Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
3.0 SYNOPSIS
Topic 3 introduces you to the key concepts and issues related to teaching reading in
the Malaysian English primary curriculum. The module provides insight into the
nature of reading skills, strategies for metacognition, and describes characteristics of
effective reading pedagogy in the primary school context.
18
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
Reading
Reading Skills Reading Aloud Skills
Comprehension Skills
1
Survey from Unit 10 Teaching Reading:sfs.scnu.edu.cn/chendm1/PPT/Unit%2010.ppt.
Module 3 adapts several materials from this PPT source accessed from the world wide web July, 2012.
19
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
Work with a partner, fill in the chart below with what you already know about
reading.
Once complete, discuss answer together in group.
Add any new information you hear in class.
Next, discuss the question that follow the reading chart.
2
Adapted from Unit 10 Teaching Reading.
20
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
Objective
Problems with
the activity
Question: What makes effective readers? What skills do effective readers use?
21
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
Technique Usually a group Usually an individual Look for the Scan for a Questions to follow
activity activity most important specific word, up, and discussion.
ideas. phrase, name,
date, or place What would you do
However can be used Read for main name, etc. if you were the main
in class or in groups ideas. character in this
to achieve learning Use the arrow story?
outcomes. Skip facts and scanning
How & why details. pattern Comprehension can
do I do it? straight down be shown by asking
Read the title or the column. pupils to write in
legend of their own words or
graphics. Focus on the draw a picture of
first letter of the story sequence
Read the each line. in lower primary.
beginning and
last paragraph
or summary
Problems Teacher needs to be Teachers cannot tell I can learn to I can learn to Some pupils can
with the sensitive to pupils what the student has skimwithout scanwithout read, but do not
approach who cannot read learnt or read without actually actually understand what
aloud well. a system of understanding understanding has been read.
evaluation and any of the text. the meaning in This is really difficult
Reading aloud can checking to ensure the text. for the teacher to
make readers pupils are actually Difficult for the ascertain.
nervous and therefore learning from what teacher to Difficult for the
does not accurately they read. determine what teacher to Therefore, teachers
represent student the student determine must ask for
reading ability. knows. what the reconstruction of
student knows. meaning,
inferences,
predictions and
conclusions to be
made inside the
lesson. Pupils must
not be allowed to
just repeat
verbatim.
22
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
Effective readers
Read the Readers Digest article, Extraordinary uses for dishwashing soap, to
practice skimming for information.
Answer the skimming questions that follow.
Next, read the New York Times article, Marriage trends in the United States, to
practice scanning for information.
Answer the scanning questions that follow.
23
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
Outdoor ants can be just as annoying as indoor ants, particularly if they've invaded
the crevices in your patio where you eat. Get rid of them with a simple 50/50 solution
of water and white vinegar with a dash of dishwashing liquid. (You can substitute
glass cleaner for the vinegar if you want.) Spray the affected area with the mix, wait
a few minutes, then happily return to your picnic.
If your hair isn't looking so lovely, try mixing a dollop of dishwashing liquid into your
shampoo. It fights grease in hair, as well as on dishes!
Forget about taking your blender apart to wash it thoroughly. Instead, fill it partway
with warm water and dishwashing detergent, cover it, and run it for a few seconds.
Empty it, rinse it, air-dry it, and call it a day.
Skimming Questions
3
Readers Digest: http://www.rd.com accessed July 2012.
24
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
Exercise: Scanning
ANN ARBOR, Mich. Jessica Schairer has so much in common with her boss,
Christine Faulkner, that a visitor to the day care center they run might get them
confused.
They are both friendly white women from modest Midwestern backgrounds who left
for college with conventional hopes of marriage, motherhood and career. They both
have children in elementary school. They pass their days in similar ways: juggling
toddlers, coaching teachers and swapping small secrets that mark them as friends.
They even got tattoos together. Though Ms Faulkner, as the boss, earns more
money, the difference is a gap, not a chasm.
