Increasing Motivation and Comprehension

One of my favorite ways to motivate and engage my students in their independent novels is through creative and engaging book projects.  Book projects are a way to assess student comprehension and taught skills, while letting them be creative and have choice about how they share their insights and knowledge about what they've read.  My goal is to try and tap into student's higher level thinking skills, by having them take steps beyond just plot summaries and character development.  I've given my students options of things such as creating character scripts for play productions, commercials, webquests and foldables presentations (click link for awesome blog about foldables w/ examples).

I don't assign. book projects for every book my students read, but give them a heads up that they will choose one book over the next couple of months or so (depending on our schedule) to do a book project on.

Check out this book project idea:  Cereal Box Book Reports

How do you engage and motivate your students to read?