The power of reading
Reading is one of the greatest ways of learning with pleasure. How can we apply it on the lesson? How to snick grammar and vocabulary into reading activity? How to make children interested in reading in the electronic era? READ and find out!
A reading lesson / Reading on a lesson
When I, as an English teacher, think of creating a reading lesson I think: I'm too lazy, there's to much work, let's not do this. I suppose most teachers feels the same. It's not an easy task to conduct a proper and deliberate reading lesson, and to prepare it- ever worst.
Nevertheless, reading is extremely useful skill. We require students to read the task, to read the text, to read the book. If we teach them everyone makes use. What can we do to teach reading in a clever, even sneaky way? As a teacher- woman I've got some ideas that I want to share with you.
There's no need for you to start a lesson with "Hello children, toady you are going to learn how to read". Let's find a way to get them interested (especially useful with young learners). If the story is about a girl who had broken her leg, we can start with a question: Have you ever broken a leg? I bet someone from your class did, talk about it, ask what happened, where was it, did it hurt?
After an emotional discussion, show a photo of a girl (any photo, but the name is from the story). Again, ask question (Is the girls sad, why do you think so, do you think she is in pain, what would you say to her?). After 5- 10 minutes of introduction, move on to the main part: give them the text with the story.
It's just an example of how can you engage young learners, how can you put them into the context. Make sure to pre-teach the vocabulary and to choose the grammar they are familiar with. Feel free to teach vocabulary and grammar using a story! It's great tool for students to learn unconsciously (as we do it by watching films or listening to songs).
Young learners...
Specific tips on how to make reading suitable for young learners, here you go:
- Introduce the topic - get your students ready for what are they going to read about. It makes it easier to understand the content even if they don't know all vocabulary and grammar. It could be questions (as I described before) but you can be more creative: prepare a mysterious box and make students guess what's inside or give them a puzzle to solve.
- Bring the story to life - the characteristics of younger students' development is that they perceive the world with their senses. You can use pictures, puppets, recordings, candles, even some food to engage them. Don't forget what senses we know!
- Prepare the text - kids are still learning how to read, they get used to the shapes of letters, words. Make sure to prepare: quite big letters; classic found (like Times); good quality print; copy for every student.
- Read together - prepare an activity when you can read the text together. After students have read the text by themselves, read it aloud and give students a task like: every time you hear a word "robber" make a policeman pose! You can also use the recording if you have one.
- A well known element - think of something your students adore, what do they talk about during the break (these days e. g. the game Brawl Stars or Minecraft). You can write your own story or simply add one element to the one you have. It can be a character, an element of the world, a catchy phrase. Don't overdo obviously, you still want them to be in a story, not a game.
- Let's play and be creative - except traditional exercises from a course book think of task for the students full of creativity and good fun (drawing a map, making a model of everyday use objects, writing a song). Students are really surprising, they can do much more than we can expect.
- Traditional tasks are good too - I mean tasks like: think of a title for that story; put the events in order; think of an alternative anding for the story; describe main characters; information gap activities. My advice is to mix them with something new, modern, creative, and there you go, interesting and methodologically correct lesson ready!
This is how I view making good use of reading as an activity during the lesson with young learners. Here's a link to valuable stories, all for free:
I hope you found my post useful, please share your opinions and ideas in the comments, we can all make a good use of sharing!