Reading
comprehension activities aimed at helping students read short
pieces of nonfiction writing are a super way to reduce your workload.
If you use the resources at hand the students' own English
language arts texts you can make your reading instruction
do triple and even quadruple duty.
Let me give you an oversimplified example.
A simple illustration
Lets say you are going to teach a grammar lesson on the distinction
between active and passive voice verbs. If you play your cards right,
you can turn that single-emphasis lesson into grammar, writing,
research, and reading comprehension activities all wrapped
up in one neat, brief package.
You might begin by having students read the discussion in
their textbooks about active and passive verbs. It will probably
be no more than three paragraphs.
Next you could have students identify the main idea in one paragraph.
In a body paragraph, the topic
sentence is usually the first sentence. To see if thats
the case in your paragraph, have students look for repeated
words.
The meaningful words that get used most often are probably most
important. Ignore words like the, in, a, and. Look for nouns
and verbs.
The main idea of the paragraph is sure to include that important,
often-repeated keyword. You might also have students find
synonyms or pronouns that are used in place of the most
important words.
Have students find what the topic sentence asserts about the
keyword. The topic sentence
of a paragraph will contain a topic (i.e., a grammatical
subject) and an assertion about that topic.
To tie the grammar reading to the students
writing, make sure you use the term topic sentence.
To tie the grammar reading to research skills,
use the term keyword to refer to the most important
word in the paragraph.
In 10 minutes, you taught a grammar lesson, a writing lesson, a
reading lesson, and a research lesson.
How cool is that?
The next step is to use that material as a writing prompt. I
just happen to have a writing
prompt on the subject of active and passive voice that you
can download free.
Don't rely on reading to make writers
I am not going to tell you that this sort of reading comprehension
activity will turn your little darlings into award-winning writers.
Being able to recognize a topic sentence or a transition
doesnt guarantee that your students can write one, but its
a starting place.
Students wont learn much about writing from reading writing,
even with your help. People learn to write only by writing.
However, if you combine some basic reading instruction with some
basic writing instruction, the two complement each other.
You may find, as I do, that teaching writing in the formulaic
manner I recommend improves students' ability to read nonfiction
material.
Whats even better is that by integrating
two or more aspects of your course curriculum into short reading
comprehension activities you cut down on the number of lesson
plans you must prepare. You can use the same lesson plan week after
week with only minor adjustments.
Published 29-Mar-2008; updated: 15-Jun-2010