What's the best way to get my primary pupils reading in English? When it comes to reading, they tend to lose their interest.Your suggestions are appreciated.
Any advice or ideas for Kyle? What work on reading with younger students do you do? How do you keep their interest? Contact us.
This question is from Kyle Chung, Hong Kong
Comments
rebecca1
If they lose interest, it may be that the story is either boring or difficult for them to understand. Pupils can only concentrate on something for a limited amount of time. So, please do not expect them to act as adults. You've tried well.
Viljami Nykanen. Finland
For improving reading skills of my elementary level pupils I often try to make the reading more interesting by using the following ways:1. In reading a chapter I group the students into two (or more) groups, and make sure each group is sitting in a full circle (pupils facing each other). Then I tell them that this will be a little reading competition (you can decide what kind of "prizes" to use, I normally give the winning group points or let them start the next exercise first). The point is to get every group to work together in reading the sentence (or the lines of a certain character in the chapter). They can invent their own ways if they want, i.e. reading together all of the sentence or just one person per word and finally everyone together etc.
2. If your pupils normally read out loud after a tape, try reversing the order (when they have heard the chapter once) so that the pupils read first and can then check their input.When I used the first way my pupils were really enthusiastic, and it seemed to make them communicate a lot in between the sentences. Although some might argue against this kind of a competition, I think it really worked well with pupils whose input I normally had difficulties in receiving, because other pupils actually told them to stop joking around and participate in reading.
In any case, hope this helps!!
P.Vinayagam, India
I teach English to my 8 year-old son. I am surprised to observe him nowadays reading aloud from comic books and other storybooks. I did not consciously develop the reading habit in him. I always read along with him. He listens to me first. I read slowly because English is a foreign language to me. After I have dropped the book and gone elsewhere, my son takes the same story and reads aloud. So, the point is that we may read aloud anything interesting with small children and then let them read the same. Don't give new items to read which they have not understood. Comic books are a better option because the characters appear before them speaking. The children are not conscious that they are reading. So reading is not a burden but becomes an interesting activity to the children.