Ms Faulkner is married and living on two pay checks, while MsSchairer is raising her
children by herself. That gives the Faulkner family a profound advantage in income
and nurturing time, and makes their children statistically more likely to finish college,
find good jobs and form stable marriages.
Ms Faulkner goes home to a trim subdivision and weekends crowded with childrens
events. MsSchairers rent consumes more than half her income, and she scrapes by
on food stamps.
I see Christines kids theyre in swimming and karate and baseball and Boy
Scouts, and it seems like its always her or her husband whos able to make it there,
MsSchairer said. Thats something I wish I could do for my kids. But number one,
that stuff costs a lot of money and, two, I just dont have the time.
But striking changes in family structure have also broadened income gaps and posed
new barriers to upward mobility. College-educated Americans like the Faulkners are
increasingly likely to marry one another, compounding their growing advantages in
pay. Less-educated women like MsSchairer, who left college without finishing her
degree, are growing less likely to marry at all, raising children on pinched paychecks
that come in ones, not twos.
It is the privileged Americans who are marrying, and marrying helps them stay
privileged, said Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University.
About 41 percent of births in the United States occur outside marriage, up sharply
from 17 percent three decades ago. But equally sharp are the educational divides,
according to an analysis by Child Trends, a Washington research group. Less than
10 percent of the births to college-educated women occur outside marriage, while for
women with high school degrees or less the figure is nearly 60 percent.
Motherhood outside marriage now varies by class about as much as it does by race.
It is growing fastest in the lower reaches of the white middle class among women
like MsSchairer who have some postsecondary schooling but no four-year degree.
25
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
Married couples are having children later than they used to, divorcing less and
investing heavily in parenting time. By contrast, a growing share of single mothers
have never married, and many have children with more than one man.
Scanning Questions
What does Andrew Cherlin from Johns Hopkins University say about
marriage?
26
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
Main ideas and Main Idea: The main message the author is conveying to the What are the main ideas in this
supporting details reader. text?
Who are the main characters?
Supporting Details: The information that "backs" up the main What details support the main
message. ideas?
Inference, Inference is using all the clues in the text and arriving at a What clues lead you to think
predicting and conclusion of what will happen. There may be some degree of that?
drawing truth in the decision made. Inferring is reading between the How does that character feel?
conclusions lines. Why did the author write this
story?
What would you do if you were
Inference and prediction are NOT the same.Inference allows the main character?
for many more questions than prediction.
Cause and effect Cause and effect is to demonstrate to children that our What happens if you go outside
actions have measurable results and they need to make a link in the rain without an umbrella?
between actions and effects. What happens if you dont eat
27
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
We teach cause and effect every time we help a young child lunch?
recognize a relationship between two things, or when we "If you drink your milk, you will
demonstrate that one event is the result of another. grow big and strong!"
"If you clean up your toys, you
can go play outside."
Synthesizing recognizes that the thinking process evolves Ask for a prediction, inference
Synthesizing during the learning process. The reader's thinking changes as and then when the pupils realize
they gather more information. New information makes the the story changed they can
reader re-evaluate and increase what they know. revise their reading schema.
Reflection can also be another
Synthesizing is closely linked to evaluating. Basically, as we way to synthesize information
identify whats important, we interweave our thoughts to form a after the lesson.
comprehensive perspective to make the whole greater than
just the sum of the parts. Reflection: KWL:
What I know
See Vygotskys (1978) zones of proximal development for What I want to know
further information. What I learnt from this story
Evaluating Evaluating and determining importance has to do with What is the most important
knowing why youre reading and then making decisions about information in the story?
what information or ideas are most critical to understanding the What order do events occur in
overall meaning of the piece. this story?
Draw me a timeline of events to
show what you think is most
important.
Comprehension Task
Return to the New York Time article, Marriagetrends in the United States, and
answer the following comprehension questions.
