Let's read

How do you teach reading in your classroom?
Is it the traditional text from the book? Do you get your students to read aloud? Do they read silently? How about the activities? Are they always from the course book? Do they get the reading comprehension activities as homework? Do they have to translate? How about vocabulary?
I guess it's a combination of all the above mixed with other non-book activities depending on the text and its purpose.
So today I am sharing some activities that I use with my students in order to motivate them a bit more to read.

1. Listen to your partner
This is a reading/listening/ speaking activity. You can use the text from your course book or find any other text with the topic you'd like to teach. Students are in pairs. They get a text and a list of questions each. Text A and questions from Text B is what the one student has and text B and the questions from Text A is what the other student gets. Student 1 reads their text to Student 2, who has to answer to their questions while they are listening to their partner reading. And then Student 2 treads their text to Student 1. This activity also enhances the class spirit since each pair helps each other in order to complete the activity. (Cab be used with very low levels as well)

2. Where does this go?
This is a group activity. You will need a bigger article. Cut the article in pieces and put them around in class. The students have to find the pieces and co-operate to put them in the right order. They practise speaking and reading skills but also critical thinking and debating. (preferable with levels B2 and above)

3. What is this all about?
This is a more complicated activity and you need a lot of people to participate. Divide the class into 3 teams. Each team chooses a person who will have to read a text. (I use 3 texts in the same subject from newspapers or news websites). The reader of each team describes their text to their team while they keep notes. The teams try to re-write the text and present it to the class. Then they compare their texts with each other and the original texts. (Higher levels, C1, C2 practising reading, re-phrasing, vocabulary and speaking)