ctivities

Readers can be a starting point for hundreds of different types of project work. Here are a
few tried and tested ideas to get you started.

Pre reading activities

Guess the story from the cover

Show the cover to the class and elicit as much vocabulary as you can. Students then guess
the story and write short summaries of the imaginary plot. These could be kept until you
have read the book to see which one was closest to the real story.

Jumbled chapter titles

Give strips of paper with the chapter titles on to students in pairs or groups. They decide the
best order for the chapters and think about the possible story. Compare the answers with the
other groups and then look in the book to see who was closest.

Find out about the author

Ask students what they know about the author. Ask students to write some questions about
the author that they would like to know the answers too. Then use the internet to search for
the answers to the questions. If you don't have access to the internet for the students try to
print off some information yourself and have it stuck around the room for the students to
skim read and try to find the answers. Try typing the name of the author and the title of the
book into a search engine and select the most suitable site for the age group or level. You
could also try the site www.biography.com which has over 250,000 concise and clear
biographies.

Photocopy the pictures

If the reader has pictures or photos, enlarge these and use them to familiarise the students
with the main characters. Students can read the introduction page or the back of the book to
guess who is who.

During Reading

Comic strips
Choose a suitable chapter or chapters that can be broken down into chunks to make a comic
strip. Encourage students to be creative with the characters and give them examples of the
type of language to put in the speech bubbles. This can also be done when you have
finished reading the book.

Radio plays
In groups students select part of the book to make into a radio play. Students are assigned
character roles and one is the narrator. Plays can be recorded and listened back to.
Encourage students to really get into the roles of the character they are playing. For
younger students the tapes of all groups could be listened to and students could vote on the
best radio play. If you are into podcasting it would be great to publish their plays on the
internet afterwards!
News articles
Students become journalists and report on part of the story. Choose a piece of action and
students write it up as if it were to be published in a national or local paper. Focus on
writing good headlines and prepare the articles in the format of a newspaper story.

Video parallels
If the reader you are using in class has a film version use this to spot the differences in the
plot between the book and the film. Ask students whether they want to start with the book
or the film. It may be better to start with the book so that students can create their own
visual images of the characters. They can then compare their imagined characters with
those in the film.

Horoscopes
At an appropriate stage in the plot development, students write horoscopes for the
characters predicting their future. From what they know so far about their personalities,
which star sign do they think they are? At a later stage these can be used to compare against
the real events of the book. Did the horoscope prediction come true?
In the characters' shoes
Students role-play an interview with one of the characters. Take a couple of the main
characters ‘out' of the book and bring them into the classroom! Assign students the roles of
the characters and the rest of the class prepare questions they would like to ask them. The
students playing the roles of the characters must try to put themselves in the characters'
shoes and give suitable answers. Time and support must be given by the teacher to both the
interviewees and the interviewers in order to make this successful. Depending on the book
you could imagine that the interviews are taking place in a police station, on a TV chat
show or wherever seems appropriate.

Post reading activities

Book reviews
The most obvious post-reading task is a book review. Get students to give the book a star
rating from one to five. Before doing this it would help to look at the style and language of
book reviews. Have a look on the websites of the publishers of your reader. They have lots
of simple book reviews that can be used as models for the students' work. For children's
classes take a look at www.kidsreads.com for some ideas.
Quiz time
In teams students prepare questions about the book's plot and character's. Questions would
be used in an inter-team quiz to see which group is the most knowledgeable. This may
involve students re-reading parts of the book.

All the publishers of graded readers have materials on their websites to accompany the
books. Check out the sites for some ready-made downloadable material.

Further reading

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EXPAND THE TEXT

With short, simple texts, get students to add an adjective in front of every noun / an adverb
to every verb etc.
For slightly longer texts - before class write (10) extra clauses or sentences that can be
inserted into the text. Write these up in jumbled order on the board and get students to add
them in the most appropriate places.

REDUCE THE TEXT

Get students to reduce the text to EXACTLY (100) words OR reduce the total number of
sentences by (50%).

RECONSTRUCT THE TEXT

Before class, write a list of key words from the text in jumbled order on a sheet of paper.
Make one copy for each group of students.
In class, give out the text to all the students. Get them to read it through. Now ask them to
turn over the text. Hand out the jumbled keywords. Ask students to put the keywords back
into the correct order WITHOUT LOOKING AT THE TEXT. When they get stuck, allow
them to reread to the text (but first get them to cover up the jumbled words again.)
When all the students have got the words in the correct order, take the text away. Get
students to reconstruct the text (orally or in writing) from the key words.

MATCHING

Before class, get a heavy black pen and cross out the first sentence of each paragraph. (If
you downloaded the page off the web, use your word processor to delete the sentences
before printing.)
In class, write the missing sentences up in jumbled order on the board and get students to
add them back into the text in the correct place.
Note: choosing the first sentence of a paragraph is particularly useful as these often
summarise the main idea of the paragraph. Students can use these sentences to help them
understand and structure the text.
TRANSFORM THE TEXT

Students must transform the text in some way, for example:

 Retell a story in the first person not the third person

 Retell a story from the perspective of a different character in the story (e.g. from the
wolf’s perspective, not from Little Red Riding Hood’s.)
 Present a news story as a TV news item instead of a newspaper item.

