READING ACTIVITIES

Before reading

There are lots of activities you can do before students read a text to help enhance their comprehension, such as ones that
activate the students schemata or background knowledge, arouse their interest in the topic or prepare them
linguistically.

1. A carousel of ideas
This activity helps Ss find out what they already know about a topic and encourages them to share ideas about topics
before they read a text.

Before Ss read a text, choose four topics that relate to the text that would be useful for Ss to think about before reading.

Take a large piece of paper and divide it into four triangles by drawing diagonal lines from opposite corners. Write one
of the topics in each of the triangles in the centre of the piece of paper.

Four students sit around the piece of paper and are given a time limit e.g. one minute. They write as many ideas as
possible relating to the topic in their triangle. When the times up, they rotate the piece of paper and have another
minute. This time, they read the ideas already written down and add new ones to it. After a minute, they rotate the paper
again and add more ideas. Repeat one last time until all Ss have written in each triangle. They then read all the ideas in
each triangle.

2. Ideas continuum
This activity helps Ss think about how much they know about a topic and share ideas with each other.

Draw a horizontal line on the board. At one end write I know a lot about this and at the other end write I know very
little about this.

The teacher says topics or ideas that relate to the text. Ss decide how much knowledge they already have about the
topics and write them on the line in their notebooks, so if the topic is Australian animals and the student knows quite a
lot, they write Australian animals towards the I know a lot about this end.
Students compare their existing knowledge and those who know a little about one of the topics find someone who
knows more than them and they tell each other what they know.

3. Sneak preview
Show the text on the IWB or with the projector for just 20 seconds. If your classroom is low tech, students can open
their books and look at the text for just 20 seconds. The idea is for them to get as much information as possible in a
short space of time so they scan the text for key words that include the most important information.

Alternatively you could show students a few key words from the text, headings and accompanying visuals and they
guess their relevance in the text.

4. Words and pictures

Show students images related to the text and students work together to write down all the words they can see in the
images or related to the images. Then they swap their piece of paper with another group and write synonyms or related
words in a different colour next to the other groups words. This activity helps predict words that might appear in the
text and extends students vocabulary.

5. Peer pre-teaching vocabulary

This is a communicative way of pre-teaching tricky but essential vocabulary. Make a list of words that appear in the text
that students need to know in order to understand the text. Write simple definitions for the words and cut them up on
individual slips of paper. Divide the students into three groups: A, B and C. Give each group a list of the words they
need to understand e.g. if there are nine words altogether, give three different words to each group. Put the nine
definitions around the classroom. One student from each group has to go and find the correct definition for one of the
groups words. S/he brings the definition over to the group and they all write it down. Another student goes to find the
definition for word 2 and another for word 3. When the three groups have their three definitions, make new groups of
three with an A, B and C student in each. They teach each other their words and all students make a note of the words
and definitions.
The final stage is to check that all students understand all the words with a quick team game that reviews all the new
words.

For ideas on how to deal with unknown vocabulary in a text see

http://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/exams/reading-exams/difficult-vocabulary

While reading

Depending on the type of text, students will need to use a variety of reading subskills. Here are some activities you can
use to develop the different subskills.

A: Scan Reading

When we scan for information our eyes move quickly around a text from side to side or up and down. We dont read all
the information on the page but look for specific pieces of information that we need. Such information could be a
number, date, time, place, name or price. Working on scan reading skills lends itself to exploiting authentic materials
such as leaflets, posters, tickets, timetables, flyers, whats on guides or menus.

1. Noticeboard quiz
Put the authentic materials on a noticeboard and divide the students into teams. One student from each team comes up
to the board and the first student to find the answer to a question you ask gets a point. Alternatively you could get
students in groups to write a quiz for another group based on the information on the noticeboard.

2. Remove a sentence
This activity helps students think about text genre and the likely content of each type of text. Using the same texts as
above, remove one sentence from each text. Students look at the removed sentences and predict which text they think
they have been removed from. Then they scan the noticeboard and check their predictions.

B: Skim Reading

When we skim a text our eyes follow the text from start to finish. One of the aims of skim reading is to encourage
students to read a text quickly and comfortably in order to get an overall understanding of it.

