Encouraging students to enjoy and benefit from reading texts in class is not always easy, and lessons based around reading can become repetitive.
Heather Humphreys, a experienced teacher in Japan and Kazahkhstan, gives some ideas of how to inject some variety into this very valuable teaching technique.
A taster is below, but for all the detail and explanation read the full article in the IH Journal here.
1. Critique it
Students read the text and decide if they generally agree/disagree with its message, then they can analyse why and discuss.
2. Read it aloud
Give each student a short story with some missing words, they read aloud and their partner can write down the missing word.
3. Draw it, retell it
Ask students to draw the story’s key elements with no words on the page, then swap with a partner and get them to describe the story.
4. Examine it
Ask students to design a set of exam questions for their classmates around a text. (Most suitable for students on an exam course.)
5. Debate it
Choose a couple of opinion questions to serve as the basis of debate. Students can be grouped into teams to debate main points.
6. Make it
Give each student only a title, they write a paragraph based this, then partners read the text and guess the original title.
7. Expand it
Give students a copy of a reading text with a paragraph missing, and they need to write an paragraph to fill in the gap.
8. React to it
Find an online article of interest to your students and allow them to use their phones to comment on it in real time, discussing their responses.
9. Upgrade it
Students should read the text and “upgrade” its language by brainstorming synonyms, more interesting phrases, fixed expressions etc.
10. Act it, mime it, hit it
To inject some movement into your lesson, get students to remember and act out a text with gradually fewer and fewer verbal prompts; acting, miming, and then hitting prompt words on the board with a fly swatter.
We hope you found this interesting. For all the detail and explanation read the full article in the IH Journal here.