Joel Swagman (Reviews / TESOL): Engaging Activities for Any Reading Text Workshop

Explanation: This past year, I've been working on a personal professional development project to make my reading lessons more interesting. The goal was to collect as many different activities as I could, and then try them out in the classroom.

This workshop is where I shared the results of this project with my colleagues. I talked about all the activities I had tried out, and then evaluated how well they had worked, both in terms of student engagement and in terms of skills development.

As such, this workshop is kind of a report on my personal journey, and may not be useful for other people. But that being said, anyone who wants to use this workshop for themselves is welcome to it. Copy the documents onto your own Google Drive account, and then edit out any details that do not apply to you.

When I did the workshop, I printed out a sample of each reading activity, and hung it around the room. Next to each activity, was a very short explanation in bullet point. Participants walked around the room with a partner, and evaluated each of the activities using this sheet here. (The sheet was a bit awkward to write in because the table was so small, so it was more of a conversation prompt). Then, after participants had reflected on all of the activities, I gave my own evaluation of them briefly using the slideshow.

I started preparing a script for what I was going to say, but I never finished it. So the script only goes up to slide 10.

(Slide 1).

Welcome to the workshop. This is going to be an idea sharing session in which I would like to share some of my ideas with you about how to make reading lessons more engaging and purposeful. Then, after I’ve given my ideas, I’d like to open it up to a general idea sharing session. The hope is that by the end of the session, we’ll all have a lot of new ideas for activities we can use in our reading lessons.

(Slide 2).

The origins of this workshop, at least from my end, come out of a professional development goal that I set last year to increase my knowledge of different activities to use in reading lessons. And that goal was inspired by three different factors.

The first one was a desire to just increase my own repertoire of classroom activities for my own professional development. It was inspired by an old manager of mine who seemed to be just a wealth of knowledge of different activities. Teachers would say to him, “my classes are getting a little bit boring. Do you have any ideas for activities?” And he would just say, “Well, why don’t you try this, and this, and this.” And I decided I also wanted to be the kind of teacher who had a lot of different activity options for the classroom just at my fingertips. I worried that since coming to this university, I had become overly reliant on using electronic device games like Kahoots and quizziz to increase engagement in my lessons, but that I hadn’t been developing myself as a teacher by learning new activities. So that's the first purpose of today’s workshop is to increase everyone’s professional development by increasing your repertoire of activities which you can have at your fingertips when needed.

The second purpose is to find a collection of activities that will engage the students even when the reading text itself is not inherently engaging. I suspect you’ll recognize the need for this. We’ve all had classes in which the students are not interested in the reading text, and this causes them to resent the lesson, and results in a lot of negative energy. In the past, I used to rely on my lead-in to generate interest in the text, but, as I’m sure you know, this can be touch and go. Sometimes the lead-in works, sometimes it doesn’t. So the purpose of these activities is that the activity can be fun and engaging even when the text is not. Now you can still try to do a really good lead-in to generate interest in the text, but if the students are still feeling resistant to the text even after the lead-in, then the lesson is still not a complete disaster—you still will have a fun activity that revolves around the text.

The third purpose is to develop reading skills. It’s often been said that traditional reading comprehension questions, the type that often are used in the textbooks, don’t really teach students how to understand the text, they just test whether or not the students can understand the text. So we want to use activities that are actually teaching the students to develop their skill, instead of simply testing the students.

(Slide 3)

There’s a quote from I.S.P. Nation that I really like, “We want to develop in the language learner the the ability to comprehend texts, not to guide him to comprehension of a text. To put it another way, when learners study a reading text, we want them to gain knowledge that will help them to understand tomorrow’s reading text. We want them to learn things that apply to all texts.”

(Slide 4)

So the purpose of this workshop, then, is to try to find activities that are both engaging and purposeful. It’s sometimes difficult to find activities which hit both spots, but that’s the aim. Activities that I found that were good for developing subskills, but didn’t look to me to be particularly engaging, I haven’t really pursued. Likewise, activities that were engaging for students, but didn’t actually develop any skills, I’ve left out of this workshop. Included in this latter category are things like using running dictation to reconstruct parts of the reading text. Students definitely found it engaging, but it was difficult to see what reading skill they were developing.

In theory all of these activities are good for developing reading subskills, or at least that’s how they were advertised when I found them. And I’ll talk about my sources for them in just a minute. But I also want to invite a bit of skepticism, or critical thinking, as we go through them. Do these activities actually work? Do they actually improve the subskills that they are supposed to? How could they be adapted to work better?

