British Council Teacher Community Top ten reading activities This week we asked British Council Teacher Community members to suggest their favourite reading activities A selection of these can be found below, we hope you find them useful You can still contribute to the original discussion (and tell us about your favourite reading activities) here Thanks to everyone who has contributed so far, we’re looking forward to reading some more of your ideas very soon Chris and Marcus, April 2019 Pre-reading Prediction | Fahima Seedat Focus learners on the title (and anything else that’s known about the topic) and guess what may be contained in the text – they then check their predictions by reading the text Prediction | Susan Main As a prediction activity, I paste the text into http://www.wordle.net/create, then ask students to guess the content of the text from the wordle KWL charts | Nasrin Anjuman Runi and Maryem Rchouk before reading a text get learners to list everything they know about the topic – and then, everything they want to know about it This activates their schemata (topic-specific knowledge and associated language) which aids reading comprehension Having a list of things they want to know about a text provides a learner-generated purpose for reading the text – it’s much more motivating when reading to find the answer to their own questions, rather than other peoples’ Return to the KWL chart at the end of the lesson and prompt learners to reflect upon and list the things they have learned British Council Teacher Community | Ten reading activities British Council Teacher Community Top ten reading activities While reading Order a text Photocopy and cut up a text (comic strips are especially good for this) before the lesson Learners then attempt to reorder the text This can be done individually or collaboratively – doing this with others can lead learners to engage with the text on a deeper level as they have to justify their answers and reasons to peers Running dictation | Nancy This is an energising reading (speaking, listening and writing) activity Choose a short passage or dialogue and make several copies Put the copies up around the walls of the classroom (or even the school building) Put the students in pairs or small groups The aim is for one of the students in each pair to walk (or run!) to read the passage on the wall They remember some of the passage and walk (or run!) back to their partner They quietly dictate what they remembered to their partner, who writes it down They then swap roles Over several turns they will build the whole passage This means they really have to run back and forth because students will only remember three or four words at a time The winning pair is the team that finishes first - although you need to check for mistakes If there are mistakes, they must keep walking to check! A good idea is to teach them punctuation vocabulary beforehand if you want them to use the correct punctuation in English It's a good way to check spelling and fabulous for pronunciation - and great memory training! (Taken from: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/running-dictation) Reading slaps Help learners improve their scanning skills (quickly finding specific pieces of information) with reading races Put learners into groups according to reading level and provide them with large-print copies of a text (one per group) The teacher provides a piece of information referred to within the text, and learners race to be the first to identify the relevant area of the text (by slapping it) Follow up by eliciting the strategies that successful learners used (topic sentences, synonyms, skimming beforehand) and then considering where this could be helpful in the real world Check and remake predictions You don’t need to wait until the end of the text to check predictions Prompt learners to evaluate and if necessary, reconsider any predictions (made before reading) after reading a section of the text Breaking a larger text into smaller more manageable chunks, can help prevent some learners getting left behind and lost in a larger text British Council Teacher Community | Ten reading activities British Council Teacher Community Top ten reading activities After reading Jigsaw reading Give different texts to different learners Following the reading stage, put learners into groups consisting of individuals who have read different texts (and therefore have different information about a given topic) Learners then work within their groups to complete a task that requires them to combine the information they got from their various texts This can be a good way of differentiating reading, as learners could be allocated texts (or questions) depending on their reading level Story recreation | Bayan Farah Students retell a story, or present the information from a text in another medium (acting, comic strip, poster Story extension | Zoe Tysoe After reading a story, learners write the next chapter (or a prequal) This allows them to demonstrate understanding of the original narrative and characters, provides an opportunity to develop themes and personalise the story while enabling repeated productive use of language from the text (which helps learners remember it) British Council Teacher Community | Ten reading activities ... Community | Ten reading activities British Council Teacher Community Top ten reading activities After reading Jigsaw reading Give different texts to different learners Following the reading stage,...British Council Teacher Community Top ten reading activities While reading Order a text Photocopy and cut up a text (comic strips are especially good... https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/running-dictation) Reading slaps Help learners improve their scanning skills (quickly finding specific pieces of information) with reading races Put learners into groups according to reading level