Internet Treasure Hunt
Prior to engaging your class in reading a text, have the
students do some online research to develop their background knowledge about
the text. Provide students with some
preliminary information, such as the title.
Depending on the level of your students, you may also guide their search
by providing them with some search questions.
Questions may include gaining information about the author, the plot,
the setting, and reviews. In developing
the students’ background knowledge of the text, students will be engaging in
skimming and scanning skills.
This activity will also help develop other academic skills
such as evaluating, networking, and citing sources, deciphering between fact
and opinion, and better understanding the author’s perspective. Depending on your students, it may be
important to do this activity in class to help ensure that students use the
target language in their search.
Sample Activity
Twenty Questions
To introduce students to a text, provide your class the
title and some snippets of the text; you
could also use images and video or radio clips that relate to the text. Put students into small groups to come up
with 20 questions they have about the text based on the information provided to
them. The questions could be related to topics like the plot, setting, events, characters, and vocabulary/unclear phrases. Have the students write their questions on a
large sheet of paper that gets hung up on the classroom wall. As students read, they should try to answer
their questions (or those from another group).
After the students have read the text, they can discuss their findings
with their groups. With a longer text or book, this could be done with various
sections of the book. With a shorter
text, you may want to reduce the number of questions students need to come up
with. This might be a nice time to review question formation.
Sample Activity
Memory Game
Before reading a
narrative, the teacher prepares a deck of cards with narrative text
structure words and their written definition. Students play a memory game and
as part of the game have to quickly skim the words and definitions to determine
if they have found a match. For example, "Setting: Establishes when and where the story
takes place." "Crisis: A decisive point in
the plot, upon which the outcome hinges; a turning point."
After students play the game and are familiar with narrative
text structure vocabulary, they can then be asked to organize the cards based
on their typical place in the story hierarchy (e.g. setting, characters is generally at the top).
This activity focuses on skimming and narrative text
structure awareness (comprehension strategy). Variations of this game could include matching book titles
with back cover blurbs, genre with book titles, or characters with quotations.
Sample Activity
Caption Creation
Before reading, provide relevant scenes or images to
students associated with the upcoming text.
Students interpret the images and write captions to accompany the images
or students select the most appropriate caption based on three provided by the
teacher. The class shares captions and
answers.
Note: An excellent source for digital textbooks is the
International Children's Digital Library [http://en.childrenslibrary.org/]
Variation: Class is given a blank comic strip and asked to
interpret images. Students could be asked to write dialogue or select the most
logical dialogue based on the image. Two great sites to make free comic strips are http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/comic/index.html or http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/Comix/
Sample Activity
Stop-and-Go
Strategizing
This activity guides students to read a passage
three times, each time in more detail (i.e. from a quick green light reading to
the most detailed red light reading). Using a graphic organizer, students are
guided to go from a simple main idea to a more detailed summary of the reading
based on the notes made during their multiple readings.
Sample Activity
Vocabulary Round-Up
Write the title of the reading on the board, a direct and
open-ended question following it, and ask students to think for a few moments
about what kind of vocabulary might be in the text. Then have students write
different words on sticky notes, silently placing them on a wall where columns
have been labeled with headings such as “setting,” ”characters,” ”plot,” etc.
Sample Activity