Extend the Story: Communicative Follow Up

(TESOL Ideas--Communicative Follow Up)

Sample: docs, pub

One communicative follow up for reading or listening lessons is to expand on an element of the story.  This, obviously, is most appropriate for reading or listening texts that have some sort of a narrative element to them.

Here is an example from the Impact 4 textbook.  In this reading, the students have to read about Nizar Ibrahim and the search for Spinosaurus.  A key point in the story is when Nizar Ibrahim accidently runs into a man with a mustache that he has been looking for.  I asked the students to expand this scene into a movie script.

Imagine you are making a movie about Nizar Ibrahim and the search for Spinosaurus.  Below is the opening of one of the key scenes, in which Nizar Ibrahim finally finds the man from Erfoud.

Scene: Nizar is sitting at an outdoor cafe, drinking tea with his colleague.

Colleague: So, Nizar, how has your search for Spinosaurus been going?

Nizar: Oh, it’s all useless. I travelled all this way to Morocco, but I still can’t find the man I’m looking for.

Colleague: That’s too bad.  [Takes a drink of his tea, and then looks up.] Oh, look at that funny little man walking down the street.  Did you ever see such a distinctive mustache?

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Retell the Story from a Different Perspective: Communicative Follow Up

(TESOL Ideas--Communicative Follow Up)

Sample: docs, pub

One communicative follow up for reading or listening lessons is to retell the same story from a different perspective.  This, obviously, is most appropriate for reading or listening texts that have some sort of a narrative element to them.

Here is an example from the Impact 3 textbook.  In this listening, the students have to watch a video in which explorer Paul Nicklen is talking about his encounter with a leopard seal.  For the communicative follow up, the students have to write the story from the perspective of the leopard seal:

You have listened to a video describing the story from the perspective of Paul Nicklen.  But how do you think the story would sound if it was the leopard seal who was telling the story?  Write the same story, but from the perspective of the leopard seal.

Hello.  My name is Sally, and I’m a leopard seal from Antarctica.  One day I was swimming, when I saw this strange looking human in the water…

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Find the Missing Sentence: Reading Activity

(TESOL Ideas--Activities that Can Be Used with Any Reading Text)

Sample: docs, pub

Notes: I had previously posted this activity as an example of Running Dictation for Reading Texts.  But I've been thinking recently that perhaps I had mislabeled the activity.  The activity itself wasn't running dictation.  Running dictation was simply a way of checking the answers.  The activity itself was "Find the Missing Sentence."

This activity is partially inspired by similar activities mentioned in Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language by Christine Nuttall.  The idea is that it practices students ability to recognize coherence in a text by removing a sentence, and seeing if the students can recognize where there is a gap in the text.

The sample activity is from Q: Skills for Success: Reading and Writing 4: Unit 3 Reading 1: The Good Teen p.65-70.  The text has been recopied onto a Google Doc, but one sentence from each paragraph has been deleted.  The students have to read through the paragraph, and identify where the missing sentence is located.

The directions I originally included with this activity are:

Directions: Tell students to close their books.  Put them in pairs.  Give each pair a copy of pages 1-2.  Instruct them that there is one sentence missing from each paragraph.  They have to read the paragraph and use the cohesion clues to tell where sentences are probably missing.  They mark the spot in the paragraph where they think the sentence is missing.

Then, give each pair a copy of sheet 3.  Instruct them that the full text is posted outside the room (p.4-5).  They have to go outside of the room, look at the full paragraphs, and find the missing sentence, and then write it down on their answer sheet.  Standard running dictation rules apply (i.e. one student can run outside to look at the text, but they can't write anything.  They have to memorize the sentence, and run back and dictate it to their partner).  The first pair to write down all 9 missing sentences is the winner.

...but the running dictation part is optional.

In fact, another way to continue the activity would be to provide students a list of the missing sentences, and students have to decide which sentence goes in which paragraph. 

https://www.baamboozle.com/ --  Useful Websites for Teaching English

I was talking to a colleague recently, and she mentioned that she uses the website Baamboozle in a lot of her lessons.
The name sounded familiar.  I had definitely heard this website mentioned in the teachers' room before.  (In fact, correct me if I'm wrong, but was this website a lot more popular like about 5 years ago?  I feel like I used to hear it mentioned more in the past.)

