Are you wondering how to improve your students' reading skills with some fun content to practice with? I love getting my students to read as much as possible and I have some fun lesson ideas for using brochures for reading skills comprehension. I know brochures are old school, but I still love them, and here’s why:
1. You can use them for reading comprehension.
If you’re using the same brochure(s) for the whole class, you could ask them a set of text-specific reading comprehension questions. If you have a stack of different ones – like I do – and want them to just read a few they find interesting, you could ask them a set of questions that are applicable to all brochures, such as:
- What is the brochure for? If it's a place: where is it?
- What is the most important thing they want to highlight?
- Is there a pricing chart? What is the most expensive thing on there?
- Are there bullet points? What do they list? What thing on the list do you like most? Why?
- Are there pictures? What are they pictures of? Are they well-chosen? Why, or why not?
- What headings are there?
2. Use them for vocabulary study.
Have students note down words they don’t know while they read and get them to look them up in a dictionary. Or have them note down the adjectives that were used to make the things in the brochure sound amazing. Then get them to find synonyms for those words and build a larger adjective list.
3. Talk to students about text type.
The brochure is a lovely text type to pick apart. Discuss the layout and conventions of brochures with students. What features do they notice in all brochures? Discuss cover page, titles and headings, bullet points, pictures, pricing charts, contact info and maps, as well as placement of information.
4. Get students to make their own brochure.
Now that students understand what brochures look like and what information can usually be found in them, get them to make their own brochure for something they are trying to sell or a place they want people to visit. (I’ve personally done this assignment for favorite countries or cities a few times.) It’s a fun, active exercise in which they can show what they’ve learned through using their reading skills, and they get to show their creative, artsy skills as well! I would give them some guidelines for that though, or even a template. I’ve created one, if you’re interested in using that, and you can find it HERE.
Would you like some ideas on using other text types, like Menus, Recipes, Newspapers, or Magazines in your lessons? Check the links to find my blog posts on them as well!
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