Title:
From learning to read to reading to learn: a project of fostering reading skills through teaching readers at S2
Type:
Lesson plan
KLA:
English Language
Level:
S2
School:
Nam Wah Catholic Secondary School


Background

The school project focused on developing reading skills of S2 students.
From the annual subject plan 2007-08, the school intended to develop a 'reading to learn' culture. The teachers identified some needs for teaching and learning:

  • Building a reader friendly environment to encourage students to be active and interested readers
  • S2 students can acquire different reading sub-skills

Thus the project team decided that efforts could be put to build on existing strengths of the panel and available resources of the school, e.g. reading worksheets with some readers, packs of readers purchased, library lessons.

 

 
Objectives
  1. To develop a reading habit and read with a reasonable level of competency
 

Implementation

Planning

two-year plan was set to achieve the objective.

 

Building a reader friendly environment

  1. Encouraging students to design book marks with quotes related to reading
  2. Posting up the book marks in the library and other parts of the school campus

Teaching reading skills in the library lessons

Giving students an introduction to basic reading skills, and knowledge of non fiction.

Assessing the suitability of a reader for skills teaching before selecting the book and planning for teaching.

Inventory of reading skills form
Reader suitability assessment form

Readers- plans and materials

Readers taught

1. Sara Says No

Objectives

To enable students to:

  1. understand the moral of the story;
  2. extract and organise information of the story in a graphic organiser;
  3. apply a range of reference skills with the help of cues;
  4. analyse and discuss some ideas from the text critically.

Whitney, N. (2005). Sara Says No! Thailand: Macmillan Readers.

 

Unit plan

A story about a girl called Sara whose father always cheated customers at their fruit stall. Sara prayed to the God and one day, a miracle happened and changed her life.

worksheet

2. A Trip Around the World

Objectives:
To enable students to:
  1. understand the features of non-fiction texts;
  2. sequence events, extract and organise information of the story in a graphic organiser
  3. write paragraphs using appropriate connectives;
  4. identify general and specific information using knowledge of the world;
  5. recognise key words in a sentence;  
  6. search for relevant details of a topic and present the information in correct register.

O'Donnell, K. 2004). A Trip Around the World. New York: Rosen Classroom Books & Materials.

Unit plan
This is a non fiction reader. Students can learn the facts about various cities in the world.

worksheets

3. The Umbrella

Objectives:
To enable students to tackle a wide range of reading tasks which tap on their multiple intelligences, e.g. bodily, kinesthetic, visual and spatial, verbal / linguistic, interpersonal.

Harris, C. (2006) The Umbrella. Thailand: Macmillan Readers.

Unit plan

A story on the fabulous experience of a woman whose umbrella was taken by mistake by another woman.

worksheets

4. A Look at Dogs

This is an assessment task set on the reader 'A Look at Dogs' with the following objectives:

  1. To assess students' knowledge of fiction and non-fiction, and their reading skills;
  2. To use data in this assessment task to inform learning and teaching.

 

Halpern, M.(1998). A Look At Dogs. Steck-Vaughn Company.

A reading test

 


 

Acknowledgements

Nam Wah Catholic Secondary School

 

File download

Two-year plan

38 KB

Design book marks

162 KB

Basic reading skills

40 KB

Non fiction

159 KB

Inventory of reading skills form

35 KB

Reader suitability assessment form

44 KB

1. Unit plan

30 KB

1. Worksheet

94 KB

2. Unit plan

29 KB

2. Worksheets

247 KB

3. Unit plan

83 KB

3. Worksheets

80 KB

4. A reading test

149 KB

 

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