1. Time limit
Set a realistic time limit for your students to read the text and give them a general question to answer before they read.
A typical task could be to choose the best title for a text. To help choose a realistic time limit, time how long it takes
you to read the text comfortably and add a bit more time, depending on the level of the students. You could ask students
to raise their hand as soon as they know the answer to the task. This is an unobtrusive way of seeing how quickly each
student reads the text and which students need to increase their reading speed.

2. Confirm predictions
After a pre-reading prediction task students skim the text and confirm which of their ideas from the pre-reading task are
mentioned in the text.

C: Intensive Reading (for detail)

1. Student-generated questions
Students work in pairs or groups and write a few comprehension questions based on the text. They must know the
answers. This is a great way of reviewing question forms and helping students write questions correctly. Then, they give
their questions to another group and answer the other groups questions. Finally, they give their answers to the original
group who correct them. Students love correcting each others answers.

2. Student-generated true and false sentences

After reading the text, students work in groups and write two true and two false sentences about the text. They give their
sentences to another group who have to decide which are true and which are false, and correct the false ones. Finally,
they give their answers to the original group who correct them. Again, they love correcting each others answers.

3. Colour the text

For any intensive reading task, I encourage students to colour or highlight the part of the text that gives them the
answer. This trains them to always look for justification in the text to support their answer and helps you see which
students are able/not able to find this information in a text. This is a technique they can be encouraged to use in a
reading test or exam.

4. Read and tweet

Asking students to summarise a text is a useful skill as it helps them to pick out key information and to develop
paraphrasing skills. Students highlight the key information in the text with a coloured pen. A short written summary
could take the form of a tweet. To summarise a longer text, ask each group of students to summarise a different
paragraph from the text as a tweet. Then collect the tweets, put them on the board and the students read them all and
decide which order they go in. Rather than spending lots of time counting a maximum of 140 characters, you could give
them a maximum number of words e.g. 25 words. The same activity could be done orally.

After reading

After reading a text, students can integrate the skills by talking or writing about it or could focus on specific language in
the text.

Drama
This is a fun activity that works with texts with a lot of action. In groups, students act out the text. If necessary, one or
two students could be narrators.

Roleplay
Choose two or three of the characters in the text and students imagine what they would say to each other and carry out a
roleplay. This is a good way of developing creativity and imagination as the dialogue goes beyond what is in the text.

Vocabulary
A typical vocabulary activity carried out after reading a text is Find the word in the text that means.... Students look
for words in the text for these synonyms or definitions. This activity can be taken one stage further by asking students to
replace the words in the text with the synonyms and make the necessary changes to the syntax and grammar. This helps
students develop their paraphrasing skills.

Language
Take a paragraph from the text and take out examples of a similar word type, e.g. all the verbs, articles, prepositions or
personal pronouns. Give the students the missing words and they put them back into the text in the right place.

Scanning

One of the most essential reading skills is scanning for specific information. By training students to scan the page to
look for key words, they learn to group specific letters together and quickly identify words, thus improving their fluency
over time.

Skimming

Skimming is an essential skill because it previews the text for the learner. Just like knowing the topic of a
conversation beforehand helps us be better listeners, knowing the main idea of a text is extremely beneficial before
students begin to read closely.

Activity:
Have skimming activities where you copy the text, blocking out everything but the title, pictures, first lines of each
paragraph, and the last paragraph. From this information, get your students to identify the main idea and why the author
is writing this story. Have a discussion about what they already know about the text and what they think they will learn
in the details.

Main Idea

Main idea is one of the most difficult skills for students because its one of the only test questions where the answer
cant always be found in an exact line within the text. Students need to be able to comprehend an entire text and then
decide what is the big picture idea. While the skimming strategy described above helps students to determine the main
idea before reading, the main idea strategy is for students to understand the big picture after reading the text.
Activities: Give students the 6W questions to ask about the authors purpose after reading an entire text. Who is
writing this text and who did the author want to read this text? What is the author saying? Why is the author saying this?
When did the author write this story? Where does this story take place? How did the author write this story? By getting
the basics of the authors purpose, we can more easily understand what the main idea is.

Context Clues

Many times students are too reliant on their dictionaries; they use their dictionaries every time they encounter an
unfamiliar word which disrupts reading fluency and sentence comprehension. A better and more realistic approach to
help them master unknown words is discovering meaning through context. Context clues can be found in other words
nearby and also from the grammatical structure of the sentence.

