If she’s shy about reading aloud, take turns reading. Spend a lot of time asking questions about theme, making predictions, wondering why things happened, and character motivations to name a few. For vocabulary, you can use inferencing to determine meaning. Try substituting words she knows to see if they make sense and re read. My students like to keep a cool lookimg notebook, like a personal dictionary, where they write new words that they’ve discovered and like, along with the definition in their own words.

A great place to get ideas is at readinglady.com. There’s a lot more to books than just vocabulary. Thinking about them and discussing them will raise a child’s understanding and enjoyment alot more than drill and kill. Also, give her a choice of books to read so that she can find something she enjoys, and then challenge her with more difficult text or different genres.

By 5th grade, the student should be able to read the paragraph you wrote & correct the spelling & grammatical errors. Have her rewrite it making all the corrections as well as writing the meanings of five “S” words. That would not be boring

You might also consider picking out a quality book that is neither boring or useless. There are plenty of interesting books out there, particularly for intermediate students.

For curriculum ideas you might want to check out readwritethink.org — They have some pretty basic ideas about how to approach things such as vocabulary.