Anyway, I may be a bit late to the Baamboozle party, but I'm always looking for new tricks, so I checked the website out.

Like all of these websites, there's a basic version that you get for free, and then a more advanced version that you have to pay money for.  And, like all of these websites, I'm only going to do the free version.

The basic version appears to be somewhat of a one trick pony.  You can design quiz games suitable for doing an all class quiz using the projector.  It's very similar to Hurricane, but you can play it right off of the computer instead of having to write the grid up on the white board.

The questions are designed and inputted by the teacher, and can be about anything.  So this website is easily adaptable for any grammar point or any vocabulary set.  For reading lessons, you can input specific information questions and use it for a kind of scanning race game.

This website works best if you create an account.  (You can create a free account using your email address.)  Once you create a free account, you can create games.  You can also play the games with up to 4 teams.

However, you can still play the games in your class without creating an account.  You'll just be limited to only 2 teams in the class.

Anyway, I've created an account now, and have started created games.  My Baamboozle profile is here.  I've got a few games created, and I'm hoping to add to that in the future. 

Communicative Follow Up

(TESOL Ideas--Stages of a Reading Lesson, Stages of a Listening Lesson)

Index

* Balloon Debate

* Discussion Questions Related to the Topic of the Reading or Listening

* Retell the Story from a Different Perspective

* Using IELTS Speaking Part 2 Topics

* Create Your Own Organization; Create Your own _____

* Personalize the Theme of the Text

* Extend the Story

The Communicative Follow Up is the final stage of a reading or listening lesson.

In the communicative methodology, reading or listening texts are not simply texts to be absorbed for comprehension.  They also serve as prompts for communicative activities in which students can talk and write about their own ideas.

It is traditional to have the communicative activity match the receptive skill.  Reading and writing are thought to be related skills, so after a reading lesson, the communicative follow up activity would be writing.  Similarly, listening and speaking are related skills, so after a listening lesson, there would be a speaking activity.  

However, this is not a hard and fast rule, and the teacher should also take into account student preferences (many students prefer to use in-class time for speaking practice, and to do writing at home).  Also the teacher should take into account whether the topic lends itself to a speaking activity or a writing activity.  

One possible communicative follow up activity is to just give students a list of discussion questions on the same topic as the reading or listening text.  This is often the simplest and most straightforward activity to design, and it is also very easy to set-up in class (i.e. instructions to students are very simple "Here are some questions, discuss them with your group).  

However, these are not always the best type of activity, because the students may lack motivation to just discuss the question if there is no greater purpose to the discussion.  (But this will depend on the motivation level of your class.  For highly motivated students, a list of discussion question may work just fine.)

However, a better communicative activity usually contains a communicative outcome--that is, the students need to achieve something during the activity.  For example "plan a vacation with your group.  Where will you go?  What will you do?  Where will you stay? etc"  This works better because now the students are not simply talking for the sake of talking, but they actually have an outcome that they need to achieve to complete the activity successfully.  (This idea could be used as a communicative follow up to any reading or listening text that was about travelling).

Other popular communicative activities are:

* role play .  Students are put into pairs, or small groups, and assigned characters from the reading or listening text.  Each character has a goal for the conversation.  (e.g imagine a reading text or listening text that involved some sort of conflict between characters.  In the role play, the students could be assigned one of the characters, and the goal could be to resolves the conflict.)

* ranking activity.  students are given a list of things that relate to the reading or listening text in some way, and must rank them in order of importance.  They and their partner must agree on the rankings, so the communicative activity is to talk through the rankings until they reach an agreement.  (e.g. for a reading or listening text on travel, students could rank the most important features when choosing a destination)

* balloon debate.  there are six people in the hot air balloon, and the balloon is too heavy.  One person needs to be thrown out to save the lives of the other five. Who will it be?  This activity could be directly adapted to a reading or listening text using the characters from the reading or listening.  Or, it could be loosely adapted as just a "choose which one is out" activity.  (e.g. again, sticking with the theme of travel, a follow up to a reading and listening text on travel could be: you are going on a camping trip.  Here are six items.  You can only bring 5.  With your partner, decide which item you are going to leave behind.)

