next? Updated page 102
This chart, adapted from the HIP Reading Assessment, looks at common difficulties in reading and recommends the next steps a teacher (or parent) should take. Handy material for your teacher notebook. Click here for the PDF file. First editions of the HIP Reading Assessment have a typographical error on the Student Reading Assessment, "How Do You Feel About Reading?" page 102. Click here for a new PDF.
Evaluating Hi-Lo Materials
With so many publishers producing materials for struggling readers, teachers and parents need a set of criteria for evaluating them. Click here for nine items that are important in selecting effective hi-lo texts.
Articles and Handouts based on talks by Paul Kropp and Lori Jamison
- Hooking Struggling Readers (article)
- Readability Q&A
- The Boy Problem (handout)
- Reaching Reluctant Readers (handout)
- The BEAR list of Boy Books
Testing Upcoming Books
We are always looking for classrooms to test our novels-in-progress. If you are already using HIP novels and would like to try some forthcoming books in manuscript format, email us at hip-books@sympatico.ca. Perhaps your class can join with other schools to help us perfect the next group of HIP novels.