Questions
In your own words, write down the main point that the article is making.
What is happening to marriages in the United States with women who do not
have college degrees?
Compare marriage trends in the United States with those in Malaysia.Are they
similar or different? Why do you think so?
28
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
29
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
30
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
Read the text below and then answer the questions that follow.
It was 3.15 p.m. Miss Hindon left the room. She was not gone long. When
she returned ten minutes later, she saw that the board was not the same.
Who erased the notes she had written?
Miss Hindon looked at her pupils. Ban Min was reading a book. Dannys
head was on his desk. Jamri was drawing a dragon. The others sat very still.
No one would tell Miss Hindon who had erased the board. She had a plan.
Who wants to go for recess? she asked. Ban Mins hand was dirty. Jamri
had pencil smudges on the side of his hand. Miss Hindon knew who had
erased the board.
Questions
2. What clue told Miss Hindonthe person who had erased the board?
31
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
Predicting Outcomes
information and
what you
clues in the PREDICATION
already know
reading
Drawing Conclusions
information and
what you
clues in the CONCLUSION
already know
reading
32
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
Malik was returning home late after visiting a friend when he suddenly realized
that he was being followed by a small group of men. He knew that they were a
gang of robbers. He ran dodging in and out of alleys trying to shake them off.
At that moment, the robbers saw his head above the edge of the grave. They
surrounded him.
This is my grave, replied Malik, I just came up for a breath of fresh air.
The robbers..Malik..
My questions
33
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
There are several causeandeffect patterns. Writers may explain causes only,
effects only or a causeandeffect chain.
1) Causes only
Example:
cause
good
eating
effect habits good
health
cause exercise
2) Effects only
This type of explanation focuses on two or more effects and one cause.
Example:
strength
effect
cause gymnastics
effect
good
coordination
34
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
3) Effects only
In this explanation one cause leads to an effect, which causes another effect, and so
on.
35
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
36
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
The three main criteria for evaluating texts for reading development:
suitability of content
exploitability
readability
37
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
3.3.2 Exploitability
Also known as facilitation of learning, exploitability is the most important criteria after
interest (intrinsic motivation). Pupils learn by focusing on the meaning and purpose
of the text. The focus of a reading lesson is how language is used for conveying
content for a purpose. We want pupils to develop the ability to extract the content
from the language that expresses itto become effective readers.
3.3.3 Readability
This often refers to the combination of structural and lexical difficulty. It is important
for the teacher to assess the right level for the pupils you teach; to do this you must
assess the pupils themselves.
Many teachers have to cope with classes where the gap between the strongest and
weakest pupils is very wide. A library for extensive reading should cater for the full
range of levels of pupils in the class. Most teachers, however, work in circumstances
where it is not possible to provide differentiated materials for regular classroom use.
We shall assume you will have to compromise by choosing material that suits most of
the pupils in the class, and that you compensate for this by giving individual attention
38
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
to pupils who are behind the others, or are capable of handling more difficult
materials. Be prepared ahead of time with strategies to teach reading to both the
advanced and emerging readers in the classroom.
Structural difficulty
Readability also involves structural difficulty, which is harder to assess. New
grammatical forms (tenses, structural words, etc) often cause no problems if the text
is comprehensible in other respects. A more likely cause of structural difficulty is
sentence length and complexity. Experienced teachers can usually assess whether
a text is structurally about the right level without using formal methods. But it is also
possible to work out its readability index. This is a way of assessing a text by giving
it a kind of score. To make use of it, you first need to work out the readability index of
texts that you know are suitable for the students. This gives you a yardstick against
which to measure the readability of texts you are considering using.
A text for classroom use should be such that a typical student could score about 45
percent on a cloze extract; it would be challenging but not too difficult to read with
39
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
support from the teacher. For independent reading (self-study), texts need to be
easier; students should be advised to choose books on which they score at least 60
per cent.
What are the three criteria that teachers should use to evaluate the value of a
reading text?
