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Category Archives: Graded Readers


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Reading for Pleasure – Students make their own word games

Teenage girl reading on couchContinuing the Reading for Pleasure series, Verissimo Toste, an Oxford teacher trainer, looks at ways of keeping students reading for pleasure.

You have set up the class library and started your students reading. First of all, congratulations. Next, we need to keep them reading.

Having played Bingo and made some posters, I now ask my students to make some word games based on the stories they are reading. Students usually expect activities around words in a language class, so word games are no surprise. However, games like word search puzzles or crosswords are usually provided by the teacher. In this case, I am going to ask my students to make the games themselves, and more importantly, I am going to show them that the games they make are for their friends to solve.

You can follow the instructions for the word game here. I would like to focus on why we are doing word games and how this is helping our students learn better.

My students have played Bingo and made some posters for their stories. Although I have displayed their posters around the school, with word games I want to encourage them to share their reading experience with each other on a more personal, one-to-one level. By making a word game that a friend will solve I hope to achieve this level of involvement.

I start with a very simple game that is quick to make. I want my students to make the game and have another student solve it within a class period. This is to reinforce the idea that the games are not for the teacher. I also want them to focus on their stories, not on how to make the word game. As they decide on the sentences to use, they are going over their story, using their books as examples of the English they want to use.

Of course, some of my students, usually the stronger ones, will write sentences without actually using their books. Expecting me to look at their work, they rely on me, as the teacher, to correct any mistakes. So, I purposely stand back and not correct any work. After all, they have the correct sentences in their stories, all they have to do is copy. Being responsible for their own work is the first thing many students notice. If they do make mistakes, their friends will point these out when they solve the game.

And this is the second important point they notice, that their word games go directly to another student. They get immediate feedback, not only on any mistakes, but also on whether the game is interesting or not. If it’s too easy, then it is boring. If it’s too difficult, then a student won’t want to do it. This feedback helps students adapt to the activity. They begin using their books in order to avoid mistakes. With their friends in mind, they adapt their sentences accordingly.

As they get used to making the word games, students focus on making them fun and challenging. They choose sentences that are interesting to their friends, rather than focussing on correct language for the teacher. They try to make the sentences difficult so as not to make the game too easy. In doing this their reading comprehension improves as they browse through their stories a second and third time.

An equally important point is that as students solve the word game, the sentences create a certain curiosity about the story.  This curiosity leads to further conversation about their stories, usually outside of class. These conversations further strengthen the social aspect of the class library and the positive reading environment, which is an integral part of the project.

As my students understand the activity, they become better at making the word games. They enjoy making various games for friends throughout the month. At this point, it is possible to introduce games that take longer to make, like word search puzzles. The key is that the game is easy to make and the focus of the students is on the content.

With word games, the participation of my students in the class library becomes more personal. If there are still any hesitant readers, they are usually motivated to participate by a friend as they share their games.

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Reading for pleasure – Activities to get students involved

Teenage Girl ReadingContinuing the Reading for Pleasure series, Verissimo Toste, an Oxford teacher trainer, looks at ways of involving students in the reading process.

So, we’ve started our class library. Students have the books and many have begun reading them. In an ideal world, my students would now go on to read a variety of stories, sharing their experience with their friends, while effortlessly improving their English. Like I said, in an ideal world. In the real world of my classroom, most of my students are looking at me with a look that says, “Okay, we’re reading. Now what?” There is the expectation to do something with the reading. And I need to meet that expectation to keep them involved and motivated.

In my classes, I use the first lesson of each month to introduce an activity they can do based on their reading. The main aim of the activity is to keep them involved and share their reading experience with their friends and family. You can find 10 of these activities on the Oxford Big Read website, so I won’t explain how to do them here. However, there are some important underlying features in these activities that are crucial for the reading experience to also become a learning experience.

Let’s take the first 2 activities from the Oxford Big Read as examples of this. The first is based on the whole class and the second is based on students working individually.

Bingo

“Why are we playing Bingo?” they ask me. It’s a good question. As I am a firm believer that teaching should not be a secret, we discuss why we are playing Bingo.

