Hands-on Reading Activities with High Schoolers

My challenge with at-risk high schoolers or struggling readers is that all the suggestions I find for "hands-on" and "engaging" activities still require a bunch of reading, such as research projects.  Not even my idea of "hands-on" and I love reading.

How do I get them to wrestle with and engage with the text, if they won't read all of the words.  They just sorta skim and guess and hope for the best.

Cut and paste!

Cut and paste was PART of the answer for me. 

Cut and paste the main idea and supporting details.  

Cut and paste the claim and evidence.

Cut and paste examples of figurative language.

Now they have to read them to identify them.  They can actually engage with the words.  We are working on arguments.  So, they have a claim and 3-4 pieces of evidence all mixed up.  They can rearrange them, read them, rearrange them, read them - until they find the claim and evidence to support it.

I often check it before they glue it down.  "Do these three really support that one?"

They laugh the first time, but they look forward to it and their understanding improves.  It's not so hard and difficult when they can actually touch the words.