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The communicative activity should in some ways expand on the topic of the reading or listening text.

With the traditional style textbooks, this used to be fairly straightforward.  For example, a listening text would be 4 characters talking about movies that they liked.  The communicative follow up, then, would be for the students to talk in their groups about movies that they liked.

However, recently textbooks quite often are about topics that are not related to the students' lives, such as the National Geographic books, and then some creativity is required to create a communicative follow up.  However, with some creativity, it is usually possible to relate some aspect of the text to the student's lives.

For example, when teaching out of a National Geographic textbook, I once had to teach a lesson on Alaskan Ice Climbing.  This was a listening text about mountaineer guides in Alaska who guide tourists through the dangers of ice climbing.  It was completely unrelated to the lives of my students in Vietnam, so for the communicative follow up, I had the students pretend to be tour guides in Vietnam and think of the dangers in Vietnam that they needed to warn tourists about--see example here.  

Another example of a listening text I had to teach that was completely unrelated to my students' lives was this lesson on the reindeer people of Mongolia.  The lesson was about how the traditional way of life among the reindeer people in Mongolia are threatened because of the end of government subsidies.  Again, it was completely related to the lives of my students, but I created a role play in which a government official had to negotiate between the needs of the urban workers and the nomadic reindeer herders--see here.  

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Because Communicative Follow Ups are often a type of free conversation, I used to refer to them as "free practice" in my lesson planning.  (And if you look through my old archives, I think you can find some communicative follow ups mislabeled as "free practice" in my old lesson plans.)

But a couple of years ago, when I was working with an experienced CELTA tutor, he took great care to always correct me whenever I said "free practice" for a reading or listening lesson.  So now I try to always take care to differentiate between "free practice" and "communicative follow up".

The difference is that free practice takes place at the end of a grammar lesson. So there is a specific grammar point that the students are practicing, and at the end of the free practice the teacher can provide feedback on how accurately the students were using the grammar (or vocabulary).

With a communicative follow up, however, there is no language point that is being practiced.  It is simply practicing general fluency, and communicative ability.

As such, there is no need for feedback on language mistakes.  If the students can complete the task, they have successfully fulfilled the communicative objective.  The teacher can (and should) give some sort of feedback on the task.  (e.g. "Oh, that looks like a very nice vacation that you've planned.  I like the way you included so many outdoor activities.  I would like to go on your vacation myself." etc)  But there is no need to give feedback on language accuracy.

The exception to this, however, is if you're teaching a class where the students really want a lot of feedback on language accuracy.  Then, you can integrate some language points into the feedback.  However, because communicative follow ups are fluency activities, don't interrupt the students while they're speaking.  Save all the language accuracy feedback points until the end of the activity.

Orientation to the Text (for Reading and Listening Lessons)

(TESOL Ideas--Activities that Can Be Used with Any Reading Text , Activities That Can Be Used with Any Listening Text)

This is another entry in my quest to define all the terms I use on this blog.

"Orientation to the text" usually occurs after the lead-in.  The purpose is to clarify for the students all the variables of the reading or listening text.  So, for example, for a listening text, some of the variables could be: Who are the speakers on the audio? What is their relationship to each other? Where are they? What are they talking about? etc

In the past, I've often confused the lead-in with orientation to the text.  And, I hate to say this, but if you search my archives of materials on this blog, you will find several examples of a lesson stage that is labelled as "lead-in" but is actually "orientation to the text".

But I had the opportunity to work with a CELTA tutor a few years ago, and he set me straight on the difference.  And going forward, I'm going to try to be more precise in my terminology.

The difference is that a lead-in is supposed to be a brief conversation prompt that allows the students to relate their own life to an aspect of the reading or listening text.  So, to continue the example of parties that I introduced in the previous post, for a listening text on parties, the lead-in might be, "talk to your partner about a party that you enjoyed."

However, the orientation to the text would be: "You are going to listen to a conversation between two people.  They are brother and sister.  They are talking about a party that they went to last night."

As always, as much as possible, this should be done through eliciting.  Most textbooks nowadays have  will have some sort of photo that shows the people, so use the photo.  "What can you see? Who are they? What do you think their relationship is?  What do you think they are talking about?"

