62. READING AS AN INTERACTIVE PROCESS. CREATING PRE-, WHILE-, POST-READING ACTIVITIES What are some Pre-Reading Activities that You can Implement in the Classroom?
There are many pre-reading activities that you can do in the classroom. More than we can even think of
Creativity leads to the creation of more activities to suit needs and interest of a diversed community.
Here are some pre-reading activities that you can implement or modify to meet your student needs.
Pre-Reading Task #1: Discussion
The first pre-reading activity is about creating a discussion about the topic.
The Teacher prepares 4 sentences expressing opinions about the topic, then sticks them in the 4 corners of the classroom.
Students go and stand near the opinion they disagree with the most. The groups explain why the disagree about the topic to the teacher and the rest of the students
Pre-Reading Task #2: I’m listening to You
The second pre-listening task is called I’m listening to you. This activities can help teachers promote interaction in the class.
This activity requires students to work in pairs. One of them talks while his or her partner listens.
Then challenge them to talk in English for 1 minute about a topic.
Repeat with a new topic, students change roles and they can change partner after they have spoken and listened to each other.
Pre-Reading Task #3: Quotes
Good Reads, a very popular site for readers has good lists of questions that you can choose from.
Find a quotation about the topic that you are going to cover and tell students to make groups of three and discuss the quotes you chose in advance.
Students think about and answer questions like these:
What does it mean?
Do they agree with it? Why/Why not.
Pre-Reading Task #4: Guessing from Words
Before students look at the text they are going to read, the teacher writes 5 or 6 words from the text on the board and asks the students to guess the topic.
Students brainstorm ideas and then the teacher confirms how close or far they were.
Pre-Reading Task #5: Guessing from Pictures
The teacher finds 3 pictures or objects which are connected to the story and ask the students to guess how they are connected.
Students read the text to check if they were right or wrong about the story connections they made.
Pre-Reading Task #6: Pictionary
Select some of the key words from the text.
Put the class into two or three groups. a learner from each group (at the same time) comes to the whiteboard.
They are told the word and they have to draw that word. They are not allowed to use letters or numbers in their drawing.
The other students try to guess what the word is and earn points for their team.