The department of education encourages teachers and learners to “drop all and read” once a day. This is a great idea for those of us who love to read, but the reading period presents challenges for a teacher who has a class of reluctant readers. Perhaps the best way to ensure that the reading period becomes an opportunity for even the weakest readers to improve their reading skills is to develop an exciting programme of activities so that children look forward to the next reading period.
Here are some ideas for developing a reading programme:
- Allow learners to select the story that you will read.
- Let them bespeak books (put their names down for their turn) that they want to read.
- Treat your class to a well-read story, no matter how old they may be and how well they can read.
- Give your learners reading cards on which they record the books they have read and a comment about the book.
- Put them into groups and let them do group reading of a story – each one reading one paragraph.
- Give each learner in each group a card with an instruction, for instance, “Ask a question”, “Make a comment about the main character”, “Describe the clothing worn by the main character or what would be appropriate clothing”, “Describe a ‘bad’/ ‘good’ character or event”…
- Ask learners to write their own story and read it to a fellow learner.
- Give learners magazines to read.
- Invite the principal, a local celebrity or a sporting star to read a story to the class.
- Ask groups of learners to read a story on day one and to act it out on day two.
- Read the first half of a story and ask learners to discuss possible conclusions in groups. Each group presents its idea of how the story might end.
- Write your own story and read it to the class.
- Team up with one or two other classes to carry out the proposed activities.
- Arrange for your learners to pair with learners in a more junior class and read to the juniors.
- Arrange for your class to pair with a more senior class and on the first day your learners read to the older children while on the second day the older learners read to your learners.
- Arrange for parents or past learners in the neighbourhood to come in during the reading period and work with your learners on their reading skills.
- Hold a reading competition.
- Hold a memory competition based on the stories learners have read over a week.
- Hold a speed-reading and comprehension competition for your learners.
- Ask learners to list new words they come across during a week and use these in the following week’s vocabulary lesson.
- Ask learners to tell a story they have heard from an older person in their community.
- Give learners stories or books written by local authors.
- Invite local authors to visit your class and read to the learners.
- Ask the local bookstore owner or manager to visit your school to talk about writing and publishing, or take your class to visit the owner or manager at the bookstore.
- Arrange for your class to have book pals at another school. Once a month they write to their pal about a book they have read during the month.
Jenny Rault-Smith is a chief director of curriculum and assessment in the general education phase in the department of education. This article is in support of the department of education’s Foundations for Learning campaign. It aims to strengthen the teaching and learning of literacy and numeracy