Research shows that practicing reading skills a lot is super important for learning a new language! Reading helps students become more fluent in the language skills overall, it strengthens the brain and brain connectivity, and it builds vocabulary. If you do a lot of reading, you become better at the other skills (listening, writing, and speaking) as well and it strengthens your comprehension of the language as a whole.
That's why I like to take some time during lessons to just sit and read, for fun. For this reason, students should always choose something
That THEY think is fun
That is easy enough for them; never above their level of proficiency
It means that every students practices their reading skills at their own pace too. Reading should be as relaxed as can be for a school activity. As a teacher, you have to make sure reading really is JUST for fun too, so don't give them any exercises to complete about the it.
Magazines for perfect reading skills
Besides the obvious choice of books, MAGAZINES make for fun reading too. Especially kids that think books are too text heavy might enjoy reading magazines more. In the picture are three magazines I think are awesome for kids. They each have online editions too, but I like the paper ones more :)
Check them out!
Exercises
If you do want to give students exercises to practice reading skills comprehension, you could have them check out what types of text a magazine usually contains and what the conventions are of those text types. You could have them compose a vocabulary list of words they came across while reading but they didn't know the meaning of. They should look up those words later to improve their vocabulary. In addition, you could have them design a different cover based on the article they found most interesting and get them to have snippets on the cover of the article's most important points. And last, you could have them write their own article that would fit well in their particular magazine. In all cases, they should be doing something active after the reading.
Would you like some ideas on using other text types, like Menus, Recipes, Newspapers, or Brochures in your lessons? Check the links to find my blog posts on them as well!
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