21 must use reading activities for language lessonsFun Pre-Reading and Post-Reading Activities for All Language Classrooms

I honey language lessons which involve an element of reading. This is considering there are so many opportunities for learning and improving linguistic communication acquisition with topic-related texts. Reading activities are the perfect starting bespeak to acquire rich topic-related vocabulary (adjectives, nouns, verbs etc), pick up new grammar structures,steal 'star phrases'and ultimately improve comprehension and improve language acquisition skills.

According to Moeller & Meyer (1995), reading, even at a slow pace exposes students to more sentences, grammer, and new vocabulary per minute than the average short class, Television testify, or vocal. And so, if you are in a rut with how you nowadays and teach your reading activities, get an innovative injection of pre-reading activities and postal service-reading activities below.

Who Should Apply These Awesome Reading Activities?

All of these reading ideas for the language classroom are depression-prep and no-prep reading activities. Utilise them in whatever post-beginner language classroom, including French, German, English language and Spanish lessons.

The aim of these 21 must-employ reading activities is to become your linguistic communication students focused and in the mood for learning.  However, as the teacher, you will demand to be in accuse of providing a great text, to bring the reading ideas below to life. This could range from one paragraph for beginners, to a few chunky paragraphs for intermediate learners, to an extended text for avant-garde students.

Pre-Reading Activities

  1. "Notice The Discussion" Reading Aloud Action (Pair Piece of work)
    Put students in pairs and provide them with ane copy of a text. Have a hugger-mugger list of words at the ready and phone call them out, at random, one at a time. Permit time for students to scan the text for the word they hear. The starting time person in the pair to point correctly at the discussion in the text gets a betoken. Make sure you lot set sound level rules, as well as clear guidance on how the class should exist silent gear up for the next circular.
  2. "Reading Aloud" Chore (Pair Piece of work / Small Grouping Work)
    Provide students with a 'chunky' text split into paragraphs. Advise that each educatee in the pair/group must read one paragraph aloud. If the person has an upshot pronouncing a discussion, he/she must circle it and if they come beyond a word they don't empathise, they must underline it. Allow students to discuss their trouble areas in pairs and then in fours. Go around making a note of the common problems and write on the board with whole group choral work and give-and-take at the cease.
  3. "Team Reading Aloud" – Pronunciation Reading (Whole Grouping)
    Split the classroom in two and assign all students in each team a number and repeat (using the same numbers) with the other team. Provide students with a 'mesomorphic' text for reading and set each team off with 20 points. The aim of the activity is to exist the squad to finish with the about points after the text has been read. Flip a coin to see which team begins. Randomly cull a number and that student must begin reading. If the other team spots a pronunciation fault, every bit the student is reading, a member of the team must put their hand up. If all others in the squad agree, everyone'due south hand must go up – this should go along everyone focused. If they spot a genuine pronunciation error, they tin can aid the reader brand the correction receive a point (provide support if their 'assistance' isn't quite accurate). Still, if the whole team has made a mistake and picked a word that was correctly pronounced, they will lose a point and the other team volition gain a point. Each fourth dimension an error in pronunciation is correctly spotted, swap the reading team. Deduct points for talking or misbehaviour.
  4. "The Last Word" Reading Activity (Pair / Small-scale Group Work)
    As a group, the team chooses how many words each pupil should read. For instance, 3 words. In add-on, allow students to choose the order of reading. Once the students begin reading, the winner is the student who follows the rules and manages to be the person to read the last word.
  5. "Avoid The Line" – Reading Aloud Activity (Pair / Small-scale Groups) When you prepare a text, underline words at random. Students start with five points. Each student must read v words at a time, only must avoid actually saying any words that have been underlined. Should they read the underlined word by blow, they lose a point. Students with with the nigh points at the end of the reading activity win.
  6. "Bratwurst" Proper name" – Reading Out Aloud Activeness (Small Groups) One pupil begins and after a pre-determined number of words or sentences, they shout "Bratwurst / Pain au chocolat / Churros" (etc, depending on the linguistic communication yous teach) plus the name of someone in the grouping i.e. Bratwurst Laura. This person must then proceed where the other reader left off. Award points at the showtime and if someone loses focus and doesn't know where the previous reader was, they lose a point.
  7. Teacher Names – Reading Activity Out Aloud (Whole Group)
         Split the class in two and assign five points to each squad. Then, model pronunciation of the text by reading information technology out aloud. At random intervals, instead of reading the next word, call out a student's name and that student must read the word that their name was replaced past. If the chosen educatee doesn't answer without beingness prompted inside 5 seconds of stopping, the squad loses a indicate. Perfect for getting students to focus on reading activities, besides as getting them to pronounce the words you recall they might find tricky or could do with knowing. In add-on, you lot could get students to create a list of vocabulary replaced by students names and interpret/make sentences with, as a post-reading activity.
  8. "Wie bitte?" – Reading Aloud Activity (Small-scale Groups)
         Put students into threes, taking it in turns to read a sentence. Every bit they read, a student must brand a mistake, on purpose. This could include: incorrect words, wrong genders, wrong pronunciation, incorrect verb ending etc. When a listener hears a mistake, they must say 'Wie bitte?' 'oh la la' or 'Oye', depending on the linguistic communication you teach. If they can correct the mistake, they win a point and if they tin't right the error, the reader gets a betoken. This can also be washed as a whole group with students continuing up when you brand a mistake. The last 1 to stand up is 'out'. All the same, make sure you give students who are out a little task to do until the end of the game.
  9. Spontaneous Reading Activity (Whole Group)
         One student starts reading at random and can read a maximum of one sentence. As presently as they cease their sentence, another student must begin reading. If no-ane starts within a second, or more than one person starts reading, the whole group must go back to the beginning. Starting with some other student reading the first sentence. You can vary this by getting learners to translate the text as they read the sentence or change the person (thus the verbs and possessive adjectives etc). Go on going dorsum to the starting time until the reading out aloud activity has been completed as per the rules.
  10. Observe …. – Skim Reading Action (Solitary)
         Equally soon every bit yous requite students a reading text, provide them with a list of words in L1 (native linguistic communication) to discover in L2 (language beingness learnt) in the text. This could be all masculine nouns, all verbs, all adjectives, all words beginning with 'a'. They could either highlight the words in the text or underline the words.
  11. Find the Synonym – Skim Reading Activity (Individual)
         As with reading activity 10, give students a reading text and provide them with a listing of words in L2. They must find and note down the synonyms they find in the text.
  12. Be A Presenter – Reading Aloud (Pairs)
         Take iPads or laptops available, enough for one betwixt ii. Have students paste a copy of your text into cue prompter with ane student sitting with their back to the laptop and the other person reading aloud. The presenter must read clearly with accurate pronunciation and the listener must fill up in the gaps on their sheet as they are listening with the words they hear. They may non ask the presenter to spell any word. Instead, if they have gaps at the end, the presenter must re-read (the whole lot or merely the sentence, depending on how you're feeling on the day).
  13. Approximate The Rule Reading Aloud (Whole Grouping Game)
         The teacher begins by reading every other word from the text in lodge. Students must put their hands up to guess the dominion. Allow individual students in the group to exercise the same by reading aloud. The balance of the group must effort to guess the rule. Students tin only outset to put their hands upwardly after the reader has read at least i/three or 1/2 of the text. Let the students be creative with their rules. The teacher could too re-read and do the same with adjectives, nouns, verbs etc to make the reading activity more than grammer based. It'south perfect to get reluctant and shy students reading.
  14. Running Dictation Speaking Reading Activeness (Pocket-size Groups)
         This works better with shorter texts or splitting a whole text into paragraphs, which each squad is responsible for. Put enough copies of the texts up outside the classroom with a number on each. Assign each team a number. Propose the aim is for students to be the first team to communicate the text from their corresponding paragraph outside the classroom, without cheating. Students must have information technology in turns to read a sentence in sequence from their paragraph, and be the first team to stop communicating and writing the paragraph down on a sail of paper.
    RULES: a) merely one student can be out of their seat at a time, b) students must not run or shout, c) students  must also take it in turns to write the sentences on the paper, d) learners are not immune to spell any words, but they are allowed to go back as many times as they need to to re-read the sentence, e) the rest of the group must piece of work every bit a squad to ensure the words are spelled accurately and the grammar is also correct.
  15. Gap-Fill up Transcript Dictation Reading Activity (Individual)
    Provide students with a copy of the text, with gaps. I suggest three forms, one with verbs missing, the second with nouns missing and the 3rd with adjectives missing. Distribute the sheets so they accept people around them who had the aforementioned sail. The students must individually fill in the words as they listen. You lot could read again if necessary. In one case finished, become learners to check they accept spelled the words correctly by discussing (not showing!) with their neighbours.
  16. Wrong Words Reading Action (Individual)
    The teacher provides students with a copy of the text with a selection of incorrect words. Every bit they listen to the text being read, they must highlight the word they hear that is incorrect. Go through a second fourth dimension, and this time, the students must write in the correct words. This will give the students an idea of the text before they do any comprehension activities.
  17. Key Word Bingo – Vocabulary Based Reading Activity (Individual)
    From the text, read 5-20 words (dependent on text length) at random in L2. Students must cantankerous them off as they hear them.