If the textbook doesn't have a suitable photo, you can usually find some sort of approximate photo on Google images that you can appropriate.  

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"Orientation to the text" could also be a time where you clarify any background information that the text assumes, but that may not be known to the students. 

A good example of this is a lesson I taught recently in Reflect Listening & Speaking 5, Listening 1: How to Structure a Good Story p.4-8.  The listening text was on story structure.  Romeo and Juliet was used as an example to illustrate the stages of a story.  The assumption behind the text was that the students were already familiar with the story of Romeo and Juliet, and the purpose of the listening text was to use this pre-existing information as an example of the 3 act story structure.

However, in my case, I knew not all of my students would be familiar with the story of Romeo and Juliet.  So before we did the listening, I briefly went over some of the key plot points of Romeo and Juliet.  

I did this by showing them some Youtube clips from the Romeo and Juliet movies.  See HERE.  

• Orientation to the Text 

• Tybalt kills Mercutio (Carlei)

• Romeo kills Tybalt (Carlei) or Romeo + Juliet (1996) - Romeo Kills Tybalt (HD)

• Romeo is Banished

• Romeo + Juliet (1996) - Romeo Dies Scene 

And once again, it's best to elicit as much as possible.  (To once again quote As J.J. Wilson from How to Teach Listening, you don't want to do a listening before the listening.)  So instead of narrating the clips myself, I played the movie clips without the sound on, and got the students to describe to me what was happening.  I added clarification as necessary, but for the most part the students were able to get the main parts themselves. 

Update March 14, 2025:  I was just rereading this old post, and it struck me that I should probably make something clear.

As you can see above, I'm using two definitions of "orientation to the text".  The first definition is to clarify all the different variables in the text, the second is to give any necessary background information.

I should make clear that the first definition is the traditional definition.  The second is my own extension.  It's probably debatable whether providing background knowledge is best classified under "orientation to the text" or not.  

Lead-in (for Reading and Listening Lessons)

(TESOL Ideas--Activities that Can Be Used with Any Reading Text , Activities That Can Be Used with Any Listening Text)

If you search through my archives of TESOL materials, you'll notice that I've used the term "lead-in" repeatedly.  But I've never bothered to define it.  It's a very classic CELTA term, so I've often just assumed that other TESOL teachers would know what I meant.

However, recently I've been on a mission to define all the terminology that I use on this blog. So I should probably talk about what exactly a "lead-in" actually is.

A "lead-in" is an activity that is used at the very beginning of a reading or listening lesson (*).  The main purpose of a lead-in is to get the students interested in the topic of the reading/listening text.  A secondary purpose might be to activate the students pre-existing knowledge about the topic.

In its most typical form, a lead-in would consist of a conversation prompt that relates to the students' life in some way, but also relates to the topic of the reading or listening text.

So, for example, imagine the listening text is a conversation between two people about a party that they went to.  A lead-in could be, "Talk to your partner about the last time you went to a party.  Where did you go?  What did you do? Did you have fun?" et cetera.

The students would then spend a couple minutes talking to their partner about a party that they went to.  And, in theory, after they've had the opportunity to relate the topic to their own life, this will make them more receptive to listening to a conversation about the same topic.

Now, obviously this approach works best with reading or listening texts which are about everyday life topics.  It gets a bit harder to devise interesting lead-ins when the reading or listening text is about some more exotic topic not related to students' lives (looking at you, National Geographic textbooks).  But with a little bit of creativity, you can usually devise some sort of personalized speaking prompt that relates to an aspect of the reading/listening text.  

So, for example, when I had to do a reading lesson on Alaskan Ice Climbing, and I knew none of my Vietnamese students had ever gone ice-climbing, the lead in was a mingle activity in which students talked about the most dangerous thing they had ever done (see here and here).  It was stretching things a little bit, but it was the best I could think of.  (The examples in the slideshow  were supposed to stimulate ideas, and were my attempt to include both exotic dangerous activities as well as mundane dangerous activities--e.g. riding a motorbike without a helmet is relatively common in Vietnam.)  I probably could have done a better job of making it relevant to the students' lives, in retrospect, but you get the idea.