First, playing Bingo involves all the students in the class, even those who have not yet started reading their book. Everyone can participate, some by saying words from their stories, others by simply writing them in their Bingo card. Without preaching to them about the value of reading, I am saying to all my students, “If you want to, you can do this!”.

Second, each student reads and understands based on their own ability and interest. There are no wrong answers. Maria may decide to say “love” in relation to Tom Sawyer because that is the part she liked, or simply because that is the last part she read. One student in my class said “adventure” simply because it was on the cover. I wrote the word on the board, the students wrote it on their Bingo card and the activity continued.

Third, playing Bingo creates a certain curiosity about the different stories.

Students become curious about what others are reading based on just words. A word like “dragon” or “murder” will raise a few eyebrows. This may lead students to talk to each other about the stories outside of the classroom. In this context, playing Bingo is just a means to another end.

Finally, playing Bingo reinforces the positive reading environment I want to create around the class library. The activity associates reading with fun and enjoyment, going against their original perceptions. As the first activity in our class library, Bingo encourages the more hesitant and sceptical students to start reading, showing them how they can participate.

Discussing this with them helps them to see that there is more to Bingo than simply playing a game.

Posters               

The first individual activity I ask my students to do is to make a poster for the story they are reading. Making posters reinforces the features I have mentioned in playing Bingo, but it goes further.

First, the language for the posters is in their stories. There is little need for the teacher to intervene. Whether based on a sentence or around 10 words, students refer back to their stories to find the language they will include in their posters.

Second, displaying posters reinforces that their work is for their friends to see, not simply for the teacher to correct. This will emphasise that they are sharing their reading experience with others. Becoming fully aware of this will lead them to be more careful about spelling and grammar mistakes. They will browse through their books to help them get it right and thus reinforce language learning.

Third, displaying their posters will add to the sense of achievement they already feel in understanding and enjoying a story in a foreign language. Seeing their poster amongst everyone else’s will strengthen their involvement in learning English, regardless of whether they are weak or strong students. After all, there is their work being looked at and read by others.

Finally, their posters have a communicative purpose. They are not meant simply for the teacher to correct, but primarily to encourage their friends to read the story. And this encouragement is based on what they liked about the story. There is real student-to-student communication, making the English they use more memorable to them.

The features of these 2 activities will become part of the class library as the activities change. As students’ confidence and self-esteem increase, so will their learning.

Verri will be running a workshop on setting up a class library at IATEFL Liverpool on Tuesday 9th April.


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Where ELT and first language education meet: an interview with Nathalie Reverchon

Oxford Reading TreeNathalie Reverchon is the International Teacher Training Manager for Oxford Primary Education International (OXED) at Oxford University Press. She has extensive experience as an ELT teacher and trainer in the UK, Sri Lanka, Jordan, Afghanistan, and Switzerland.

Q: What trends can you see happening in ELT across the various countries that you’ve taught and provided teacher training in? Are there any similarities that you’ve seen?

Well, I think one trend that I have seen is in the types of people who work in this field. I’m always amazed by how motivated and resourceful English language teachers are. Because they are often working in a very isolated context, most ELT teachers have that ‘get up and go’ attitude – the one that allows them to leave their comfortable surroundings and move to a completely different country to teach English. That takes a special type of person. And then to be able to not just make a go of it but to actually make a success of it takes somebody who has real initiative, who’s really creative, and who has a lot of energy and enthusiasm.

At the same time, some of the energetic, vibrant methods that teachers use in ELT perhaps don’t always fit some of the more sober education systems that are out there, so I think it’s equally important to be able to adapt to your surroundings. Being able to understand the context always helps. English teachers who go somewhere, learn the local language and really embrace the culture I think are in a really unique position to be able to understand both sides of the coin and bring the best of both worlds together through teaching.

Q: What similarities are there between teaching English as a first language and as a foreign language to young learners?

I think the similarities are becoming more apparent. In the past, mainstream teaching really relied on the standard textbook teaching method, and I don’t think this really worked in ELT. I think mainstream schools now are really finding the impact of investing on really good teacher training and making the learning more interactive in the classroom, something that is already apparent in a lot of ELT classrooms. In a similar way, I see some mainstream materials moving over into ELT as secondary language learners’ levels are becoming higher overall. There’s a kind of cross pollination happening which is really interesting.

