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

I dearest language lessons which involve an chemical element of reading. This is because at that place are so many opportunities for learning and improving language acquisition with topic-related texts. Reading activities are the perfect starting point to learn rich topic-related vocabulary (adjectives, nouns, verbs etc), pick up new grammer structures,steal 'star phrases'and ultimately amend comprehension and ameliorate language acquisition skills.

According to Moeller & Meyer (1995), reading, even at a slow step exposes students to more sentences, grammar, and new vocabulary per minute than the average short class, TV bear witness, or vocal. So, if you are in a heat with how you present and teach your reading activities, go an innovative injection of pre-reading activities and mail service-reading activities below.

Who Should Use These Awesome Reading Activities?

All of these reading ideas for the language classroom are low-prep and no-prep reading activities. Use them in any post-beginner language classroom, including French, High german, English and Spanish lessons.

The aim of these 21 must-use reading activities is to get your language students focused and in the mood for learning.  Even so, as the teacher, you will need to be in charge of providing a great text, to bring the reading ideas beneath to life. This could range from one paragraph for beginners, to a few chunky paragraphs for intermediate learners, to an extended text for advanced students.

Pre-Reading Activities

  1. "Detect The Give-and-take" Reading Aloud Activity (Pair Piece of work)
    Put students in pairs and provide them with i copy of a text. Accept a secret list of words at the ready and telephone call them out, at random, one at a fourth dimension. Let fourth dimension for students to scan the text for the word they hear. The commencement person in the pair to point correctly at the give-and-take in the text gets a point. Brand sure you set sound level rules, as well equally clear guidance on how the form should be silent fix for the next circular.
  2. "Reading Aloud" Task (Pair Work / Small-scale Group Work)
    Provide students with a 'mesomorphic' text split into paragraphs. Advise that each pupil in the pair/grouping must read one paragraph aloud. If the person has an issue pronouncing a word, he/she must circle it and if they come up across a discussion they don't sympathize, they must underline it. Permit students to hash out their trouble areas in pairs and and so in fours. Go around making a annotation of the common issues and write on the board with whole grouping choral piece of work and word at the cease.
  3. "Team Reading Aloud" – Pronunciation Reading (Whole Group)
    Divide the classroom in two and assign all students in each squad a number and repeat (using the same numbers) with the other squad. Provide students with a 'chunky' text for reading and set each team off with 20 points. The aim of the activity is to be the squad to end with the nearly points after the text has been read. Flip a money to see which team begins. Randomly choose a number and that pupil must begin reading. If the other team spots a pronunciation error, as the student is reading, a member of the team must put their hand up. If all others in the team concord, everyone's mitt must go upwardly – this should go along everyone focused. If they spot a genuine pronunciation error, they can aid the reader make the correction receive a point (provide back up if their 'assistance' isn't quite accurate). However, if the whole team has made a mistake and picked a word that was correctly pronounced, they will lose a signal and the other team volition gain a betoken. 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 grouping, the team chooses how many words each pupil should read. For example, 3 words. In improver, let students to cull the order of reading. One time the students brainstorm reading, the winner is the student who follows the rules and manages to exist the person to read the last discussion.
  5. "Avoid The Line" – Reading Aloud Activity (Pair / Pocket-sized Groups) When you fix a text, underline words at random. Students start with v points. Each student must read 5 words at a time, merely must avert actually saying any words that have been underlined. Should they read the underlined word by blow, they lose a betoken. Students with with the most points at the stop of the reading activity win.
  6. "Bratwurst" Proper noun" – Reading Out Aloud Activity (Pocket-sized Groups) Ane educatee begins and after a pre-determined number of words or sentences, they shout "Bratwurst / Hurting au chocolat / Churros" (etc, depending on the linguistic communication you teach) plus the name of someone in the group i.e. Bratwurst Laura. This person must then continue where the other reader left off. Honour points at the beginning and if someone loses focus and doesn't know where the previous reader was, they lose a point.
  7. Teacher Names – Reading Activeness Out Aloud (Whole Group)
         Separate the class in two and assign 5 points to each team. Then, model pronunciation of the text past reading it out aloud. At random intervals, instead of reading the next word, phone call out a student's name and that student must read the discussion that their name was replaced by. If the called student doesn't respond without being prompted within 5 seconds of stopping, the team loses a signal. Perfect for getting students to focus on reading activities, too as getting them to pronounce the words you think they might detect tricky or could exercise with knowing. In addition, you could get students to create a list of vocabulary replaced by students names and interpret/brand sentences with, as a mail-reading activity.
  8. "Wie bitte?" – Reading Aloud Activity (Modest Groups)
         Put students into threes, taking information technology in turns to read a sentence. As they read, a student must make a mistake, on purpose. This could include: wrong words, incorrect genders, wrong pronunciation, incorrect verb catastrophe etc. When a listener hears a mistake, they must say 'Wie bitte?' 'oh la la' or 'Oye', depending on the language you lot teach. If they tin correct the mistake, they win a betoken and if they can't correct the error, the reader gets a betoken. This tin can also be done as a whole group with students continuing upwards when yous make a mistake. The last one to stand up is 'out'. Nonetheless, brand sure you lot give students who are out a little task to do until the cease of the game.