So, to summarize, the ideal lead-in is a short conversation prompt which relates both to the reading/listening and to the students own lives.

2 or 3 questions is probably the limit.  You usually don't want to go overboard and give the students a whole page full of questions.  (Although, if you look through my archived materials, you can see I've sometimes been guilty of this in the past--see here, for example.)

And the lead-in works best when it's a personalized speaking prompt.  We want students to be talking and to be active.  Often there's a temptation to find a really interesting Youtube video on the same topic, and use that as your lead-in to try to pique student interest, especially when your teaching a reading/listening on a specialized topic (see, again, the National Geographic textbooks).  But this is usually a bad idea.  (As J.J. Wilson says in How to Teach Listening, your lead-in to a listening text shouldn't be another listening activity.  It'll just exhaust students.)  

...although, once again, this is another mistake I've definitely been guilty of in the past.  If you search my archives, you can find plenty of lessons when I've used Youtube videos as lead-ins.  But it's something I'm trying to do less of now.

As far as setting up and running the lead in:

Just like any other stage in a lesson, the "lead-in" is usually structured in the following way:

1) Set up the task

2) Students do the task

3) Feedback on the task

We'll go through these steps briefly below:

1) Set up the task

The set-up should ideally be short and sweet.  The teacher should give out the speaking prompt, and possible give a brief personal example to illustrate.  In order to avoid excessive Teacher Talking Time, and to increase student involvement, it's always best to elicit the example as much as possible.  

Pictures work best for this, if at all possible. For a hypothetical illustration, let's go back to the example above with the lesson about parties.  Before the lesson, I would dig around for old photos of myself in Facebook or Google Photos, etc.  I would find photos of me at some party.  I would put the photos on a PowerPoint.  But then instead of describing these photos, I would use eliciting questions to get the students to describe the photos to me.  e.g. "Look at this picture?  Where am I?  What am I doing?  Who am I talking to?  Am I having fun?"

Once I've used the eliciting questions to get students to describe the picture of me at a party, I would then say, "Okay, talk to a partner.  When did you last go to a party?  Where was it? Who did you talk to? Did you have fun?"

Now, obviously all of this is an ideal set-up.   (It assumes I have a classroom with a computer and a projector, pictures of myself that I can locate, a topic that lends itself to personalization, etc).  But sometimes it does all work out.  And in those cases, I think this is the ideal way to set up the lead-in. 

For a real example of this, see my lesson on Rosie's Walk.   The reading text is about a walk that somebody goes on.  So for the lead-in, I have the students discuss a time that they walked somewhere.  And for the  example, I include real photos of me on a walk (see slideshow here) and I get the students to describe the photos to me.

In other cases, if you don't have the perfect photo of yourself in that situation, you can just use stock photos from Google Images to elicit from students.  So, for example, this lesson.  The listening text was on plans for the weekend.  So the lead-in was that the students talked about their own plans for the weekend.  So I gave the students an example from my own life but I used generic pictures to elicit all the activities (see slideshow here).

2) Students do the task

The students are assigned a partner.  (According to CELTA methodology, the teacher always assigns the partners--ideally quickly.  e.g. "You two together, you two together, you two together, a group of three over here.")

During the task, the teacher listens in, and notes which students have stories that would be suitable for whole class feedback.  (e.g. if you overhear one student say to her partner that she's never been to any parties, and she doesn't have anything to talk about, then you want to make sure that you don't call on that student during the whole class feedback.)  The teacher should not interfere with the speaking activity, unless the students ask for support.

3) Feedback on the task

As an experienced CELTA tutor once told me, you should never give any language related feedback during the lead-in (i.e. don't correct any language mistakes--grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation--that the students make during the lead-in.)

This is for a few reasons: 

1) the purpose of the lead-in is to get students interested in the lesson, and we don't want them to start tensing up and worrying about correction already.  

2) The nature of the feedback should always be related to purpose of the lesson stage.  The purpose of the lead-in is to generate ideas, so the feedback should be related to ideas, not language accuracy.

3) The students haven't yet been taught anything at this stage of the lesson, so it's not fair to correct them on anything yet.