Q: What advice would you give to teachers who are ELT teachers interested in using OXED primary materials like the Oxford Reading Tree?

For ELT teachers interested in using first language resources like Oxford Reading Tree (ORT) or other OXED primary materials, I would really encourage them to have confidence in their understanding of pedagogies, of methodologies, and of approaches. This might require a lot of adaptation to match the class type and size, but the principles are really effective teaching methods and will make really engaging classes.

Q: Do you think there are advantages to using the Oxford Reading Tree as a textbook over using it just as reading materials?

I think there are real advantages to using the ORT in the classroom because at a younger age, children are less able to explicitly analyze the language in the way that an adult would be able to. In fact, teachers of primary schools in the UK won’t simply use just a textbook to teach literacy. The approach that is taken as a first-language approach is based on how you learn your first language: through natural acquisition such as stories, fun and games, songs and so on. The idea of ORT is to use that child-centered methodology and build up this bank of really rich stories that appeal to children. Children are really motivated by the stories; they want to know what’s happening.

Also, one of the main appeals with ORT that I’ve seen where it’s being used in different countries around the world is the visual appeal. The ORT teams of authors, Roderick Hunt and Alex Brychta have worked together so well to create these stories which have a lot of humour in them. And that humour is reflected in the pictures. So even children who are perhaps struggling with the words themselves can engage and appreciate the story on a visual level. That can really support their comprehension as they’re starting to engage with English. I think it’s a really nice child-friendly way into English.

There’s also some really rich vocabulary which is one of the biggest differences with materials designed for ELT. Because we’re seeing it used in so many international schools as well, the ORT team are continuing to develop as many resources and materials to support teachers who are using it in a second language context and who have a mixture of language abilities in the classroom. In these types of classrooms, it’s very important to have that scaffolding that the ORT has. As we know, in ELT you can either grade your material, or you can grade your task, and what they’ve developed with the ORT teacher support materials is extension for higher level children but then also a lot more structured tasks for the lower level students.

Some of the mystery, or the feeling of being overwhelmed that surrounds the ORT comes from looking at the storybooks. But actually less-confident teachers or busy teachers will be glad to know that the teacher resources are there to support you to use it in the classroom.

Is there anything you’d like to ask Nathalie?

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Reading for pleasure – setting up the class library

Young boy in libraryVerissimo Toste, an Oxford teacher trainer, outlines the steps involved in setting up a class library to encourage reading in English for pleasure.

Having talked the talk, it is time to walk the walk. In other words, having challenged my students with the class library, it was time to put books in their hands and have them start reading.

The first consideration is choosing the right level. Reading at the right level is very important for the success of the library. As their teacher, I knew what level was right for them, or at least I thought I did. But it was important for them to see this too.

I choose two readers from what I thought was their level. Then, I chose two readers from the level above and the level below. Finally, I choose one page from each of these readers and put them up around the class. I ask my students to stand up and read the texts. Their aim is to choose a text they enjoy. They cannot use a dictionary or ask for translation from me or another student. They should read as if they were reading in their first language. Based on this, they choose a text. In this way they have also chosen their level.

When reading for pleasure students should read at one level below the level they are studying. In this way, they can focus on enjoying the story, rather than worrying about the language. Their reading will also act as revision for the English they have already learned, showing them grammatical structures and vocabulary in context. They will not necessarily be aware of this. It is like going to the gym that I mentioned in my previous blog post: you don’t need to know anatomy to benefit from going to the gym. Likewise, you don’t need to know the grammatical tenses to be able to benefit from reading.

Now they are ready to choose the book they want to read. Choice is very important for a student. It helps my students believe that they are an integral part of the class library.

My favourite activity is to use the readers’ catalogue to allow them to choose the reader they want. I give each student a catalogue and ask them to turn to the pages for their level.  They are surprised by the number of readers they can choose from. Their task is to read the brief summaries and choose two they would like to read. They write their titles on the board. They check that there are few or no duplicates and each student decides which reader they will buy.

Writing the titles on the board is to avoid two students buying the same reader. As the readers will be part of our class library, students will be able to read them all, if they want. So a class of 30 students could have 30 different titles. Once they have agreed on the list, I send the order in.

