Page 30 - ELG1806 June Issue 458

RESOURCES .
Do-It-Yourself Do you want to actually teach

fairy tales your young learners to read?

You can buy graded readers, but why not
try making your own to suit the specific Graded readers from the innovative new ELT publisher
needs of your class, writes Terry Phillips based on the latest research into early reading

t is not easy to find readers that actually
teach reading. But you don’t have to buy
readers if you are prepared to do a bit of Designed for children whose first language is not English
I work yourself. In fact, as an experienced
teacher of young learners whose first
language is not English, you can probably
produce better readers than you can buy
from a market obsessed with repurposing
readers produced for native-speaker
children of the same age. Engaging!
a number of separate incidents 3
1 Find a suitable illustration or set Jack and his mother are very rich.
Choose a story with a strong
narrative structure. In other
of illustrations for each page/
They have one dog.
incident. Free clip art is fine but
words, one with a plot line with
Jack goes to the shop.
don’t break copyright.
which are clearly linked. Fables and fairy Pre-teach the key vocabulary from OR
Jack and his mother are very ….
tales nearly always meet this criterion, for the whole story. Remember that non- They have one ….
example: native adults must know 90 per cent of Jack goes to the …. Motivating!
vocabulary in a text in order to guess the
Jack and the Beanstalk other 10 per cent. You can give out the flashcards from the
For young learners, the percentage earlier activity – the children must find Fun!
Jack and his mother are very poor. They have is probably higher. Type the words on and hold up the correct word. Don’t ask
one goat. Jack goes to the market. He sells flashcards in lower case. Teach the word, comprehension questions e.g. Does Jack
the goat. He gets three beans. He takes them then flash it for children to learn to sight go to the market? because such questions
home and gives them to his mother. His mother read it. pose challenges which are irrelevant to the Colourful!
like Calibri. Use simple syntactic 4
throws them out the window … Show the first ‘page’ of the story. purpose of class readers.
2 Get the children to read along after one 6
Type the separate incidents on
Check understanding of the whole
Use handouts or, even better,
narrative. Reading is all about
display on a smartboard. Read the
different pages. Use a sans serif font
sentences aloud.
prediction and hypothesis checking
– being ahead of the text. Show
structure – mainly S V C/O A.
Put each sentence on a different line. Use or two repetitions. the children two sentences and ask: 'What
narrative present because you don’t want is the next sentence in the story?' The
the first encounter with a verb to be the Check comprehension, focusing children read the two sentences, discuss Pop-out characters
on truth value. Make statements,
simple past – Jack went / sold / got… 5 and choose. Do not confirm or correct. for story retelling
using language from the reader,
Then show them the next page to check
[page 1] to check understanding of the their predictions.
Jack and his mother are very poor. truth of the statement to elicit yes/no or a
They have one goat. correction. Get the children to retell the story
Jack goes to the market. of comprehension e.g. Jack sells his mother. 7
with puppets or through role play.
Ideally, make absurd statements; to
make the children laugh – the greatest test The children make hand puppets or
[page 2] masks of the characters in the story • Free audio
He sells the goat. You can also usefully check reading and – and items, like the beanstalk. Children
He gets three beans. comprehension by showing the sentences take it in turns to read sentences or pages • For classwork or for one-to-one
He takes them home. with the final word missing. from the story and the other children move
the puppets or role play the story. • 76% of the 200 most common English words in Grades 1 to 4
• Detailed teacher / parent notes
So, it’s as simple as that… If you have n Terry Phillips is the
the time, you can create your own business development director
readers, or take a look at the Innova of Innova Press Ltd and the
Graded Readers Series, which is reteller of fables and fairy Visit innovapress.com to see a flipbook reader
published next month. stories in the Innova Graded
Readers series. and to browse our range of titles
INNOVATING LANGUAGE EDUCATION
30 June 2018

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