Activity: Choose a made-up word (for example, noubit ) and use it in many different contextual sentences, and ask
students to determine the meaning of this non-word. Keep the same made-up word for each sentence, but use
appropriate word endings to illustrate the change in part of speech (i.e. noubits, noubiting, nubition, nubitous,
noubitously, etc). Using the same non-word throughout the exercise will prevent them from relying on their
dictionaries while also keeping them from thinking that this word is a real word.

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%).

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 wolfs perspective, not
from Little Red Riding Hoods.)
Present a news story as a TV news item instead of a newspaper item.

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 others questions. The group that answers the most questions correctly wins.

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.

Questions While Reading

Asking questions while reading can be one of the greatest aids to understanding a passage, either at home or in
class.

Vocabulary Preview

Before you introduce a new set of reading vocabulary to your students, see what they already know or can
decipher about the given set of words.

KWL Board

If you use KWL charts (Know, Want to Know, and Learned) with your students before reading a new reading
selection, try this variation, which uses post-it notes. Instead of having students complete individual charts, have
them write what they know about a given topic on post-it notes one idea on each note. As a student completes a note,
announce to the class what is on the note and stick it to your board. As your students hear what their classmates know,
they may remember facts of their own.

Quick Questions

You can get your students to think critically as they read by placing post-it notes in your classroom library
books. Write several sticky notes for each book that you have in your classroom, and ask questions such as these: What
do you think will happen next? Did the main character make the right decision? What advice would you give the
character?

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.
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.
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.
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.

Follow-up Activities for Reading Passages

Retell the Story

A simple follow-up activity for any reading passage is having your students retell the story. You can put as
much preparation into the activity as you like, either leaving students to their own creative devices or providing
props for them to use in the retelling. If you like, have students retell the story or sections of it in skit form. You
will know if they have absorbed all the important points in the story if they include them in the retelling.

Vocabulary in Context

Choose or highlight specific words in text. Have your students find the definitions of those items in the text.
You can also have them write a definition in their own words based on the context of the items in the reading
passage.

Story Board Sequencing

Creating story boards is also a good way to follow up reading activities with your students. If you have read a
picture book, make a copy of every page in the book for the activity. If you have read something with few or no
pictures, use smaller pictures that represent the different events in the story. Separate and shuffle the pictures, and then
have your students put the events from the story in the correct order.

Shorter and Shorter Summaries

Writing summaries is always a good follow-up activity, and it doesnt require any prep work for you. Ask your
students to write a one page summary of a longer passage they have read. To make it even more challenging for them,
have them take their one page summary and pare it down to just one paragraph. Follow that by having them condense
their paragraph long summary into just one sentence.

Whos Asking the Questions Now?

Another great follow-up activity is to have your students write comprehension questions for their classmates.
This activity does double duty. First, students have to understand what they read and what was most important in the
text in order to write the questions in the first place. They have be able to pick out the key points in what they have read.
Then, once students exchange their questions with each other, they will have to answer the question their classmates
have written. This ensures that they have also understood what their classmates thought was most important in the text.

Copycat

If you have your students read essays or short stories in class, you might want to see if they can write in the same
structure or style as what they read. In which case, the reading passage they have completed can serve as a model for
what they themselves will write. If your students have read a short story, have them break down the major plot points
and make notes on why each piece is important in the story. If they have read an essay, have them look at the function
and purpose of each paragraph. Then have them follow the same pattern when they write their own story or essay.

Tell Me What You Really Think

If your students have read an opinion piece, such as an editorial or personal opinion essay, you can use what they
have read as a starting point for sharing their own opinions. Break your class into groups of three or four, and have
them discuss the points or arguments the writer presented in his written piece. Then have your students discuss whether
or not they agree with what they writer said. Follow up by having each person write their own editorial, letter to the
editor, or letter of response to the author. If any of your students does a particularly effective job on their letter to the
editor, have them send it in to the paper and see if it gets printed.
 Everyones a Critic

How many critics do you have in your ESL class? They may not act that way all the time, but everyone is a critic at
some point or another. If your students have read a book, either in its complete form or an abridged version, have them
write a book review as a follow-up activity. Have them model it after a movie review they see online or in a newspaper.
Then post your students book reviews on a bulletin board in class. If everyone has read a different book, have your
class vote on whether they would read each book based on the review their classmate has written.