So, ideally, don't do any language correction during the lead-in stage. (**)

Instead, the teacher would nominate one or two students to share their answers with the whole class.  

As mentioned above, the teacher should use their notes to make sure they call on students who actually have something to say (and avoid embarrassing students who don't have suitable responses.)

The teacher should then give some sort of brief comment on the content of the student's response, (e.g.  "That sounds like it was a very fun night out.  Thank you for sharing"), but avoid commenting on the language accuracy of the response.

Notes:

(*) The exception to this would be that some teachers like to do a quick game to review the language from the previous lesson.  This serves the purpose of (1) warming the students up and getting them ready to study, (2) reviewing the material from the previous lesson, and helping to cement it into their permanent memories, (3) allowing for late-comers to come in and get settled in the first 10 minutes, without missing any crucial parts of the main lesson.

In these cases, the lead-in would be the second activity of the lesson, not the first.  But it would still be considered the first stage of the "main lesson".

(**) A possible exception to this would be if you have a group of students who request more language correction throughout the lesson.  (Some students want the teacher to provide constant correction.  This tends to be more of an issue with highly motivated adult learners, and less of an issue with teenagers and young learners.)  In this case, you might select one or two language accuracy issues to give feedback on during the lead-in.  It's not the CELTA methodology, but in the real world the methodology is always negotiated with the needs of the particular students.  

(The only thing to be careful about, though, is to make sure that everyone in the class wants the increased correction.  In some cases, it could just be a couple students who are more vocal than their classmates, and the majority of the class actually doesn't want the increased correction.)

Lead-in for Grammar and Vocabulary Lessons

I should mention that lead-ins are also used for grammar and vocabulary lessons.  This is during the presentation stage of the lesson.  In these cases, the lead-in is for the context, not the grammar point.

You see, in the CELTA method, the sentences used to illustrate the grammar point are not just random sentences.  Rather, a context is selected in which to present the grammar point, and the sentences come from that context.

So, for example, in this lesson on "going to future", the context is plans for the weekend and all the examples of "going to" come from that context.  So, the lead-in, then, is "talk about your plans for the weekend".

It's important to remember that the lead-in is a lead-in to the context, and not a lead-in to the grammar itself.  Resist the temptation to try to sneak the grammar point into the lead-in.  The lead-in is purely about getting students interested in the context.  Drawing attention to the grammar will come later.

For a classic example of when I screwed this up, see this this Lesson For Quantifiers on Countable and Uncountable Nouns.  In my lesson plan, I had the first stage classified as a lead-in, but it was actually a sorting activity for countable and uncountable nouns, which was previewing the grammar point, and not a lead-in to the context.  (The context was the difference between the countryside and the city.)  As my manager pointed out after he had observed the lesson, the real lead-in to the lesson was when I had the students discuss the difference between the city and the countryside (lesson plan here, slides here).  The city and the countryside discussion was the context in which I was illustrating the quantifiers (e.g. "not much pollution", "not many buildings" etc), so getting the students to discuss the differences between the city and the countryside was the actual lead-in, and that's where I should have begun the lesson.

I later used that lesson (or at least a version of that lesson) to illustrate the wrong way to do lead-ins in my presenting grammar workshop.

Engaging Activities for Any Reading Text Workshop

(TESOL Ideas--Workshops, Activities that Can Be Used with Any Reading Text)

Google Drive Folder: HERE

Slideshow: slides, pub

Script: docs, pub

Bullet Point Explanations: docs, pub

Gallery Walk: docs, pub

Activities to post around the room:

* DIY Heading Match: docs, pub

* Faulty Printer: docs, pub

* Find the Missing Sentence: docs, pub

* Garbage Man: docs, pub

* Jigsaw Reading: docs, pub

* Make Headings for the Other Group to Match: docs, pub

* Make Questions for the Other Group: docs, pub

* Match the Sentences to their Function: docs, pub

* Paragraph Reconstruction: docs, pub

* Paraphrase Race Game: drive, slides, pub

* Scanning Race Game (i.e. Lightning Round): drive, slides, pub

* Student Editors: docs, pub

* Write in the Missing Verbs: docs, pub

* Wrong Words: docs, pub

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  

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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.