Groups of students are given colored markers. They must look over the question and form a group response. Every five minutes they rotate to another question until they return to their original question. Then the group summarizes the main points made by the others. Buddy reading is an assignment I adapted from an English Journal idea.
Students work in pairs to read related or parallel works.
Each student must read his assigned work daily and in his notebook record responses, comments, questions, summaries, favorite passages, quotes, etc. Each day, the partners exchange notebooks and respond to the entries. After the works are finished, partners are allowed a class period to discuss the work as a whole. Outside of class, the partners plan a joint presentation of the two works to the class. Follow up by having a kind of State Fair in which student groups provide information, demonstrations, and recreations.