Straight to the Heart

Once your students have finished reading a story or fictional composition, you can follow-up your reading with
an opportunity to share something personal. Rather than having your students illustrate someone or something from
the story, have them think about what the story means to them. It might bring back a memory or touch on one of their
personal values. Have each person in your class draw a picture that represents what the story means to them. Then give
your students a chance to share with each other what they drew and what it means.

Act Out

Encourage your students to act out in class with this post reading activity. Ask individuals or groups of students to
pose as the characters in the story in a particular scene. Then, take a photo of your students. After printing the pictures
out, bring them to class the next day and ask your students to explain what it happening in the book at the moment they
are acting out!

1. Ask students to choose 10-15 words from the text. You can provide categories for the words e.g. the
most interesting words / the most important words / key words related to the topic. Students then write
a text using the words. This text could be a story, poem, news report, summary, etc.
2. Ask students to say which part of the text is the most important/interesting and which part is not
interesting or key

What does a graphic organizer look like?

A graphic organizer (also known as a concept map, mind map or relationship chart) is usually a one-page
form with blank areas for learners to complete with ideas and information which are connected in some way.
(Darn, 2008)

Graphic organizers

can help convey large chunks of information concisely;

encourage strategic thinking: describing, comparing and contrasting, classifying, sequencing,
identifying cause and effect, decision making, etc;
can be used to aid reading comprehension students can brainstorm around a topic, summarize texts,
etc as well as other learning activities, such as organizing and storing vocabulary, planning research,
writing projects, etc;
are easy to use with all levels and ages;

7. Using teamwork

After the students have read the text, ask them to make groups of five or six people. Set a time limit of five
minutes and tell them they have to brainstorm as many facts about the text as they can in that time. The group
that can recall the most is the winner.
 8. Using the vocabulary

Ask the students to choose 10 words from the text. Tell them that they should try to find a variety of different
kinds of words (nouns / verbs / adjectives etc.). If you want, you can give them extra guidelines. For example,
find at least one new word or the most difficult word. The students then use these words to produce their own
text on a new topic. If you want, you can specify what kind of text you want them to produce. For example, a
narrative, a poem, a summary, a report.

9. Chain game

After the students have finished reading, tell them to go through the reading and try to remember some of the
key points and details. If you are teaching a large class, split the students up into small groups of about five or
six students. Ask the students to sit in a circle. Student 1 has to recall some information about the text.
Student 2 then repeats that information and adds something new. Then student three repeats both pieces of
information and adds their own. This process continues until the group runs out of ideas.

Sentence Frames

One of the most valuable tools to help build oral and written language skills is the use of sentence frames.
Sentence frames are templates of sentences that students complete. They are ideal for ESL students because
they allow them to focus on supplying the content rather than worrying about grammar or usage errors. They
also demonstrate the proper way to write a complete sentence, so the more ESL students use them, the more
likely they are to pick up those skills.

Some sentence frames that can be helpful for writing summaries include:

This story is about _____.

The main character's name is _____.
At the beginning of the story, _____.
In the middle of the story, _____.
At the end of the story, ____

Pre -Reading, While Reading and Post -Reading Activities

Pre-Reading Activities:

The pre - reading activities which I would like to incorporate into my future lessons are:
- Guessing the story from the chapter headings and predicting what will happen from the pictures.
- I would choose new and difficult vocabulary from the story and would write them on the board. I will pre teach them
or review it with the students. After explaining the vocabulary words I will ask questions about the chosen words
.Students will be asked to use vocabulary in their sentences.
- I will choose random sentences from the story and will write the sentences on the board not in the order they appear in
the story. Learners will be asked to discuss in group how they think that these sentences will be placed in the correct
order.
When they will read the story they can see how the sentences appear in it.

While Reading Activities:

-While reading I would like to ask questions based on text and will ask them to predict what will happen next.
- When learners are reading the story they will be asked to find information from the paragraphs.
- While reading the text I would ask students to identify previously discussed vocabulary words.
- I would ask learners to read the text in pairs.
Post- Reading Activities:
- After reading the text I would ask questions based on the text and will ask them to predict what will happen next.
- Once students read the text they will be asked to think of different endings in group and each group will be asked to
share their endings in class.
- Students will be asked to summarize the story in their own words.
- Students will be divided into pairs and each pair will be asked to talk about their favourite character in the story.
Discussions about the text
Summarising texts
Reviewing texts
Using a 'follow-up' speaking task related to the topic
Looking at the language of the text (e.g. collocations).
After reading activities
As always our aim is for the students to have fun and enjoy reading because it is through enjoyment that learning
comes. Thus effective after reading activities use the book as a springboard into active language use rather than try and
wring every drop of meaning out of it. Time spent reading another book is better spent than time dissecting the last one!
Imagining
These activities ask students to use their imaginations. Ask them to guess what the main characters have in their
pockets, handbags, or desk drawers. Play 'Hollywood' and choose which film stars would play which characters. Why
not ask them to 'flesh out' the characters by making up a lot more personal details about them? Ask students to imagine
that
they are in the story as an extra character: what happens? Choose events in the story which are mentioned but not fully
described and ask students to fill in all the details. Ask students to imagine that the characters are all animals, or trees,
or fruit. What kind of animal, fruit or tree would they be and why? Ask students to think of a popular song, film or TV
programme which would make a good title for the book. A great activity is when groups of students mime episodes
from the book (perhaps while you (or a student) read the relevant section out). Students could try making up a sequel to
the story using some of the same characters or imagine what happens to the characters in five years' time.
Changing
Here are three ways in which students can take control over the book by changing it. The first is an old favourite:
making up a new ending for the story. The second is giving the story a new title or chapter headings or new names for
the characters. The third is always fun: designing a new cover or choosing a new cover picture from magazine pictures.
Writing
All kinds of writing can spring from reading. Here are some ideas for letters: a letter of advice to a character suggesting
what he or she could do, a letter to the author of the book addressed to the publisher (authors usually reply!), a letter
from one character to another. Students can keep a diary for a character, make a wanted poster for a character or a
character poster, or a word puzzle from the character's name. They can try writing captions for pictures (Levels 1 and 2
only), an introduction to the book for other students, or a new blurb.
Speaking
Role plays make good after reading speaking activities: interviews with the characters (three questions each), press
conferences where students take the role of characters and answer questions from journalists, a game where one student
pretends to be a character and the others have to guess who it is (yes/no questions), an interview with the author or full
dramatisation of part of the story.
Students can make a 'photofilm' of all or part of the story. A 'photofilm' is really a large poster showing the main scenes
of the story. A camera is brought to class, students mime the scenes (in costume if possible) and are photographed. The
developed photographs are stuck on the poster and captions written underneath. Try a 'balloon debate', where students
role play being the characters stuck in a hot air balloon which is sinking to earth. Each character has to justify her or his
existence. The class then votes on which character has to jump out of the balloon to save the others!
Finally, why not try a discussion relating events in the book to personal experience: has anything like this happened to
you?
Listening
We've already looked at listening activities before and during reading. Here are two after reading ones: a listening cloze
test where students listen to the cassette and fill in missing words, and character bingo: write characters' names on the
bingo cards and the students cross off the squares when you read out information about the characters on their card.
Remembering
There are lots of different ways of talking about what was in the book without resorting to comprehension questions!
Many of these can be prepared by the students themselves - good practice for them and a welcome relief for you.
Try some of these: get students to match pictures of characters (Levels 1 and 2 only) and quotations from them, or
create a time chart with days and times down one side and events from the story written in against them, or create a
character adjective grid (characters from the story down one side and adjectives across the top) and tick which adjective
applies to which character.
Students can have fun guessing which characters are being described from clues (e.g. clothes, possessions), matching
characters and descriptions, or putting events in the right order. You can draw a series of clocks showing significant
times and ask students what happens at these times, or ask them to match beginnings and endings of sentences
describing events and the days they happened on.
Visual clues are useful. For example, draw the face of a character in an empty bubble surrounded by statements and
quotations and ask who it is. Artistically talented students can draw the story or make a collage telling the story, while
others can use copies of the pictures from the book to tell the story.
Recording
There are lots of ways in which you and the students can keep track of what they have read and enjoyed without it
seeming that you are spying on them!
Students can keep a 'reading diary' showing their reactions as they read. Play 'Find someone who': who liked or didn't
like a particular book, has read two books by the same author, has read six thrillers, likes science fiction etc. While book
reviews can be a turn-off, opinion forms in the book are popular; they are just a slip of paper on which students write a
grade for the book (1- 5) and a one-sentence comment anonymously.
Finally a 'reading fair' at the end of term or year where students display posters they have made to persuade other
students to read their favourite books is always a success.