Reading Strategy - Reading Volleyball

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Now I could be wrong on the title of this activity, but I got it from another teacher in my department.

So I am an advocate of input.  But there are times in the year when you need to get your students to read.  And I am "pushed" in my district to do group work and things that to me aren't necessarily providing input.

But with a block schedule, we have to do something to break it up every now and again (aside from just brain breaks).

So here's what I tried today.

Students stood in two lines, facing the person opposite them (their current partner).  They all had their novels.  They had one minute to translate sentence by sentence, taking turns.  They were encouraged to look up words they didn't know and I didn't want just one person translating it all. Once the minute timer went off, they were to mark their place in the book and one line moved one person to the right (with the last person going to the beginning of their line).

Students were to start with their new partner where the person farthest behind was.  This way, no information is skipped and at times, multiple passes of parts of the chapter can occur.

Once students finished (and their partner(s) had too), they were to summarize what they had read in English or Spanish.

Once everyone had been able to summarize once, we sat down.

Definitely not something to do every day.  But students seemed to enjoy the novelty.  I could probably do it once/twice per novel.

I could also do it on blah days with embedded readings maybe.  It definitely helped the students get into the reading more, but of course, it always helps that the reading is super simple and the glossary in the back has the words they don't know.

Know of any other reading activities for classes?