(Slide 5)

So, where do these activities come from? Nothing here is completely my own idea. I’m borrowing from other great minds.

The majority of them come from the Reading Feedback and In-Class Activities document that is shared with all teachers following the pilot exam. You know the one, right? After the pilot exam, if your students are weak in this subskill, then you might want to try this activity. This was recommended to me by my line manager at the time, when I told her I wanted to find new activities to do in reading lessons. You all have access to this document, so hopefully this workshop isn’t going to waste your time by just going through activities that you already have access to anyway. But on the other hand, stuff often gets overlooked. There’s a lot of stuff on Sharepoint, none of us read all of it. [And I think there are a lot of engaging activities in this document that I wanted to highlight and say, “Look, this works really well. Give it a try, it can really improve the engagement in a lesson.” Secondly I wanted to talk about a few adaptations I made to make the activities more engaging, or to gamify them a bit more.

Secondly, I’ve gotten a few ideas from Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language by Christine Nuttall, and again I’ve adapted some of her ideas and gamified them slightly.

I searched the web for a good website on activities for reading texts, and I had trouble finding something. The majority of the websites that came up, at least on a simple search, were either comprehension exercises for individual reading texts, or games for beginning readers based around word recognition. I did find one website, however, which had ideas for activities that can be adapted for longer reading text. Of course, you have to be careful with sources on the Internet. I’m not sure all 21 of her ideas follow best practices, but I think a couple of them could work with some adaptations.

(Slide 6)

Just a quick note on suggested staging. I’ve found that almost all of these activities work best if the students are already familiar with the main idea of the reading. So I wouldn’t do them as the first reading task. I would maybe first do a gist reading, or maybe do a prediction and check task as the first reading. And then maybe even if there’s time you could have the students work through some of the comprehension questions in the textbook. And then do these activities as extension activities.

Now, a lot of these activities, such as writing in missing words, do rely on students reconstructing parts of the text, but I find students never remember the text perfectly, so an initial gist reading does not spoil the activity. You can still have the students read the text once or twice, then tell them to close their books, and hand out the activity.

(Slide 7)

Also, just another reminder, this is something I often forget to do, but it’s good to signpost the purpose of the activity to the students. Because if you succeed in making the activity engaging, sometimes the students might not realize it actually has a purpose. And the last thing you want is for the students to get to the end of the term and then write on their class evaluation, “Well, we played a lot of games in the class, but the teacher didn’t really help me develop my reading at all.” So either before or after the game, make sure it’s clearly communicated to the class that the activity actually has a skill-building purpose.

(Slide 8)

Another tip on engagement is that I think these activities often work best if used sparingly. So a new activity can often have high engagement because students enjoy the novelty of it and enjoy working out the puzzle. But each of these activities will have diminishing returns in terms of engagement if they are used repeatedly. At least that’s been my experience. So I make it a rule of thumb to try to only do each activity once in each term—helps to keep things fresh.

(Slide 9)

Now, that being said, I don’t want to give the impression that these activities should simply be selected based on whether or not you’ve done them yet this term. Ideally, you want to select the activity based on what the reading skill goals are for that unit. This helps give them a purpose, rather than using them at random. Or, you can select them based on the needs of your students. For example, if you notice a particular subskill is weak, or if the class scores low on a subskill on the practice exams, you can choose an activity based on that.

(Slide 10)

Okay, let’s get into it. The first activity I want to talk about is Faulty Printer.

(Slide 11)

Like a lot of these activities, this one comes straight from the practice exam feedback document. It’s supposed to

[...the script ends here. This is as far as I got.]

Faulty Printer

Delete the last word from every line.

Students read the text, and try to predict what the missing word is.

Make it a competition. Put students in teams. One point for each correct word.

Optional additional stage: after students have already made their best guess, post the full text outside the room, and give them a chance to check their work with a running dictation.

Optional additional stage: after students have already made their best guess, play the audio track one time. Students can listen and check their answers.

Wrong Words

Change one word in every sentence into an incorrect word

Students read the text, and try to predict what the wrong word is. They underline the wrong word, and write the correct word above it.

Make it a competition. Put students in teams. One point for each correct word.

Optional additional stage: after students have already made their best guess, post the full text outside the room, and give them a chance to check their work with a running dictation.

Optional additional stage: after students have already made their best guess, play the audio track one time. Students can listen and check their answers.

