Teaching reading and writing to primary leaners

How can we get our learners to read?

Reading and writing are linked together in real life that's why it is logical to teach then in pair

Getting Young Learners to Read

Reading is cognitively challenging. It requires a lot of concentration. It is about turning abstract symbols (letters, words, sentences) into meaning.

When we read, we create a world in our mind (smell, sounds, voices etc.) and teachers want their learners to do the same.

If we want our learners to be good readers, learners need to develop certain reading strategies:

1.                  A teacher should arose interest in reading what we want them to read – activate their pre-knowledge. Learners should be well aware of their own experiences relevant to the texts. Good readers always make connections between their real life and the imaginary life of the characters in the book;

2.                  Predict what is going to happen in the text. Learners should be able to visualise what is happening in the book. For this, a teacher should create a reading atmosphere and students should not be distracted from reading. Numerous things can distract them, but the aim of a teacher is not to let unknown words in the text distract the students. That’s why it is essential to choose appropriate texts.

However, a teacher should also teach their students to take risk – to guess new words from the context that are essential for understanding.

3.                  Help learners to summarise the content of what they are reading;

Practising reading only works if students are emotionally fully engaged in the reading process

In other words, they need to enjoy what they’re reading, and want to read more of it.

It is not enough to tell your students to read. Learning to read starts in the classroom. We need to develop learners’ intensive reading skills before we can expect them to read extensively on their own.

Learning to read starts also in the family. 

If parents want their children to become avid readers, they should exemplify. Children should see their parents, relatives and close people reading. This can be not only books, but also some recipes, instructions, emails, letters etc. This will enable them to understand that reading is an integral part of our life, that we can’t do without it.

Children should know that their teacher reads too. It is great when there is a place  in the classroom where books are displayed. A teacher can always take one and speak about it, tell the students how interesting it is. So, this will help them to understand, that reading is fun!

Children love stories and that’s why a teacher should start collecting them but this should be done carefully. Don’t forget about your learners’ needs, interests and about the features of a good story. You should also carefully chose a course book. Select the one which provides good stories.

What can we do after reading?

There are some standard activities, such as “true/false questions”, but they may seem tedious for your learners and not quite appropriate if we want to interest our learners, to motivate them and to encourage them to read a lot. So, here are some other activities:

• Ask your learners to give a summery and draw the plot on the board. Alternatively, ask your learners to draw it. This will give your weaker learners an opportunity to understand what they haven’t understood while reading. It’s also fun as primary learners tend to like drawing;

• Ask your learners to select one of the most favourite episode and to act it out. They can stick to the story-line, or modify it a bit;

• Read them a short summary of the book but include 3-4 mistakes. Ask them what the mistakes were. You can also ask them to listen to you with their eyes closed so that they could visualise your words in their minds. 

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Teaching reading and writing communicatively

One of the main aims of a communicative approach to language teaching and learning is to integrate real-life use of language. So we should always try to provide opportunities for learners to communicate during reading and writing tasks.

A learner's ability to read and write is dependent on the age. If a learner has already acquired these skills in their L1, it will be easier for them to acquire them in L2. However, a lot of other factors play role while learning to read and write: the amount of vocabulary they already know or the grammatical patterns the have learnt. 

To help learners to acquire these skills, a teacher should motivate their learners:

• Give lots of encouragement;
• Make wall displays of written work;
• Promote collaborative tasks;
• Have an area where learners can go to read;
• Tell learners about books you have read;
• Put labels on classroom items;

How to integrate reading into teaching?

• a reading race - You write questions about the text on separate pieces of card and write numbers on the back. Then you put all the questions on a chair. Working in pairs or groups, the children take a card, read the question and write the answer in their notebook. They continue until they’ve answered all the questions. The first group to answer all the questions correctly is the winner!
• reading to the class, without a follow-up activity. Use readers and don't forget that reading is about reading. - Read more about reading aloud and its benefits
• give learners a related text to read for homework. They could then talk about what they read in the next lesson. This helps to provide a communicative focus for reading and an opportunity for learners to ask for clarification of any difficult vocabulary.

How to extend reading tasks into writing tasks?

• After learners have read a selection of greetings card messages, ask them to create their own greetings card message or verse.
• Get learners to create a top ten list of books for your book corner.
• Devise a chart where children can record the books they’ve read.
• Learners write two or three sentences about what they can remember from a class story.
• Ask learners to write their prediction of how the story will end up. Or ask them to modify the ending. 

Ideas how to motivate your learners to read and to use writing

To become a fluent writer or reader it is necessary to do both as often as possible

For a gradual development of writing, learners can begin with writing words, then move on to sentences and then to longer texts. So, start with helping your students with accuracy and move from words to sentences to longer texts.

Activities:

Gap fill

• Use a text with some gaps, and a picture next to each gap. 
• Learners complete the text by writing the correct words.

Dictation

• Learners listen and write down the sentences you say.
• They compare with a partner, and then volunteers write the sentences on the board.

Copying

• Hang copies of a text around the classroom. 
• Pairs divide into roles: ‘writer’ and ‘runner’. 
• Runners go to the text, read the first part of it, run back and repeat it to their partner. 
• Writers write whatever their partners dictate. They gradually build up the whole text in this way.

Freer writing

• Display two pictures.
• Learners choose one and write a description.
• Volunteers read out their descriptions.

Before a freer writing activity, it's a good idea to have pre-leads. For example, divide the task into several stages:

Preparation stage

• Brainstorming theme 
• Vocabulary consolidation

Main task stage

• Reading
• Writing model
• Writing

Post task stage 

• Feedback 

One of our main aims is to motivate our learners, to help them to like reading and writing, to engage them and provide opportunities to create their own texts. We can allow them freedom to create and experiment with written text.

Writing for a communicative purpose, (these activities need an audience):

• Give your learners some vocabulary to use to write a poem for a friend. Alternatively, you could just give them a topic and let them choose their own vocabulary;

• Put your learners into groups and ask them to create a story for younger learners to read. You could even arrange for your learners to go into a younger class in your school and read their stories;

• Display six pictures and ask learners to create a short story about one of them. Then share the stories and get the class to choose their favourite one;

• Get your learners to create a writing journal to share with you. Every now and then, ask them to write a sentence about their weekend, their holiday, their day or the things they’ve enjoyed in your lesson;

• Create a class book containing your learners’ poems and short stories;

• Story swap - show 6 pictures to your learners and elicit some ideas about each of them. Put your learners in pairs and ask the, to sign their papers. They are to write the beginning of the story using two pictures. Then, they pass their work to another pair who writes the middle part using two different pictures and again pass the story to the next pair who finishes it with the last two pictures. When the story is finished, the original pair reads the whole story aloud;

• "Like what?" poem - select a topic and brainstorm words related to it. Ask your learners to choose one of the words to write a poem about. Your learners are to work in pairs to invent a poem with lines beginning with their topic word. For example: My cat is yellow as the sun, my cat is naughty as a child etc;

In order to help learners improve their creative writing, get them to do a draft first and give them some feedback.

Links:

1. Article "Getting Young Learners to Read" by Herbert Puchta - Find it here 
2. http://www.cambridgeenglishteacher.org/courses/details/18777/teaching-primary-learners-communicatively