Postal service-Reading Activities

  1. True or False? – Postal service-Reading Activity (Solitary)
    Once students have read the text through properly, permit them 5 minutes to create a list of true or false statements. These tin can be given to a peer to answer if fourth dimension allows.
  2. Summarise The Text – Postal service Reading Action (Individual)
    Once students have read the text, advise that they must underline the key messages, depending on the size of the text. I recommend advising a maximum number. Students must then combine and re-word these ideas to summarise the whole text in a ready number of words.
  3. Re-write The Text – Reading Activity (Alone)
    After reading (and depending on the length of the whole text), students must re-write the text in the first, second or tertiary person singular. If the text is long, then advise that they should option out a certain number of paragraphs.
  4. Walking Text – Reading Comprehension Activity (Individual)
    Instead of getting students to read the texts in their seats, print out a few copies.  Ensure the text is enlarged and in paragraphs with line numbers. Then, chop them up with numbers, indicating the paragraph number on each and stick them around the room. I recommend doing a few copies to ensure that no more than than 2 students are at one paragraph of text at a time. Give them some pre-printed comprehension questions to reply equally they go effectually. Y'all can support learners who need it with an indication of the paragraph number, correlating to the question, written on their sheet.

Want these ideas in a handy downloadable format? Download my 21 must-use reading activities for all language classrooms PDF hither:

Did y'all enjoy this reading activities for the language classroom post? If so, be sure to check out these posts to improve language conquering hither too:

Fun Games for the MFL Classroom
Spontaneous Speaking with Video Clips in the Language Classroom

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