Paraphrase Recognition Race

Take sentences from the reading, and re-write them as paraphrased sentences

Show the students the paraphrased sentences on the projector. Students have to quickly scan through the reading to find the original sentence with the same meaning

Make it a competition. Put students in teams. Students have to run to the whiteboard to write the answer. One point for the fastest team

Optional add-on: Use a PowerPoint Game template to increase the game element

Paragraph Reconstruction

Take a paragraph from the reading text, write the sentences on different slips of paper, and shuffle the sentences.

In groups, students try to reconstruct the paragraph by putting the sentences in the correct order.

Students should pay attention to reference words and cohesive devices in order to see how the sentences link together.

DIY Heading Match

Cut up the reading into paragraphs. Put students in pairs. Give each pair one paragraph, and a strip of paper to write their summary

In pairs, students write a 5 word (maximum) summary of the paragraph on the strip of paper

The summaries are posted around the room.

The students then walk around the room with a partner, read the summaries, and match them to the paragraph number.

Check answers by reading out the paragraph summaries aloud to the class, and the pair who wrote it will tell the class

Make it a Competition: One point for each correctly matched Paragraph.

Lightning Round (a.k.a Scanning Race Game)

Make specific information questions about the reading text where the answer can be found by quickly scanning through the text

Show the students the specific information questions on the projector. Students have to quickly scan through the reading to find the answer

Make it a competition. Put students in teams. Students have to run to the whiteboard to write the answer. One point for the fastest team

Optional add-on: Use a PowerPoint Game template to increase the game element

Garbage Man (a.k.a Another Scanning Race)

Make specific information questions about the reading text where the answer can be found by quickly scanning through the text

Put the questions on slips of colored paper. Scatter the slips of colored paper around the floor of the classroom

Students are put into teams, and assigned a color. They have to pick up the colored paper that matches their team. They can only pick up one slip of paper at a time.

They scan through the text to find the answer. The teacher checks their answer. If they get it right, they can collect another strip.

The winner is the first team to collect all their paper slips from the floor.

Jigsaw Reading

Put students into 4 groups. Give each group a different section of the reading text.

In groups, students read the text, and discuss in their groups, and agree on what the main ideas are. They take notes

The students are reshuffled into groups of 4. In each group, there is one person from each section of the reading text.

The students tell the other people in their group what the main idea from their section is. Together, the groups create an outline of the reading.

The students are given questions about the reading, which they use their outline to answer

Find the Missing Sentence

Delete one sentence from each paragraph. Make sure it is a sentence that affects the coherence of the paragraph

In pairs, students read the text, and detect where there is a gap in coherence in each paragraph. They mark this spot with an “X”

The full text is placed outside the room. Students check their answers (via running dictation). One student dictates the missing sentences to their partner.

Make it a Competition: The first pair to reconstruct all of the missing sentences is the winner.

Match the Sentences to the Function

Take one or two paragraphs from the text.

Create a “map” of these paragraphs in which you write down the rhetorical function of these sentences, but not the sentences themselves.

Put the sentences onto slips of paper and shuffle them up

Students place the sentences on top of their rhetorical function in order to recreate the text.

Make Questions for the Other Groups

Students read the text, and, in groups, make their own comprehension questions for the text

They trade their comprehension questions with another group. They try to answer the questions that the other group has made

After finishing, put both groups together. The students correct each other’s answers, and, where necessary, explain where in the text the answers are located

Delete the ____________ (e.g. nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs)

Choose a part of speech, and delete it from the text.

Students read the text in pairs, and try to put the missing words back in.

Make it a competition. The pairs are competing against each other. One point for each correct word.

Optional additional stage: after students have already made their best guess, post the full text outside the room, and give them a chance to check their work with a running dictation.

Optional additional stage: after students have already made their best guess, play the audio track one time. Students can listen and check their answers.

Student Editors

Go through the text and change every pronoun to the original referent (e.g. change “she” to “Amy”)

Students read the adjusted text, and try to predict where the pronouns should be. They underline the nouns, and write the appropriate pronouns above.

Make it a competition. Put students in teams. One point for each correct pronoun the teams can put in the text.

Optional additional stage: after students have already made their best guess, post the full text outside the room, and give them a chance to check their work with a running dictation.

Optional additional stage: after students have already made their best guess, play the audio track one time. Students can listen and check their answers.

Joel Swagman (Reviews / TESOL)

Thursday, July 13, 2023

Engaging Activities for Any Reading Text Workshop

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