DEDUCTION

Copy the text onto a piece of A4 paper. Tear off a column (say 4cm wide) down the left
hand side of the copy and a similar sized column off the right hand side. Photocopy and
hand out the remaining “middle” part of the story. Students must work together to deduce
the whole story from the bits they have. Hand out the original story for comparison at the
end.

TEXT QUIZ

Hand out the chosen text to the class. Give them time to read it, check new words etc.
Now get the students in groups to prepare (15) questions about the text which another
group will have to answer from memory. Questions should be factual.
When the groups are ready, cover up all copies of the text, then get groups to swap their
question sheets and answer each other’s questions. The group that answers the most
questions correctly wins.

WORD PARTNERSHIPS

Before class, find (15) useful word partnerships in your chosen text. Write the first word of
each partnership down the left-hand side of a piece of paper.
E.g.
Solve …………
(Don’t forget that word partnerships can consist of two or three words, and also that
sometimes a word is partnered with another one in a completely different part of the text.
E.g. “The puzzle, which had baffled experts for well over 20 years, was finally solved by a
12-year-old girl from Ramsgate.”)
In class, hand out the text. Allow students time to read and ask questions.
Now get the students to complete the sheet that you prepared by finding the partners for
each word.
As a follow-up, students can test each other by covering up one of the columns on their
sheets and trying to remember the missing word partners.

REACTIONS

Before class, prepare a list of sentences along the following lines:

What I found most interesting about this text was…..
boring
shocking
amusing
irritating
baffling
incredible
etc.
In class, allow students time to read the text and check out any problems. Then ask them to
complete all / some of the sentences from your list.
When they have finished, put them in groups to discuss their reactions.

TALK ABOUT THE TEXT

One of the things we often do in real life is tell someone else about a story / news item /
magazine article etc that we read.
To do this in class, all you need is a text and a group of students. Get the students to read
the text. Now ask them to describe the text and their reactions to it to their partner. Get
them to start like this:
“I was reading this (story) the other day and it was really interesting. What it said was…..”
Variation: have two or more texts and get different students to read and talk about different
texts.

1. Warm up
 Since students will mostly be sitting at their desks during a reading lesson, use the five to
ten minute warm up period to get students moving and speaking. You are also going to
want to generate some interest in your reading topic so that the warm up activity flows
into your introduction of the material. One way to do this is to have students stand in a
circle and ask them to tell you what they know about a certain topic. This can be as simple
as giving you some related vocabulary. After a student has given you a word or phrase you
can write it on the board and he can call on a student to go next. If appropriate you can
bring a ball to class and ask students to gently toss it to the next person. This is good
because it actually gives students something to focus on other than the words being written
on the board which you will be able to review later.

2. 2

Introduce

Your introduction may have been made quite easy by the warm up activity.

Now, while students are seated, ask them to use some of the vocabularythey

came up with in sentences and add any key vocabulary to the list. Now you

can distribute the reading passage and ask students to read it silently to

become acquainted with the new material.

3. 3

Practice

Practice reading the material aloud. You can do this through a series of steps.

First have students do some slash reading. You should read the passage aloud

pausing where appropriate. Have students repeat each section after you and

place slashes in their text. A sample sentence might look like this “For
 Christmas dinner / I ate ham, / mashed potatoes, / and green beans.//” This

will help students read more naturally. Now you can have students read the

passage by repeating sentences after you and then call on students to read one

sentence at a time. If students struggle with the pronunciation of certain

words, take this opportunity to practice pronouncing them too. You may wish

to have students read the passage again silently to focus on its meaning before

moving on.

4. 4

Practice More

With reading lessons it is important to ensure that students understand the

material as well as any new words. To check vocabulary you can ask students

to match synonyms, antonyms or pictures or ask them to complete sentences

with the correct vocabulary words. To check overall comprehension, you

can start with some true or false questions. Be sure to ask students why a

particular statement is true or false when checking the answers. You can also

have fill in the blank sentences or basic comprehension questions in this

section.

5. 5
 Produce

Prepare some discussion questions related to the reading and some that require

students to use key phrases in their answers. For beginners, discussions will be

quite challenging but intermediate and advanced students will gain a lot from

discussing their thoughts and opinions. In smaller classes there will be more

opportunities for students to share their viewpoints while with larger classes

you may simply have to ask who agrees or disagrees with a particular

statement and then call on three or four students to express their opinions.

6. 6

Review

Ask students to summarize the reading or what they learned in class. If you

have not already done so, you can also have students search for the topic

sentence and discuss why students chose certain sentences whether they chose

correctly or not.

Reading is a key part of learning English and these lessons give you an excellent
opportunity to introduce topics of your own. Be careful when selecting an article. It is
important that your students are interested in the material. They will be more active in the
discussion if they feel strongly about a particular topic.