At this point I also send a letter to parents to explain our class library. You can find this letter as part of the Oxford Big Read. Getting support from parents will greatly motivate a student to read.

Then, the day comes when the books arrive. Each student writes their name in their book, as they will get it back at the end of the school year. Every book will now become part of the class library. Using a large poster with a grid, I ask students to write their name along the top of the grid. Then, I ask them to write the title of their book along the left hand column. As students finish reading their books, they will draw a happy or sad face, depending on whether they liked the story or not. This poster is very important. It motivates the class to read by recording what each one is reading and what they feel about it. It is student to student communication.

As students read their stories, the first reaction in almost all of my classes is surprise that they were able to enjoy a story in a foreign language. Their sense of achievement is evident, and most important, contagious. They start talking to each other about the stories. Students who have not yet begun are motivated to pick up their books and read. Smiley faces start appearing on the poster, further encouraging more hesitant students to get involved and pick up their books.

As the class library begins to take shape, I begin to focus on the next stage – keeping their interest. We establish a goal for the term, as well as for the school year. This goal will largely depend on your students’ expectations and the amount of time you have. In my classes we usually set a goal of reading 10 books during the school year. That comes to about a book a month.

My next posts will focus on the different activities that will keep my students reading. In the meantime, learn more about getting your students passionate about reading with the Oxford Big Read.

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Reading for pleasure: appealing to learners, not readers

Girl reading bookVerissimo Toste, an Oxford teacher trainer, outlines the benefits of extensive reading and how to convince learners it’s worth doing.

“Teacher, why should I read in English when I don’t read in my own language?”

A very good question and one that I often get from students as I set up my class library.

“Students don’t like to read.”

Another familiar comment, this one from other teachers and some parents.

I didn’t believe those comments when I first began working with class libraries over 20 years ago and I don’t believe them now, despite continuing to hear them.

The benefits of reading for pleasure are well-documented.  You can watch Professor Richard Day explain the benefits below.

So, how do we get our students to read, to read a lot, and equally important, to enjoy the experience? Reacting to what my students like to do, I focus on establishing a positive reading environment.  They frequently talk to each other about movies, music, and television. I add books to this list. I appeal to them not as readers, but as people and so my class library is part of a social environment.

I am aware that what I am proposing to them is new, to some it is so new it is difficult to understand. Linking reading for pleasure, and the class library, to something they understand is important.

I begin by associating reading for pleasure to playing a sport, or playing a musical instrument.  After some discussion we agree that it is important to establish a routine – to play a sport or an instrument well takes time and practice. To get the benefits from our class library will also require time and practice. I ask them for about 15 minutes of reading per day, outside the classroom.

Soon, my students point out that they are not required to play a sport or a musical instrument. This is a key point to the success of the class library – it isn’t reading for pleasure if you are required to read a book you may not like. So, I tell them the class library is voluntary. There are usually some raised eyebrows of disbelief. I also tell them that they will be able to choose the book they want to read. More raised eyebrows! And since I’ve got their attention, I finish by promising that there will be no homework and that I will not test their reading.

In essence, our class library can only help them. After all, we will continue with our normal lessons, which include homework, testing and the required grades at the end of each term. Through the library they will be able to improve.

In essence, I am challenging them. Their initial reaction is to put me to the test. My students continue to believe they don’t like reading. Many even believe they can’t read in English. But I am not appealing to them as readers. I am not preaching to them about the benefits of reading. These they have heard before. I am appealing to them as learners. That is what a student is – a learner.  And just as you become better at playing a sport or a musical instrument by simply doing it, I am betting that my students will improve their English by simply reading.

My first challenge is getting them to understand that the books we will be reading were written for them – learners of English. My students simply don’t understand the concept of a Graded Reader. Then, I need to help them choose a book they like. Again, this is not easy for many of them. When it comes to reading, they don’t know what they like.

You may have noticed that I have not appealed to my students based on the well-documented benefits I mentioned at the beginning of this article. As a matter of fact, I haven’t said one word about them. Like the foundation of a house that is not seen, the benefits will be the foundation of the class library. They will become apparent to my students as they read.

Having challenged them and raised their curiosity, I will focus on setting up the class library and getting all of them involved. This will be the topic of my blog post next month.

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