What should teachers consider when selecting reading materials for the class?
What are authentic texts and why are they important in teaching reading?
In cloze tests, the words are deleted systematically. The interval at which words are
deleted is usually between every fifth and every ninth word. However, if every
seventh word has been deleted in the first few sentences, then every seventh word
must be deleted for the rest of the text. The most common purpose of the cloze test
is to measure reading comprehension.
40
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
The cloze test contains a passage with 12 gaps which you have to
complete from a selection of words or phrases in the box.
Read the passage, then fill in the gaps with one of the words or phrase.
CambridgeCloze Test7
How do you turn something from yellow to green? Your art teacher would tell you to
add blue, but American Kevin Newman would disagree. He would point to the pair of
water heaters installed in his garage, which,1)________with a hose and some
chemicals, turn the fast-food by-product yellow grease into green biodiesel.
Yellow grease is waste cooking oil from restaurant fast food fryers. It is a marginally
valuable commodity,2)__________its use as an additive in animal feeds and
cosmetics, but it can only be sold if it 3)_________a certain standard. In the past, a
lot of yellow grease went towaste, to the 4)_________that restaurants had to pay for
it to be taken away.
This was ideal for home-brewers like Kevin Newman, who picked up gallons of
grease from their local fast food 5)________, and turned it to clean fuel at a cost of
about $1 a gallon.These days, governments are 6)_________ find alternatives to
petroleum, and waste vegetable oil has become highly 7)__________after. Thats
great news for the restaurants, 8)________can sell to the highest bidder.
Its good for the environment too, as the fuel is renewable, local, and gives
9)___________far less pollution than petroleum. It isnt great for Kevin though, as he
loses his cheap 10)________of yellow grease to the bigger companies. It's
11)_________to make much difference to the general public either. Biofuels may be
cheap, but currently only 150 million gallons of them are produced per year,
12)_________diesel consumption is a staggering 38 billion gallons.
7
Cambridge cloze test, adapted from: http://www.examenglish.com/ECPE/ECPE_cloze.htm, July 2012.
41
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
How do you turn something from yellow to green? Your art teacher would tell you to
add blue, but American Kevin Newman would disagree. He would point to the pair of
water heaters installed in his garage, which, along with a hose and some chemicals,
turn the fast-food by-product yellow grease into green biodiesel.
Yellow grease is waste cooking oil from restaurant fast food fryers. It is a marginally
valuable commodity, due to its use as an additive in animal feeds and cosmetics,
but it can only be sold if it reaches a certain standard. In the past, a lot of yellow
grease went towaste, to the extent that restaurants had to pay for it to be taken
away. This was ideal for home-brewers like Kevin Newman, who picked up gallons
of grease from their local fast food outlet, and turned it to clean fuel at a cost of
about $1 a gallon.
These days, governments are keen to find alternatives to petroleum, and waste
vegetable oil has become highly sought after. Thats great news for the restaurants,
which can sell to the highest bidder. Its good for the environment too, as the fuel is
renewable, local, and gives offfar less pollution than petroleum. It isnt great for
Kevin though, as he loses his cheap sourceof yellow grease to the bigger
companies. It's unlikely to make much difference to the general public either.
Biofuels may be cheap, but currently only 150 million gallons of them are produced
per year, while diesel consumption is a staggering 38 billion gallons.
42
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
Module Reflection
What I learnt:
43
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
Extension Activity
KBSR Year 6
Task Summary
You have just completed part of the module on reading skills. The next section is
designed for you and a partner to use the materials provided to create a micro
teaching lesson.
Procedure
44
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
45
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
Reference
KBSR Malaysian primary school textbook year 6, access from IPGKBL campus.
Readers Digest: http://www.rd.com downloaded from the World Wide Web, July
2012.
46
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
Appendix
47
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
48
TSL 3063 Teaching Reading Skills and Vocabulary In The Primary ESL Classroom
49