Success with reading - how to organise a reading programme (Part 1: intensive reading) — Philip Prowse
We have just looked at the benefits of extensive reading (See What is the secret of extensive reading?) but many teachers also like to use readers intensively. So we will start here with a look at how to use a class reader, when all the students in the class read the same book.
Worksheets
A photocopiable worksheet is available for every title in the series. This contains three sections: Before reading, Check your reading and After reading. These may be used in class or by students working alone.
Motivating students to read
Our first aim must be to motivate the students to read. Cambridge English Readers do this in two ways: through specific Before reading activities in the worksheets for each reader, and in the general Before reading activities, which feature universal pre-reading tasks. You can use the Before reading activities on the reader worksheet to get students interested in the book and to stimulate a desire to read.
Supporting students while they read
Secondly we need to support students while they are reading. The reader worksheets offer chapter by chapter tasks in the Check your reading section to help students reflect on what they have read, and think about what is going to happen in the story.
Follow up work
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the worksheets give you a wide range of post-reading activities to foster creative language use. The general After reading activities in the Activities section will offer an even wider range of universal post-reading activities.
Audio CDs
The full text of every title in the Cambridge English Readers series is available on CD. The recordings of each book are an invaluable resource which can be exploited in a number of ways:
- You can play the class the beginning of a chapter to make them want to continue.
- You can play extracts from chapters and ask students who is speaking and when.
- You can turn the reader into a 'talking book' and play the class a chapter a week.
- You can encourage the students to buy or borrow the CDs to listen to at home or on the move, in the car for example.
- You can also play the recording while they read in class. This has the double benefit of increasing reading speed and helping with pronunciation.