  9. Spontaneous Reading Activity (Whole Group)
         One student starts reading at random and tin can read a maximum of one sentence. As soon as they end their sentence, another student must begin reading. If no-i starts within a second, or more than one person starts reading, the whole group must become back to the starting time. Starting with another student reading the first sentence. You tin vary this by getting learners to interpret the text as they read the judgement or modify the person (thus the verbs and possessive adjectives etc). Continue going back to the start until the reading out aloud activity has been completed as per the rules.
  10. Observe …. – Skim Reading Activity (Alone)
         As soon as yous requite students a reading text, provide them with a list of words in L1 (native language) to discover in L2 (linguistic communication beingness learnt) in the text. This could be all masculine nouns, all verbs, all adjectives, all words showtime with 'a'. They could either highlight the words in the text or underline the words.
  11. Find the Synonym – Skim Reading Action (Individual)
         As with reading activity 10, give students a reading text and provide them with a list of words in L2. They must find and note downwardly the synonyms they find in the text.
  12. Exist A Presenter – Reading Aloud (Pairs)
         Accept iPads or laptops available, plenty for one between two. Have students paste a copy of your text into cue prompter with one student sitting with their back to the laptop and the other person reading aloud. The presenter must read clearly with authentic pronunciation and the listener must fill in the gaps on their sail as they are listening with the words they hear. They may not ask the presenter to spell any word. Instead, if they have gaps at the end, the presenter must re-read (the whole lot or just the sentence, depending on how you're feeling on the day).
  13. Guess The Rule Reading Aloud (Whole Grouping Game)
         The teacher begins by reading every other word from the text in order. Students must put their easily upwards to guess the rule. Permit individual students in the group to practice the same by reading aloud. The residuum of the group must endeavor to guess the dominion. Students can only start to put their hands up after the reader has read at least one/three or i/ii of the text. Let the students be artistic with their rules. The teacher could likewise re-read and do the same with adjectives, nouns, verbs etc to make the reading action more grammer based. It'due south perfect to get reluctant and shy students reading.
  14. Running Dictation Speaking Reading Action (Small Groups)
         This works better with shorter texts or splitting a whole text into paragraphs, which each team is responsible for. Put enough copies of the texts up outside the classroom with a number on each. Assign each team a number. Advise the aim is for students to exist the first team to communicate the text from their corresponding paragraph outside the classroom, without cheating. Students must accept it in turns to read a sentence in sequence from their paragraph, and be the outset team to finish communicating and writing the paragraph downwards on a sail of paper.
    RULES: a) only one student can be out of their seat at a time, b) students must non run or shout, c) students  must likewise accept it in turns to write the sentences on the newspaper, d) learners are non immune to spell any words, but they are allowed to go back every bit many times as they need to to re-read the sentence, eastward) the residuum of the group must work as a team to ensure the words are spelled accurately and the grammer is besides correct.
  15. Gap-Fill Transcript Dictation Reading Activity (Private)
    Provide students with a re-create of the text, with gaps. I propose 3 forms, 1 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 same sheet. The students must individually fill in the words as they listen. Yous could read once more if necessary. Once finished, get learners to check they have spelled the words correctly past discussing (non showing!) with their neighbours.
  16. Wrong Words Reading Activity (Individual)
    The teacher provides students with a copy of the text with a selection of incorrect words. As they heed to the text being read, they must highlight the give-and-take they hear that is incorrect. Become through a second time, and this time, the students must write in the right words. This will requite the students an thought of the text earlier they do whatsoever comprehension activities.
  17. Fundamental Word Bingo – Vocabulary Based Reading Activity (Individual)
    From the text, read 5-20 words (dependent on text length) at random in L2. Students must cross them off as they hear them.

Mail-Reading Activities

  1. True or False? – Mail-Reading Activity (Alone)
    Once students have read the text through properly, permit them 5 minutes to create a list of true or false statements. These can be given to a peer to reply if time allows.
  2. Summarise The Text – Post Reading Activity (Private)
    Once students accept 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 prepare number of words.
  3. Re-write The Text – Reading Action (Alone)
    After reading (and depending on the length of the whole text), students must re-write the text in the outset, second or 3rd person singular. If the text is long, then advise that they should pick out a certain number of paragraphs.
  4. Walking Text – Reading Comprehension Activeness (Individual)
    Instead of getting students to read the texts in their seats, impress out a few copies.  Ensure the text is enlarged and in paragraphs with line numbers. Then, chop them upward 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 answer every bit they get around. You lot tin 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-utilise reading activities for all language classrooms PDF here:

Did you relish this reading activities for the language classroom mail? If then, be sure to check out these posts to improve language acquisition here likewise:

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

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