Establishing learning goals helps teachers create productive literature extension activities. Typical elementary literature-learning objectives include describing and responding to a story. Accurately describing details from the story, such as the plot, the characters and the setting demonstrates comprehension. Responding to a story by expressing one's feelings and opinions shows that a student has considered the story's relevance to her life. Both of these learning objectives are appropriate for elementary-aged children, who are too young to write literary essays or even book reports.
Although elementary students cannot engage with literature at a highly critical level as do high school students, many elementary written extension activities teach students how to reflect on what they have read. Students can write a brief letter to the author of a book, explaining why they liked or didn't like it. Alternately, students could write to one of the book's characters giving their opinion on his or her actions or decisions, explaining what they would have done differently or the same. Finding favorite lines from the book and then explaining why they like them or why they are important makes students comfortable with using quotations, a skill they will need later on when writing persuasive literary essays.
Not all literary extension activities have to be written; artistic responses to literature also are also used to demonstrate comprehension and emotion. For example, both drawing pictures of favorite scenes from a story or creating a map of the locations in the story require students to draw on their memory of the information presented in the book, as well as to represent the text through the use of color and artistic media.
Literature circles function as engaging literature extension activities. In a literature circle, students converse about the book they just read, sharing their opinions and reactions. Elementary students, depending on their grade, will need guidance with this activity. Students pair off into groups of two or three with a brief set of questions that they can answer together. By walking around the room and visiting each group, teachers can help students understand and answer the questions, ensuring that groups stay on task. Groups can share their answers with the class.