Teach-Secondary-14.1

A re you struggling to get your students stuck into a book? Do they love storytelling and audiobooks, yet struggle with comprehending a text? If so, there are a range of ways in which you can get them intrigued and hooked on the written word by harnessing their appreciation of stories. Here, I’ve set out some strategies for helping students develop their comprehension skills more fully, and in time, discover an enjoyment for reading. 10minutes of reading First off, we can use blending strategies, whereby audiobooks and other media are combined with the written word, and consider using a broader selection of written forms of reading in our teaching practice. Students can sometimes find comfort in listening to audiobooks, so try showing themhow there’s space for both verbal and written storytelling. Some of youmay already be embedding 10 minutes of independent or class reading at the start of your lessons. One way of making this exercise more effective is to immediately follow the reading time itself with some short questions posed to the class – for example… • Who has read a good introduction to a character? • Can someone read a favourite part of their book out loud? Tell us why this is your favourite part. • Has anyone noticed a plot twist, flashback or flash-forward? Asking specific questions like this, which help to embed knowledge of language and structural features, will soon get students embedding that same language within their thinking. It should also enable students to start recognising certain literary techniques, and transfer that skill back into the work you set them in class. You can start to establish links between your own class reader to any books the students might be choosing to read themselves. If you’re studying foreshadowing, for example, ask students, ‘ Have you used foreshadowing in your own story? What impact does it have? ’ The ‘5 Seconds’ game Then there’s the ‘5 Seconds’ game – one youmight be familiar with from playing with family and friends. Suitable for pairs or groups, it’s easily adapted to fit the English classroom, a great tool for retrieval practice and can support students in connecting ideas between stories they’re listening to in their own time and those that they’re reading in the classroom. Follow the steps below and use the accompanying download (see ‘Free Resources’ panel) to organise this game as a starter activity or plenary – it can always be tweaked, amended or even developed further to suit the needs of your class. Step 1: Create (or download) a worksheet with the prompt ‘ Name 3… ’ and give each pair/group a pile of ‘ Name 3… ’ cards. Step 2: One member of the group picks a card and proceeds to ‘ name 3… ’ varieties of whatever the card specifies within 5 seconds. If they run out of time, their partner or another member of the group has a go. Step 3: Instruct the students to keep a running tally of points, with one point earned per correct suggestion as prompted by the card. You could introduce an additional incentive by drawing up a class leaderboard. Tutor reading challenge This works best with larger groups or as a class activity. The aim of reading during tutor time is to ultimately increase the enjoyment students get from reading – so dedicate one tutor session per week to reading a short story to the group purely for the purposes of pleasure, and not for analysis. Read the story aloud to model good reading, being careful to check your intonation and understanding of the punctuation ahead of time. Two good stories to use for this are ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ by Roald Dahl and ‘The Red Room’ by H.G. Wells. Pause at key moments of the story to ask students questions, such as: WORDS OF encouragement Meera Chudasama sets out a series of engaging classroom activities designed to both celebrate reading, and harness the enthusiasms of those for whom the printed word can present a struggle... “Designquickactivities that task studentswith considering different aspects ofa story they’ve read” 52 teachwire.net/secondary